San Francisco Zen Center Dharma Talks

11/16/2025, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel Osho, dharma talk at Green Gulch Farm. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel Osho teaches that sometimes it is necessary to be for or against but there is a broader context in which this is not always necessary.

11/02/2025, Gyokuden Stephanie Blank, dharma talk at Green Gulch Farm. Gyokuden Steph Blank honors the effort and awakening of our ancestors and calls on us—the living—to rise up in support of Decency, Dignity and Awakening.

11/01/2025, Zenshin Florence Caplow, dharma talk at City Center. Zenshin Florence Caplow offers stories and teachings from her life as both a Zen practitioner and person with chronic illness, and readings from her new book, “Tend to Your Spirit: Mindful Living With Chronic Illness.”

10/26/2025, Sessei Meg Levie, dharma talk at Green Gulch Farm. Sessei Meg Levie reflects on Suzuki Roshi’s dedication to zazen, his work with early students in San Francisco, and the creation of the San Francisco Zen Center.

10/25/2025, Dainin Marsha Angus, dharma talk at City Center. Dainin Marsha Angus teaches about cultivating and mental and physical capacity to settle into stillness.

10/19/2025, Jiryu Rutschman-Byler, dharma talk at Green Gulch Farm. Abbot Jiryu Rutschman-Byler reflects on the “Finding Yourself” chapter of “Becoming Yourself,” in which Suzuki Roshi teaches that finding real freedom is not about overcoming the limitations of our life, but rather embracing them: “To find true joy under some limitation is the way to realize the whole universe."

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.

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.

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.

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.