Recordings of Inquiry at Appamada. These are open sessions where participants meet with an Appamada teacher in direct encounter.

2017 Appamada Inquiry

2017 Dharma Talks

Appamada's Precepts Course is a one-year program, meeting once a month for two hours. The basic text for the course is Diane Rizzetto's Waking Up to What You Do. At the end of the year, there is a ceremony for formally taking the Buddhist precepts for those who wish to do so. See Appamada's website for more information about the Precepts Program.

2017 Precepts Program

http://www.buddhistactionnow.org
The purpose of Buddhist Action Now is to provide in the public sphere a platform for collective action and speech that manifests and advocates for the dharma values of compassion, wisdom, connection, ethical action, and care. By our Bodhisattva Vow we speak out and take action on behalf of all beings, for their liberation and relief from suffering. 

Specifically, we confront and oppose the forces of greed, hatred, ignorance and fear. We provide exemplars of dynamic, diverse, caring and cooperative communities. We work to transform public consciousness and action toward all that is wholesome, connected, caring, and liberating, for all beings and for our planet.

Buddhist Action Now

2025-05-11 | Way-Seeking Mind Talk | Lesley Bradstreet

2025-06-23 | Depth In Pracitce |Vimalakirti Sutra

2025-09-20 | Fall '25 Intensive | Peg Syverson

2025-10-05 | Dharma Talk | Sin and Repentance | Nate Smalley

2025-10-06 | Depth In Practice | Vimalakirti Sutra

Fred LaMotte

'My Ancestry DNA results came in.
Just as I suspected, my great great grandfather
was a monarch butterfly.
Much of who I am is still wriggling under a stone.
I am part larva, but part hummingbird too.
There is dinosaur tar in my bone marrow.
My golden hair sprang out of a meadow in Palestine.
Genghis Khan is my fourth cousin,
but I didn't get his dimples.
My loins are loaded with banyan seeds from Sri Lanka,
but I descended from Ravanna, not Ram.
My uncle is a mastodon.
There are traces of white people in my saliva.
3.7 billion years ago I swirled in golden dust,
dreaming of a planet overgrown with lingams and yonis.
More recently, say 60,000 B.C.
I walked on hairy paws across a land bridge
joining Sweden to Botswana.
I am the bastard of the sun and moon.
I can no longer hide my heritage of raindrops and cougar scat.
I am made of your grandmother's tears.
You conquered rival tribesmen of your own color,
chained them together, marched them naked to the coast,
and sold them to colonials from Savannah.
I was that brother you sold, I was the slave trader,
I was the chain.
Admit it, you have wings, vast and golden,
like mine, like mine.
You have sweat, black and salty,
like mine, like mine.
You have secrets silently singing in your blood,
like mine, like mine.
Don't pretend that earth is not one family.
Don't pretend we never hung from the same branch.
Don't pretend we don't ripen on each other's breath.
Don't pretend we didn't come here to forgive.'

2025-10-07 I Inquiry I Be like the Buddha was, before the Buddha was Buddha I Trudy Johnston

Recording of Calling Out to Hungry Hearts by Krishna Das courtesy of Upaya Zen Center: https://youtu.be/2wI5zlF2eeQ?si=uK1PoeKDSyJMO_bw

2025-10-12 | Dharma Talk | American Zen Teachers Association Conference | Peg Syverson

2025-10-13 | Depth In Practice | Not Two: The Appamada Story | Peg Syverson

Songs arrive even in the mail box
Songs keep coming even happy to be sad 

Josephine Foster

2025-10-15 I Inquiry I Enjoy Your Life I Josh Gifford

2025-10-19 | Dharma Talk | Grace | Nate Smalley

2025-10-20 | Depth In Practice | Not Two: The Appamada Story | Peg Syverson

W.H. Auden clip
https://youtu.be/oWtVYYoJFl4?si=MkPur0C6uJFKddz0

2025-10-21 I Inquiry I Auden and Haga: active hope I Joel Barna

Mercy has no hands,
yet carries the whole mountain
down to the quiet.

All are welcome to the river’s edge.

Spelling note: Jessica cites from several sources, including by Cynthia Bourgeault.

2025-10-26 | Dharma Talk | Becoming a Riverbed of Mercy | Jessica Steinbomer

2025-10-28 I Inquiry I Zazen and Precepts I Flint Sparks

2025-10-27 | Depth In Practice | Not Two: The Appamada Story | Peg Syverson

2025-11-02 | Dharma Talk | Living in a Polarized World: Cultivation of the Delusion of Separation | Rosemarie Gardella Gates

2025-11-03 | Depth In Practice | Not Two: The Appamada Story | Peg Syverson

2025-11-04  I Inquiry I Meeting what is needed I Joel Barna

2025-11-16 | Dharma Transmission Talk | Nathan Hōshin Kōnen Smalley

2025-11-18 I  Inquiry I It is our shared pain that is the cord of our belonging I Trudy Johnston

2025-11-23 | Dharma Talk | Black Holes, Basic Goodness, and the Perfection of Wisdom | Jon-Eric Steinbomer

2025-11-24 | Depth In Practice | Not Two: The Appamada Story

2025-11-30 | Dharma Talk | Shuzen is Not Zazen | Ellen Hippard

2025-12-01 | Depth In Practice| Not Two: The Appamada Story

2025-12-02  I Inquiry I Go to the Limits of your Longing I Trudy Johnston

2025.12.07 | Rohatsu Ceremony | Nishijima Roshi on the Buddha’s Enlightenment | Nate Smalley

2025-12-08 | Depth In Practice | Not Two: The Appamada Story

link to poem : https://www.poetryverse.com/emily-dickinson-poems/you-cannot-put-a-fire-out

2025-12-09 I Waking up and Growing up I Inquiry Suzanne Kilkus

2025.12.14 | Dharma Talk | Forgiveness | Nate Smalley

2025-12-15 | Depth In Practice | Not Two: The Appamada Story

Annunciation
~Marie Howe

Even if I don’t see it again - nor ever feel it
I know it is and that if once it hailed me
it ever does -
And so it is myself I want to turn in that direction
not as towards a place, but it was a tilting
within myself,
as one turns a mirror to flash the light where
it isn’t - I was blinded like that - and swam
in what shone at me
only able to endure it by being no one and so
specifically myself I thought I’d die
from being loved like that.


Gabriel’s Annunciation
~ Jan Richardson

For a moment
I hesitated
on the threshold.
For the space
of a breath
I paused,
unwilling to disturb
her last ordinary moment,
knowing that the next step
would cleave her life:
that this day
would slice her story
in two,
dividing all the days before
from all the ones
to come.
The artists would later
depict the scene:
Mary dazzled
by the archangel,
her head bowed
in humble assent,
awed by the messenger
who condescended
to leave paradise
to bestow such an honor
upon a woman, 
and mortal.
Yet I tell you
it was I who was dazzled,
I who found myself agape
when I came upon her—
reading, at the loom, in the kitchen,
I cannot now recall;
only that the woman before me—
blessed and full of grace
long before I called her so—
shimmered with how completely
she inhabited herself,
inhabited the space around her,
inhabited the moment
that hung between us.
I wanted to save her
from what I had been sent
to say.
Yet when the time came,
when I had stammered
the invitation
(history would not record
the sweat on my brow,
the pounding of my heart;
would not note
that I said
Do not be afraid
to myself as much as
to her)
it was she
who saved me—
her first deliverance—
her Let it be
not just declaration
to the Divine
but a word of solace,
of soothing,
of benediction
for the angel
in the doorway
who would hesitate
one last time—
just for the space
of a breath
torn from his chest—
before wrenching himself away
from her radiant consent,
her beautiful and
awful yes.

2025-12-16 I Annunciation I Inquiry I Flint Sparks

2025-12-25 | Way-Seeking Mind Talk | C. Seren8y

2017 - 01 - 10 - Inquiry - Flint Sparks

2017 - 01 - 03 - Inquiry - Flint Sparks

2017 - 01 - 17 - Inquiry - Flint Sparks

2017-02-05 | Dharma Talk | The Greening of the Dharma | Peg Syverson

2017-01-08 | Dharma Talk | Abuse of Power | Peg Syverson

2017-01-15 | Dharma Talk | Joel Barna

2017-01-22 | Dharma Talk | LZTA Meeting | Peg Syverson

2017-01-29 | Dharma Talk | Writing Exercise | Peg Syverson

2017 - 02 - 07 - Inquiry - Place - Peg Syverson

2017 - 02 - 14 - Inquiry - Rare Sutra - Peg Syverson

2017 - 03 - 07 - Precepts Class 3

2017 - 02 - 07 - Precepts Class 2

2017 - 01 - 10 - Precepts Class 1

2017 - 04 - 04 - Precepts Class 4

2017 - 07 - 12 - Precepts Class 6

2017 - 10 - 13 - Buddhist Action Now

2017 - 10 - 14 - Buddhist Action Now

2017 - 10 - 21 - Buddhist Action Now

2017 - 10 - 28 - Buddhist Action Now

2017 - 11 - 11 - Buddhist Action Now

Appamada is a contemporary center for Zen practice, inquiry, and community, located in Austin, Texas. If you appreciate these offerings, please consider making a contribution to support Appamada with the link below.

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