The Body is the Dharma — January 20, 2026 — Dharma Talk
Living Zen Podcast - Red Mountain Way
Release Date: 01/31/2026
The Body is the Dharma — January 20, 2026 — Dharma Talk
Living Zen Podcast - Red Mountain Way
In this talk, I reflect on form as a living, embodied Zen practicioner. Drawing on Rinzai Zen forms — gassho, sasshu, posture, breath, walking, and bowing — I explore how Zen is practiced through the body itself. The forms of practice are not symbolic gestures or rules to get right; they are precise, lived expressions of activity, receptivity, and stillness. This talk explores: plus, minus, and zero as lived experiences of movement, rest, and sitting how posture and mudra help call us back when attention drifts breath as a continuous expression of birth and death walking, chanting, and...
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Animacy in Zen — January 13, 2026 — Dharma Talk
Living Zen Podcast - Red Mountain Way
Animacy in Zen In this episode of Living Zen, I reflect on Zen form — not as something merely procedural or symbolic, but as something alive. This talk explores how breath, movement, sound, chanting, bells, incense, and shared attention all participate in the life of practice. Rather than treating form as a set of rules to perform correctly, the talk invites listeners to notice how the practice itself is already active, relational, and responsive. Drawing directly from lived experience in the Zendo, this reflection looks at Zen ritual as something animated and...
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Play and the Great Matter - January 6, 2026 - Dharma Talk
Living Zen Podcast - Red Mountain Way
This talk was recorded during our first sit of 2026 at the University of Victoria’s Multifaith Centre. It’s a reflection on Zen practice, play, and seriousness—and how we meet the great matter of life and death without becoming rigid or grim. Beginning again, again and again, is at the heart of practice. Living Zen is a podcast about Zen as it’s lived: sincere, embodied, and woven into real human lives. Learn more about the Zenwest sangha, teachings, and practice community: Support the podcast and ongoing teachings on Patreon — The Red Mountain Way: Explore individual,...
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“Kōzen Daitō Kokushi Yuikai” - December 2, 2025 - Dharma Talk
Living Zen Podcast - Red Mountain Way
In this episode, I explore one of the most treasured teachings in the Rinzai Zen tradition: Kōzen Daitō Kokushi Yuikai, the “Final Instruction” of National Teacher Daitō, founder of Daitoku-ji. This chant has accompanied my practice since 1995, and over the years its meaning has deepened in ways that continue to surprise me. Together we look at the stories surrounding Daitō’s life, the clarity and fierceness of his teaching, and the very human habits that distract us from the heart of practice — chasing benefits, clinging to forms, or imagining that poverty or ornamentation have...
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Tuning Practice - November 25, 2025 - Dharma Talk
Living Zen Podcast - Red Mountain Way
In this talk, we explore one of the Buddha’s most enduring teachings — the musician Sona and the image of practice as a stringed instrument. Too tight, the strings snap. Too loose, there’s no sound. Somewhere between effort and ease, discipline and kindness, we find the middle way. Drawing on this metaphor, we look at how our lives constantly shift the tuning of our practice: relationships, work, fatigue, weather, emotions. Form helps, but it isn’t the music itself. The music is the living activity of the cosmos flowing through the instrument of your life — and learning to hear it...
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Zen Shout — November 18, 2025 — Dharma Talk
Living Zen Podcast - Red Mountain Way
WARNING - Sudden loud sounds in this podcast. In this episode, we explore the heart of embodied practice — how a single moment of presence can cut through all the noise and return us to the immediacy of our own lives. Zen form, the shout, the bow, the subtle choreography of entering the Zendo… each of these is a doorway back into awakening as a lived, physical reality. If you’d like to dive more deeply into practice, teachings, and community, you’re warmly invited to visit www.zenwest.ca, where you’ll find information about training, membership, and ways to participate. And if...
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Form and Responsibility - November 4, 2025 - Dharma Talk
Living Zen Podcast - Red Mountain Way
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Decolonize the Mind - October 21, 2025 - Dharma Talk
Living Zen Podcast - Red Mountain Way
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Remember the People You Came From — July 20, 2025 — Dharma Talk
Living Zen Podcast - Red Mountain Way
In this episode of Living Zen, Eshū reflects on two guiding phrases: the Zen teaching “To study the self is to forget the self…” and the Gàidhlig seanfhacal “Cuimhnich air na daoine às an tàinig thu” — remember the people you came from. As he returns to regular practice at Zenwest, Eshū speaks candidly about the pitfalls of spiritual bypassing, the power of ritual technologies like zazen and chanting, and the importance of community as a container for awakening. He explores how our practice is rooted not in escaping the past, but in embracing it — recognizing that our lives,...
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On the De-Animation and Re-Animation of Zen — July 13, 2025
Living Zen Podcast - Red Mountain Way
This week there’s no Dharma talk from the Zendo — UVic was cleaning the carpets on Sunday, so our usual sit was cancelled. But I didn’t want to leave the Sangha hungry. Instead, I’m sharing this reflection on how Zen was “de-animated” when it came west — and how we might begin to re-animate it, in relationship with land, ancestors, and the many seen and unseen beings who share our world. It’s not doctrine; it’s just some thoughts I found worth writing down. May they serve you in some way. If this resonates (or even troubles you), I’d love to hear how. Zen has always been...
info_outlineIn this talk, I reflect on form as a living, embodied Zen practicioner.
Drawing on Rinzai Zen forms — gassho, sasshu, posture, breath, walking, and bowing — I explore how Zen is practiced through the body itself. The forms of practice are not symbolic gestures or rules to get right; they are precise, lived expressions of activity, receptivity, and stillness.
This talk explores:
- plus, minus, and zero as lived experiences of movement, rest, and sitting
- how posture and mudra help call us back when attention drifts
- breath as a continuous expression of birth and death
- walking, chanting, and bowing as embodied Dharma activity
- how practice meets collapse, fatigue, distraction, and return — without judgment
From the meditation hall, the reflection widens into life itself: how we are born and die many times over the course of a single lifetime, how identities fall apart and reform, and how practice supports us in learning — again and again — how to inhabit the world.
Nothing here is about doing practice “correctly.”
The invitation is simply to notice what is happening — in the body, in the breath, in this moment — and to come back.
About this podcast
The Living Zen Podcast arises from my teaching work with the Zenwest Buddhist Society, a Zen practice community based on Vancouver Island.
You can listen at https://livingzen.libsyn.com, or find Living Zen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
If you’d like to support this work more directly, I share additional teachings and reflections through Red Mountain Way on Patreon. Becoming a member there helps sustain this teaching work.
Another meaningful way to support the podcast is by sharing it — telling friends, passing along episodes, or sharing on social media. Comments, likes, and shares are always appreciated. I do read them, and they help others find their way into practice and community.
For those seeking one-to-one Zen support, information about my work is available through Monarch Trancework.
Thank you for listening, and for practicing together.