Yunmen’s Every Day is a Good Day.
09/04/2021, Rinso Ed Sattizahn, dharma talk at City Center.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SanFranciscoZenCenterPublicLectures/~4/4bBNV4Ud2L8" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>

Appreciate Your Life

Shuso Talk by Bert Dyer on November 7, 2013 at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center.

SFZC Live

You Are Beautiful

2014-03-08 Eijun Linda Ruth Cutts Dharma talk at City Center

Call Out My Name

04/12/2025, Ryuko Laura Burges, dharma talk at City Center. Ryuko Laura Burges, a lay entrusted teacher, talks about the timeless power of story and shares her recent book, Wisdom Stories of Tibet: Tales of Magic, Adventure, and Bravery.

Wisdom Stories of Tibet

05/03/2025, Yogetsu Akasaka, dharma talk at City Center. Yogetsu Akasaka discusses ikigai, a Japanese concept that refers to having a purpose in life.

Finding Your True Self

06/21/2025, Esho Sudan, dharma talk at City Center.
Esho Sudan explores the life-story and great legacy of Sozen Nagasawa Roshi, a Soto Zen abbess and teacher, founder of the only women's training monastery in WW2-era Japan.

In This Body, In This Lifetime

06/29/2025, Kokyo Henkel, dharma talk at Green Gulch Farm.
Kokyo Henkel explores what is really transmitted from teacher to student, and some classic Zen stories about Dharma transmission.

What is Dharma Transmission in Zen?

07/06/2025, Zoketsu Norman Fischer, dharma talk at Green Gulch Farm.
Zoketsu Norman Fischer discusses a forthcoming book by the Japanese Zen Master Kosho Uchiyama about his experience practicing chanting the name of Kanzeon Bodhisattva.

Chanting the Name of Kanzeon

04/23/2025, Shosan Victoria Austin, dharma talk at City Center. Shosan Victoria Austin uses Keizan Zenji’s teachings to explore the questions: What is intentional service? And, how does this help very different people build an environment of wholeness and trust?

Keizan's Pure Land Right Here

06/15/2025, Gyokuden Stephanie Blank, dharma talk at Green Gulch Farm. Gyokuden Steph Blank shares her experience of grief and gratitude arising through the intimate process of accompanying her father during his recent transition from the miracle of life into the miracle of death.

Grief and Gratitude on Father's Day

07/26/2025, Henzan Roger Hillyard, dharma talk at City Center. Roger Hillyard offers a look into the origins of Lay Entrustment and how it has manifested in American Zen.

Lay Entrustment and Dharma Gates

07/20/2025, Jiryu Rutschman-Byler, dharma talk at Green Gulch Farm. Abbot Jiryu Rutschman-Byler reflects on recent departures from Green Gulch of the elder teachers of the founding generation, and how at the same time as that loss, a new flower of teaching blossoms as "Becoming Yourself," the new book of Suzuki Roshi's talks, is released.

Goodbye and Hello

07/23/2025, Yogetsu Akasaka, dharma talk at City Center. Yogetsu Akasaka, a priest from the Sōtō Zen School in Japan, asks What if cleaning a bathroom could be one of your most profound spiritual practices?

Finding Awareness in the Everyday

07/27/2025, Zenshin Greg Fain, dharma talk at Green Gulch Farm. Zenshin Greg Fain talks about gratitude and grief in the context of Thusness. Gratitude and grief can both be dharma gates to bring us closer to a felt sense of connection with each other, and all of existence.

Gratitude and Grief

08/06/2025, Sozan Michael McCord, dharma talk at City Center. Sozan Michael McCord discusses working with and growing in our awareness of how the three poisons—greed, hatred and delusion—manifest in our lives, on this 80th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima.

The Three Poisons: Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki

08/09/2025, Shundo David Haye, dharma talk at City Center. Shundo David Haye reflects on the way we hold stories about ourselves and others, and how our practice of dwelling in silence can help us change our relationship with them.

Stories and Silence

08/10/2025, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel Osho, dharma talk at Green Gulch Farm. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel Osho discusses the reality that a human body will turn to dust and yet it is the body in which we carry the dharma and come to know it. As Dogen Zenji, founder of Soto Zen, taught, "To expound the dharma with this body is foremost."

To Expound the Dharma with This Body

08/13/2025, Anshi Zachary Smith, dharma talk at City Center. Anshi Zachary Smith examines case 96 from the Blue Cliff Record which holds suggestions about how to frame one’s practice and warnings about the many ways we can get it wrong.

Three Turning Phrases

08/16/2025, Tenzen David Zimmerman, dharma talk at City Center. Central Abbot Tenzen David Zimmerman unpacks what it might mean to become yourself through the simple but challenging practice of shikantaza (just sitting), referencing Suzuki Roshi’s teachings and two Zen koans.

Sitting as Your True Self

07/12/2025, Kiku Christina Lehnherr, dharma talk at City Center.
Kiku Christina Lehnherr explores the dharma of living and practicing in a human body.

This Human Body

08/17/2025, Doshin Dan Gudgel, dharma talk at Green Gulch Farm. Doshin Dan Gudgel explores how feeling the preciousness of life can support deep practice, kindness and gentleness.

Lucky to Be Alive

08/27/2025, So-on Eli Brown-Stevenson, dharma talk at City Center.
So-on Eli Brown-Stevenson explores what it means to be a good ancestor now: carrying warmth, witnessing others into fullness, and tending the ceremonies of life with reverence.

Ancestor Warmth

08/31/2025, Jiryu Rutschman-Byler, dharma talk at Green Gulch Farm.
Abbot Jiryu Rutschman-Byler discusses practicing kindness as an overflowing of the direct experience of non-separation, and explores the teachings of Suzuki Roshi on ethical precepts by analyzing each word in a questionable statement that he heard: "You should be kind, and that's enough."

Is It Enough to Be Kind?

08/06/2025, Kristin Diggs, dharma talk at City Center.
Nyokai Kristin Diggs talks about the centrality of self-study in the context of Soto Zen, the interdependent nature of body-mind-self and all phenomena, and wise view within the context of Big Mind, which includes the whole universe.

Study the Self

09/06/2025, Shosan Victoria Austin, dharma talk at City Center.
Shosan Victoria Austin points out that most of us are trying to find stability in less-than-perfect places, times, and conditions. How do we build an external and internal environment that supports us to meditate in peace?

Zazen: Outer and Inner Sitting

09/10/2025, Doshin Dan Gudgel, dharma talk at City Center.
Doshin Dan Gudgel discusses gratitude and devotional practices, using his personal altars as examples, and reading “The Angel Handed Me a Book” by Paul Valéry.

Indiscriminate Devotion

09/07/2025, Sozan Michael McCord, dharma talk at Green Gulch Farm.
Sozan Michael McCord considers the deeper purpose of monasteries—not only as places of study and community, but as spaces that preserve and sustain collective practice, creating lasting impact beyond the moment of gathering.

What Is the Role of a Monastery in Today’s World?

09/17/2025, Kim Kogen Daiho Hart, dharma talk at City Center.
Kim Kōgen Daihō Hart explores her personal journey through anxiety to the realization that it is our own, all too real human struggles that light the path to liberation.

The Struggle Is the Medicine

09/21/2025, Hoka Chris Fortin, dharma talk at Green Gulch Farm.
Hoka Chris Fortin asks: How do we—individually and as one—not turn away but bear witness, and respond to the suffering of the world with clear-hearted wisdom and compassion as we awaken together to our True Nature and shared humanity.

Engaged Buddhism

07/12/2025, Sozan Michael McCord, dharma talk at Tassajara. The world has so many issues that need people's time and attention yet we squester ourselves for days or weeks on end at Tassajara.  While it may seem indulgent or even escapist to retreat to practice in the wilderness, it is surviving vital purpose for these times.

The Unique Role Tassajara Plays in the Times We Live

09/14/2025, Sokaku Kathie Fischer, dharma talk at Green Gulch Farm.
Sokaku Kathie Fischer examines the Xin Xin Ming (Faith in Mind, or Trusting the Mind), a text by the third Chinese Chan (Zen) ancestor, Jianzhi Sengcan.

How Can We Not Pick and Choose?

09/20/2025, Tenmyo Dojima 堂島典明, dharma talk at City Center.
Tenmyo Dojima 堂島典明 shares how her early struggles with depression led her to rediscover Buddhism in the U.S., begin monastic training in Japan, and continue the joy of walking the Buddha Way—together with others, rooted in connection.

A Journey Toward Boundless Connection

09/27/2025, Chikudo Catherine Spaeth, dharma talk at City Center.
Chikudo Catherine Spaeth teaches that zazen shows us what to care for, and leads the way in our request to study the precepts with a teacher. In this caring we become a good friend to our practice.

A Request for Jukai

10/05/2025, Tatsudo Nicole Baden Roshi, dharma talk at Green Gulch Farm.
Tatsudo Nicole Baden explores how Zen practice literally shifts the architecture of our experience — from a narrow, biographical “here” into a living, embodied field of contact.

A New Here: How Practice Opens Different Worlds

10/11/2025, Shosan Victoria Austin, dharma talk at City Center.
Shosan Victoria Austin teaches that we can deepen our understanding of the causes and cures of dispute, and practice with a unifying value of kindness that has the power to transform our conflicts to occasions for mutual curiosity, intimacy, and growth.

The Power of Non-Retaliation

10/12/2025, Eli Brown-Stevenson, dharma talk at Green Gulch Farm.
So-on Eli Brown-Stevenson uses the image of bubbles and the teaching of the Three Marks of Existence to explore how Zen practice helps us meet impermanence, suffering, and no-self in the body, not through ideas, but through presence.

Perception and Practice

10/18/2025, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel Osho, dharma talk at City Center.
Zenju Earthlyn Manuel Osho teaches that when we remain in the mode of discovery we open to new portals to engage and activate in tending to today’s suffering.

Expanding How We See Things

11/11/2017, Frank Ostaseski, dharma talk at City Center.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SanFranciscoZenCenterPublicLectures/~4/FUodciCaKJc" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>

The Thin Line Between Life and Death

The Bodhisattvas' Six Modes of Going Beyond

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump

The purpose of San Francisco Zen Center is to make accessible and embody the wisdom and compassion of the Buddha as expressed in the Soto Zen tradition established by Dogen Zenji in 13th-century Japan and conveyed to us by Suzuki Roshi and other Buddhist teachers. Our practice flows from the insight that all beings are Buddha, and that sitting in meditation is itself the realization of Buddha nature, or enlightenment.

San Francisco Zen Center

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