On June 20, 2021 Rocky gave a talk about the challenging journey that led him to join the Northfield Buddhist Meditation Center in 2019, and how the sangha and meditation changed his life. As someone who was able to overcome intense anxiety through sitting, he asks how we (the sangha) can help others who may … Continue reading "Rocky Casillas Aguirre – The Doorway I’d Never Seen Taught Me to Let Anxiety In"

On October 10, 2021, Ben Connelly gave a talk entitled:  Show Up In A Good Way – Lessons from Zen practice at Indigenous Led Water Protector Camps. About Ben:  Ben Connelly is a Soto Zen teacher and Dharma heir in the Katagiri lineage. He also teaches mindfulness in a wide variety of secular contexts including police training and addiction recovery groups. Ben is based at Minnesota Zen … Continue reading "Ben Connelly – Show Up In A Good Way"

Recorded on Zoom on April 11, 2021. The subject of Shodo’s talk was refuge. About Shodo Spring: Shodo Spring is the founder of Mountains and Waters Alliance, dedicated to working together with all beings to protect and restore the earth. She is also a Zen priest, Dharma heir of Shohaku Okumura Roshi, mother and grandmother, leader of the 2013 … Continue reading "Shodo Spring – Refuge"

Mindfulness is an ancient and powerful practice of awareness and nonjudgmental discernment that can help us ground ourselves in the present moment, with the world and our lives just as they are. But there’s a risk: by focusing our attention on something (or someone), we might always see it as something other, as separate from … Continue reading "Ben Connelly – Mindfulness and Intimacy"

How should we practice through the Covid-19 pandemic? In a recent interview  Sayadaw U Tejaniya, the Burmese monk and meditation teacher, answered simply, “the same as we always practice.” Yet the intensity of the crisis, he said, reveals many aspects of Dhamma in unusually high relief, including the need to “quarantine not only the body but … Continue reading "Doug McGill – Practicing Through the Pandemic"

Courtney Work is a Professor of Ethnology at National Chengchi University in Taipei, Taiwan

About Gabe Keller Flores: Gabe Keller Flores is Common Ground Meditation Center’s Office Manager and serves on the Board of Directors, as well as the Advisory Committee on matters of equity and accessibility. He is a dedicated dharma practitioner, having spent about one year of his life doing intensive retreat practice. He’s been practicing at … Continue reading "Gabe Keller Flores – Gathering, Stewarding, and Directing Energy for Awakening"

About Beth Goldring: Beth Ann (Kanji) Goldring began Zen training in 1979 and became Maurine Stuart Roshi’s student in 1982, receiving Jukai from her in 1986 and ordination in her name in 1995. A former university humanities teacher, she was engaged in human rights work in Palestine 1986-93, a Radcliffe Bunting Institute Fellow 1993-4; in … Continue reading "Beth Goldring – Buddhism and Justice"