A Whole Forest Within You - Kisei Sensei

Using poetry, koans, and personal story, this talk paints practice as a slow accumulation of intimacy with the world — with fear, with joy, with the earth itself. It closes on the idea that these encounters don't disappear when we leave formal practice; they continue quietly shaping how we sit, dream, and live. ★ Support this podcast ★

This talk Kisei explores practice as homecoming — returning to a natural ease we knew as children but lost through striving and adulthood. A folk tale and the Buddha's own reflections before awakening sre explored forgetting and remembering as central to the spiritual path.  ★ Support this podcast ★

This talk explores what it means to listen beyond the ears — to the earth, to silence, to a mind not bound by self and asks whether the boundary between "sentient" and "insentient" is one we've simply mistaken for the truth. ★ Support this podcast ★

This talk explores the emotional and spiritual dimensions of caring for someone who is suffering, arguing that presence — flawed, tiring, and imperfect as it is — matters more than solutions. It also explores how our own inner work with fear, mortality, and discomfort directly shapes what we're able to offer someone else in their hardest moments. ★ Support this podcast ★

Reflecting on today's overwhelming availability of spiritual teachings from every tradition, this talk asks whether sampling freely across lineages creates confusion and explores how practice is a rhythm of deconstructing our misperceptions of self and world, and reconstructing ourselves toward compassion, embodiment, and ease.   ★ Support this podcast ★

This talk explores vocation not as a career choice but as a calling that arises from deep within the heart. The speaker weaves in poetry from William Stafford, David Whyte and others to illustrate how a life of meaning flows from staying connected to an inner current rather than external trappings. ★ Support this podcast ★

The Tanha Sutta's core teaching, Hogen explains, is that craving turns the fluid, ever-changing experience of being alive into a fixed identity — "I am this," "I am that" — which then must be defended and reinforced. This talk explores this as an attempt to become a solid "thing" and how that goes against reality itself, making us smaller and more fearful rather than secure. ★ Support this podcast ★

This talk explores the observation that craving turns ordinary desire into compulsive thinking, creating a tangle of self-concepts — "I am a failure," "I am a success" — that we then mistake for fixed truths.  ★ Support this podcast ★

This talk explores patience (kshanti), one of the six Paramitas in Mahayana Buddhism, as an essential practice in a culture built for instant gratification and constant phone-driven distraction. Bansho distinguishes true patience from mere "waiting," framing it instead as fully meeting the present moment without needing it to be different. ★ Support this podcast ★

This talk on reflects on the Five Remembrances — that we are of the nature to age, get sick, die, and be separated from loved ones — as a practice for living wisely rather than in denial. Rather than being purely somber, these reflections are offered as a way to "sweeten the deal," deepening appreciation for the present moment and one's relationships. ★ Support this podcast ★