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Zen Mind · Thursday · 1 hr 2 min

Sitting With Your Karma

Given at a One-Day Sitting at the Boulder Zen Center, this talk picks up a question left open in the previous episode, "Sitting Like a Buddha." If zazen is not a means to awakening but its enactment, what about karma? Thoughts, fragments of story, and small triggers of dissatisfaction keep arriving, and we assume awakening means their absence. The talk proposes instead that we are always sitting and living with our karma; what changes is our relationship to it. Karma means intentional action, and the talk reads intention as a leaning: every action leaves a trace, the trace becomes a disposition, and the disposition leans us toward acting the same way again. Some leanings are inherited, some laid down by our own actions; we are responsible for only the second, yet responsible to both. Like a landscape shaped by the water that has run through it, the present carries the whole past as its shape. Zazen is a posture built to invite all the leanings and complete none of them: a pause that separates leaning from action. When leanings don't automatically translate into action, attention widens from object to field, and the body (with the belly as its cultivated center) becomes an organ for sensing more of the situation. This makes room for an appropriate response to arise from the situation rather than from the self. Welcome to Zen Mind! Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Consider becoming a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/ If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review! See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at office@boulderzen.org. Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

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Given at a One-Day Sitting at the Boulder Zen Center, this talk picks up a question left open in the previous episode, "Sitting Like a Buddha." If zazen is not a means to awakening but its enactment, what about karma? Thoughts, fragments of story, and small triggers of dissatisfaction keep arriving, and we assume awakening means their absence. The talk proposes instead that we are always sitting and living with our karma; what changes is our relationship to it. Karma means intentional action, and the talk reads intention as a leaning: every action leaves a trace, the trace becomes a disposition, and the disposition leans us toward acting the same way again. Some leanings are inherited, some laid down by our own actions; we are responsible for only the second, yet responsible to both. Like a landscape shaped by the water that has run through it, the present carries the whole past as its shape. Zazen is a posture built to invite all the leanings and complete none of them: a pause that separates leaning from action. When leanings don't automatically translate into action, attention widens from object to field, and the body (with the belly as its cultivated center) becomes an organ for sensing more of the situation. This makes room for an appropriate response to arise from the situation rather than from the self.

Welcome to Zen Mind! 

Love the dharma talks and want to hear more? Consider becoming a Premium Podcast subscriber for only $9/month. Dive deeper into the topics through Q&A sessions related to each of the talks. You can even ask questions of your own through the 'Ask Me Anything' platform and gain access to previously unpublished talks from intensives. Learn more here: https://zenmind.supercast.com/

If you're enjoying these talks, please subscribe and leave us a rating or review!

See all events and join our mailing list at www.boulderzen.org. Email us at office@boulderzen.org.

Zenki Christian Dillo Roshi is the the guiding teacher at the Boulder Zen Center in Colorado, USA. This podcast shares the regular dharma talks given at the center. Zenki Roshi approaches Zen practice as a craft of transformation, liberation, wisdom and compassionate action. His interest is to bring Buddhism alive within the Western cultural context, while staying committed to the traditional emphasis on embodiment.

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