City Center Talks

Kiku Christina Lehnherr explores how a day—or several days—of meditation is giving ourselves the gift of simply being.

Doshin Patti Mitchell shares how meditation and community helped her face suffering, expectations, and self-judgment. Speaking about the importance of honesty, gratitude, and spiritual friendship,...

Hokyo Lorenzo Garbo explores the challenge of truly listening to the body, distinguishing between simply directing attention to bodily sensations with the thinking mind and allowing the body’s...

Shosan Victoria Austin explores love as an internal posture, rather than a feeling. A stable base for our posture of love is awareness and patience with the negative emotions that often come up...

Hokyo Lorenzo Garbo reflects on full presence as direct, embodied, moment-to-moment awareness beyond judgment or self-narrative, illustrated by a wordless encounter with a newborn and cultivated...

Hokyo Lorenzo Garbo explores how lifelong, internalized expectations—shaped by personal history and conditioning—distort perception and create suffering by separating us from present-...

Gendo Lucy Xiao 玄道 invites us to welcome the Lunar New Year by settling into inner stability and ease—remembering that peace is not something we chase outside ourselves, but something we can...

Onryu Mary Stares explores how external stimuli can act as a gate to practice if we use intention and curiosity.

Hokyo Lorenzo Garbo unpacks the shuso’s way-seking mind by framing practice as an everyday exercise of holding internal conflict without fixing it, allowing harmony to arise naturally, and...

So-on Eli Brown-Stevenson reflects on Dr. King’s legacy as a practice of staying human in the face of fear, polarization, and fatigue. Through Zen teachings on virya or joyful effort, we...

Mushim Patricia Ikeda asks how is our Zen Buddhist practice showing up within the "burning house" of global "forever wars," environmental crisis, and U.S. global and national...

Edward Espe Brown emphasizes how we learn by our own careful observation rather than simply following instructions, through reflections on his early Zen training and the creation of the “...

12/22/2025, Gyokuden Stephanie Blank, dharma talk at City Center. Gyokuden Steph Blank considers Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol as a dharma story that reveals the transformative power of...

12/13/2025, Keiryu Liên Shutt, dharma talk at City Center. Keiryu Liên Shutt presents an informal comparison of Soto Zen and Insight practices within the context of The Three Marks of Existence....

Talk by Ryushin Paul Haller at City Center on 2025-10-29

Koji Vanessa Able asks: What is true readiness and how can we respond when we just don’t feel ready for a change or a challenge? What can practice teach us about showing...

Talk by Ryushin Paul Haller at City Center on 2025-10-15

Koji Vanessa Able shares her story of Way Seeking Mind: the lifelong search for ways to express vast religious feeling, from early childhood and through the emotional and...

Talk by Ryushin Paul Haller at City Center on 2025-10-04

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...

Talk by Shinshu Roberts at City Center on 2025-09-13

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.

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...