500 episodes listed below
Slow Zen teaching for embodied practice.
Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks gathers reflective Buddhist teaching from rotating Zen teachers. The talks move slowly through Buddhist teaching, lived examples, meditation instructions, and ordinary frustrations treated as material for practice.
PRESS PLAY
Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks is a long-running collection of Zen Buddhist teachings from rotating teachers connected to the community. The episodes sound like live Dharma talks rather than polished interviews. They move patiently. A teacher may begin with a season, a room full of practitioners, a Sanskrit word, or the simple instruction to notice the body sitting and breathing. From there, the talk often opens into the central work of practice: awareness, direct experience, patience, generosity, ethical conduct, and the widening of view. The show is comfortable with Buddhist vocabulary. Dharma, Bodhisattva, Paramitas, kshanti, mindfulness, and awakening are explained through ordinary language rather than placed behind academic distance. Its recurring emphasis is embodiment. Posture, breath, the felt sense of impatience, and the capacity to stay with discomfort become practical entry points into wisdom. The teachers also make room for uncertainty. Questions are allowed to remain alive, and the talks often return to not knowing, spaciousness, and the unknown possibilities of the present moment. Jogen Salzberg, Sensei brings close attention to faith, doubt, determination, patience, and the practical shape of a Buddhist life. Hogen, Roshi often stresses direct looking, the body as a foundation of wisdom, and the need to expand beyond a narrow view when life becomes difficult. Jomon Martin, Zen Teacher frames the Paramitas through generosity, ethical living, patience, joyful effort, and teaching stories. The result is serious without being severe. It can be gentle, grave, wry, and instructional in the same stretch. The show suits listeners who want contemplative depth more than quick inspiration. It asks for attention. Some episodes linger with death, anger, discomfort, disturbing parables, and the consequences of reactive habits, but the purpose is practice rather than shock. Its best quality is the way it treats everyday unease as workable material. A traffic of thoughts, a tight body, a local conflict, or a moment of impatience can become a doorway into the Dharma.
Made for: For listeners drawn to Zen practice, Buddhist teaching, meditation, and reflective spiritual instruction. It especially suits people who prefer patient talks over fast interviews or motivational summaries.
What sets it apart: The show stands out through its rotation of teachers and its willingness to let a teaching unfold slowly through Buddhist teaching, story, body awareness, and everyday difficulty. It feels rooted in practice rather than performance.
New podcasts every Tues, Thurs and Sat. Here you can find talks from various teachers involved with the Zen Community of Oregon. We share talks from our retreats, as well as our different weekly offerings between Great Vow Zen Monastery and Heart of Wisdom Zen Temple.Zen Community of Oregon's purpose is to express and make accessible the wisdom and compassion of the Buddha’s teachings, as transmitted through an authentic, historical lineage. To support and maintain Zen Buddhist practice in order to realize and actualize our Buddha nature in everyday life. For more information, please visit zendust.org.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Practice-centered Zen talks make generosity, patience, concentration, awareness, and mortality usable in everyday life.
Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks keeps Zen teaching close to the pressures of ordinary conduct. Jomon Martin, Zen Teacher, Jogen Salzberg, Sensei, and Hogen, Roshi, use the dharma-talk format to move from Buddhist concepts into questions of generosity, impatience,…
Jogen Salzberg treats your impatience as a clue to what you care about.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A practical dharma talk on direct awareness, wider seeing, and meeting difficulty with wisdom.
Awareness in Everyday Life places awareness at the center of practice and keeps testing that idea against ordinary pressure. Its clearest thread is the value of direct looking: noticing the mind, suffering, loving-kindness, and whatever is present can make old conditioning more…
Patience is treated as a practical discipline that keeps anger from shaping character over time.
The piece frames patience as a practice worked through body, mind, and speech rather than as a passing mood. It defines kshanti as patience, endurance, and forbearance, then revisits the familiar warning that anger and frustration, left unchecked, can shape character over time.
A seasonal talk on generosity, equanimity, and story.
This episode moves from winter into spring and uses that turn to frame a discussion of the paramitas, the virtues Buddhist traditions in Japan focus on at the equinox.
A quiet meditation on death, direct experience, and asking for help.
This episode takes up death, parinirvana, and Jizo Bodhisattva with a calm, searching pace. It moves from the Zen community's seasonal attention to mortality toward a larger question: how direct experience shapes a life.
Generosity is treated as a lived practice of attention, from the new sanzen room to the closing question about what is being offered now.
The piece begins with community housekeeping: the long-awaited sanzen room, gratitude for the people who helped practice get underway, and plans for a first-year birthday party.
A patient dharma talk makes concentration feel available in ordinary life.
This spring dharma talk frames the perfection of concentration within a Buddhist path of awakening that extends beyond a single lifetime. The teacher moves from the perfections as qualities developed in the heart toward samadhi, where focused attention can ease bodily suffering,…
Meditation for returning to loving presence.
Zen talks from temple life.
A season-by-season history show pairing dramatized Rasputin and Salem narratives with historian interviews.
Two Bible translators unpack Scripture's hardest passages, from Revelation's 666 to the Witch of Endor.
Weekly Portuguese-language sermons from Pastor Pedro Bastoge on scripture, end times, and church life.
MJ Dorian's solo deep dives trace genius through Blake, McQueen, da Vinci, and Jung's Red Book.
Generosity begins by letting things be.
Spring opens the room.
This episode explores the ancient Zen teaching that life becomes easier when we stop believing our thoughts, as discussed through the repetitive but profound Sensing Ming chant.
This episode explores Zen Buddhist teachings through the analysis of koans, specifically focusing on Nyozen's Pale Moon of Dawn and Bodhidharma's Flesh, to support listeners' spiritual practice.
Jogen Sensei’s Zen Community of Oregon talk presents five practices for being a “mystic in the city”: depth, birth and death, play, love, and goals.
This episode explores the three essential pillars of Zen practice—great faith, great doubt, and great determination—as taught by Buddhist ancestors to help listeners deepen their spiritual journey.
This episode from the Zen Community of Oregon offers a meditation session and talk focused on direct experience, drawing from historical Zen teachings including an excerpt from Koen Yamada's story in 'Three Pillars of Zen'.
This episode introduces a series on the Perfections in Buddhism, exploring them as infinite spiritual capacities that support awakening across lifetimes.
This episode explores the foundational practice of mindfulness in Buddhism, focusing on grounding oneself in the present moment through embodied meditation and proper posture.
This episode explores the Buddhist Paramitas, focusing on patience and joyful effort as qualities cultivated in Zen practice.
Hogen Roshi says awareness is the key to practice in Zen Community of Oregon's "Awareness in Everyday Life," because "nothing happens without awareness." He argues that the first anchor is being in the body and breathing right now, not being absorbed by the media, Washington, or consumer promises like a new house, car, or horse.
The speaker turns to kshanti, the paramita of patience.
A Zen Community of Oregon talk opens with winter leaning toward spring and uses that seasonal shift to frame the paramitas.
Jizo, death, and pilgrimage sit at the center of this talk.
This episode explores how Buddhist Dharma teachings can help address the cultural problem of flakiness and lack of commitment in relationships and social engagements.
This episode discusses how to practice with seasonal affective disorder and low-level depression within a Zen Buddhist context, distinguishing it from spiritual dissents.
This episode explores the concept of 'comparing mind' in human beings, using the Affirming Faith in Mind poem as a springboard for a Dharma talk on overcoming this affliction.