Zen Studies Society

Engaged at ZSS – Ecoworks Update

by

By Jikyo Bonnie Shoultz Sensei

In November 2024, we shared a vision for an Engaged Buddhism Eco Workshop at DBZ and invited the sangha to join us in bringing it to life. We were heartened by the enthusiastic response—twelve members expressed interest in helping shape this initiative, and the group has already met twice. We will continue meeting via Zoom throughout the spring on the second Friday of each month at 10 a.m., with the intention of gathering at DBZ this summer to begin implementing our ideas. If this project continues to thrive, we envision hosting a larger-scale event in the summer of 2026, inviting broader participation and engagement.

The Eco Workshop reflects our collective commitment to ecological responsibility as an integral part of our practice. The ZSS 2024 Annual Report describes it as follows:

“In 2024, ZSS launched a new initiative aimed at fostering ecological responsibility through community engagement…This event will explore DBZ’s natural and structural environment, showcase its innovative stewardship practices, and engage participants in collaborative sustainability projects.

While initial projects may focus most on benefiting DBZ, the workshop welcomes participants with expertise or interest in broader ecological fields, such as sustainable urban planning. Enthusiastically supported by the Abbot and retired Abbot, this initiative represents a meaningful integration of environmental care with spiritual practice. It offers a platform for collective action, learning, and impactful contributions to both the monastery and the global ecological effort.”

The group began forming a foundation for this work during our initial meeting in December. Soren Cathy Shrady generously offered to coordinate logistics, and others contributed inspiring ideas. Keirin Brian Smith proposed leading a tour of DBZ’s sustainable systems—including solar power, heat pumps, roof coverings, and water systems—to highlight current efforts and future opportunities. Drawing on the environmental science expertise of several group members, we envisioned a meaningful weekend of workshops and hands-on projects framed by zazen and other elements of our practice.

At our second meeting in January, Shinge Roshi spoke about the urgency of the climate crisis. We discussed the need to approach this work with clarity and hope rather than despair, and this led to a deeper exploration where Myorin Catherine Landis shared the idea that an impactful goal could be to make climate knowledge and action part of the Sangha as a whole. She highlighted how, among indigenous groups, ecological awareness is woven into every aspect of life—their cosmology, rituals, and politics—and shared writings by Potawatomi and Haudenosaunee scholars with us. Shinge Roshi encouraged us to consider how, as Buddhists, we might teach an approach rooted in shared responsibility for climate change, a principle central to indigenous perspectives. Our group is now deeply engaged with this question.

Our next meeting will be on Friday, February 14, at 10 a.m. via Zoom. It is not too late to join the planning group—we welcome your ideas and energy. Please email engaged@zenstudies.org if you are interested.

Engaged at ZSS – Bridging Gaps

by

By Rev. Mudo Seiho Morris

“Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention and an action.” This insight from bell hooks’ All About Love invites us to see love as a conscious commitment to transform how we live and connect. In a world often divided by systems of out-grouping and cultural stratification, “love as action” becomes a powerful antidote to separation and indifference. It asks us to cultivate resilience and take steps to bridge the divides that harm our shared humanity.

The Twelve Steps to Bridging Divides offers a pathway to transform these divisions into opportunities for growth and connection. As hooks teaches, “Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust.” This framework encourages intentional and consistent self-reflection, courageous action, and an unwavering commitment to supporting belonging for all.

The first step is acknowledging the harm caused by systems that out-group. Often, we unknowingly inherit biases and perspectives that perpetuate separation. By bringing gentle awareness to these patterns, we create space to explore their roots without judgment. This process is not about blame but about engaging with honesty and humility.

As hooks reminds us, love requires intentionality—and with intention comes responsibility. The Twelve Steps guide us in this responsibility:

  1. Recognize the impact of out-grouping and cultural stratification
  2. Align actions with values of compassion and equity
  3. Commit to transforming exclusion into connection
  4. Reflect on how conditioning shapes personal and collective beliefs
  5. Share reflections to uncover and address harmful patterns
  6. Embrace the willingness to change and dismantle divides
  7. Practice inclusion with courage and care
  8. Seek to understand and address the wounds of out-grouping
  9. Make amends where possible, with humility and wisdom
  10. Continue self-reflection to meet emerging biases
  11. Deepen alignment with mutual respect and connection
  12. Share the practice of fostering inclusion in all aspects of life

This work requires resilience—not as indifference, but as a dynamic practice of care for ourselves and others. Resilience is cultivated through self-care, community engagement, and practices that center us in the present moment. Meditation, journaling, and dialogues across differences allow us to navigate discomfort with grace, transforming it into insight.

At its heart, this journey is one of love in action. By intentionally addressing divides, we free ourselves and others from the weight of separation. We invite curiosity, compassion, and connection to replace fear and indifference. As we do, we begin to see that the act of bridging divides is not just for others—it is for ourselves, too.

Together, we can create communities where every person feels seen, valued, and included. This is the love bell hooks speaks of—a commitment to care, connection, and the courageous act of transformation.

Engaged at ZSS – A Crisis of the Bios

by

By Gabriel Moreno

We do not just have a climate crisis; we have a crisis of the bios—of the living system itself, of all life, not just the climate or the biosphere. 

The environmental crisis is not limited to the climate. It is a global ecological crisis. What we euphemistically call “biodiversity loss” is in reality the destruction of life on Earth. It is not just the health of the planet that is being badly damaged. Our own health is also in trouble.

In the richest nation in the world, life expectancy has been decreasing for the past several years. Globally, cancer, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, and iatrogenic illnesses are on the rise. Depression, anxiety, and burnout have also been on an upward trend. 

The health of our bodies, our psyche, and our planet are not three different issues. Our planet is also our body in a biological sense. The life within us could not exist without the planet. Science has also demonstrated that our psyche and our bodies are not separate. Planet, body, and mind are intertwined. They are all part of one living system. We separate these dimensions only for practical convenience which ironically is turning out to not be so practical. 

Instead of taking the usual approach of seeing all these problems as external issues, perhaps it would be better to pause and see the whole picture. To reflect on what this says about how we are living in late industrial civilization.

Most of us are living hurried, frenetic, and hyper-busy lives that are making us and the planet sick while we go nowhere. Add to this the characteristics promoted by our hectic, competitive way of life, which seem to be increasing in intensity and ubiquity – namely, selfishness, envy, dishonesty, theft, and greed – all of which cause significant harm to people and the planet. Is all this harm done to both personal and planetary life resulting in happier human lives? What if the future of the planet was tied to our own true happiness and health?

The way we live, our current ethos, seems to be against life. There is nothing more precious than life but we do not seem to care much for it, including the life we carry within ourselves. All this exists in the name of a hunger that can never be satisfied. 

The elephant in the room in mainstream discussions about climate change, biodiversity loss, and human health is the sense of hollowness inside us – a void that cannot be filled with the typical offerings of modern industrial society, such as money, social status, and the endless consumption of material goods and luxuries. We modern humans often behave like black holes that suck in everything around us without ever being satiated. Even the few individuals who materially profit most continue to seek more with no end in sight – they are never content with the huge fortunes they acquire, to the chagrin of everyone else.

The only way to fill this inner void is through an experience of life that is radically different from one based on material wealth that is produced at the expense of human and planetary life. 

Our existence needs to be rooted in an embodied experience of biophilia, a sense of love and connection to life in our body, not just our mind. This would result in a new bioethos, or way of life, that supports and respects life, including our own well-being and true joy. If we actually pursued such a path this world would change radically. 

An embodied transformation is, by definition, not going to be achieved by change at a conceptual level or through moral precepts or ideas. An embodied biophilic ethos will require a profound transformation in how we live and experience the world, with genuine practical consequences that allow life to thrive in all its manifestations. This is where Buddhism can be engaged and offer tremendous help. 

One key dimension where Buddhism can help is in providing practices that generate the embodied change we need. Simple practices such as slowing down to engage in mindful doing, being present, observing, listening, experiencing mindful suffering, and embracing silence in meditation or the quietude of being in nature, can all be very powerful in transforming our way of being in the world. 

The ultimate outcome of these practices is an embodied experience of connection with all life – ourselves, our bodies, our fellow humans, and our environment imbued with an enhanced experience of beauty and joy and a deep sense that we already have enough with what we have right now. 

One discovers that the experience of simply being, including doing everyday tasks like cleaning or cooking, is unmatched by anything else. Regaining this connection is fundamental to our joy and to truly satisfying the hollowness most humans carry within, which is the cause of so much trouble. In other words, embodied practices like these are key to recovering a way of being that has been ‘educated away’ and buried by a socioeconomic system that, through competition, frenetic living, and a cult of the self, continues to sever our natural connection to the rest of life – that is, to all that is part of us. 

Engaged at ZSS – The Infinite Teacher

by

By Michael Fayne

“Life always gives us exactly the teacher we need at every moment. This includes every mosquito, every misfortune, every red light, every traffic jam, every obnoxious coworker, every illness, every moment of joy or depression, every addiction, every piece of garbage, every breath. Every moment is the guru.” Charlotte Joko Beck

Charlotte Joko Beck (1917-2011) was an esteemed American Zen teacher who led sanghas in California and in the Southwest. This statement, which appears in her book “Everyday Zen: Love and Work,” is a particularly concise expression of a truth we all aspire to realize in our practices and lives. It is one facet of the concept of non-duality – that any experience we face, any situation we find difficult, no matter how minute or massive, can be regarded in its fundamental nature as simply a call. It invites us to let go of yet one more of the inexhaustible desires and urges us to slip free just a bit more from the stranglehold that our sense of a separate self has on us. Every moment a teacher.

Joko Beck in this quote speaks of small daily “teachers.” But our life these days presents us with some monstrous and terrifying teachers – ongoing war, the erosion of human respect and decency among so much of our leadership, and of course the ever-looming reality of climate destruction. (As I write this, one more “unprecedented, record-breaking” hurricane rages across the Southeastern U.S.)

However, during our most recent climate-oriented Engaged Buddhism meeting (held each 4th Wednesday), we listened to a podcast conversation in which climate activist Christiana Figueres highlights three climate change trends. The first is the pervasive deterioration of the climate; the second is the ever-accelerating development of technological innovations to combat it; and the third is humanity’s slow but steady transformation toward being a species that sees itself as not separate from the natural world.

This is not to view our climate catastrophe through rose-colored glasses. It may well be that nothing averts destruction in the long run. But in light of the truth-seeking that brings us all together as a sangha, Ms. Figueres’ third trend is pointing toward a slow movement away from the egoistic and materialistic illusions that have driven our species for centuries, toward a dawning awareness of the not-separate truth of our nature.

This is the work that life presents us with in every moment: to realize, not as an intellectual concept but as a visceral and lived truth, that there is no separation. We are all every sentient being, we are all earth and trees and oceans and sky and all the vastness of space, and every grain of sand and every set of bones in every grave. (How easy to say, how seemingly impossible to truly feel.) 

May all beings attain, and live, this wisdom. 

May we not squander the opportunities for insight that tragedy can bring.

Engaged at ZSS – Ecoworks

by

By Jikyo Bonnie Shoultz Sensei

Are you concerned about the climate crisis and want to explore ways in which you can address it close to home? Would you enjoy working with other Sangha members on a tangible project that embodies Engaged Buddhism?

The ZSS Engaged Buddhism Committee has been exploring ways for Sangha members to connect meaningfully beyond our Zoom meetings. The objective is to create a sustained initiative that benefits our community, the Engaged Buddhism mission, and ZSS at large. However, with members living across the country, finding a suitable in-person activity has proven challenging…and this is where you come in!

We invite you to join the Eco Workshop Planning Group, which will meet monthly on Zoom to plan an exciting Eco Workshop Weekend at Dai Bosatsu Zendo. During this in-person workshop, participants will explore the monastery’s natural and structural environment, and learn about the stewardship solutions that have been implemented. Participants will also be able to collaborate on specific environmental sustainability projects at the monastery.

While the first Eco Workshop Weekend will focus on projects that will directly benefit Dai Bosatsu Zendo, we warmly invite planning members with a diverse range of ecological and climate interests or expertise—such as sustainable urban planning—to share their ideas as well. We are open to all insights that can enrich our discussions.

The inaugural Eco Workshop Weekend will be scheduled for Summer 2025. We envision a small gathering which will initially consist mostly of planning group members. Building on the insights and experiences from this first workshop, we aim to expand and launch a larger event in 2026. While the planning group will ultimately shape the details of the weekend, below are some of the activities we anticipate will be included:

  • Zazen
  • Workshops by Keirin Brian Smith, Kanchi Lucia Oliva Hennelly, and others who can provide specific insights into DBZ and offer in-depth teachings on the environmental issues faced at the monastery.
  • Work on projects that will be identified and agreed upon with DBZ administration

We’d love to have you join the planning group. Once the group is established, we’ll set a time for our monthly Zoom meetings and discuss how our Buddhist vows can guide our collaborative efforts on this project. If interested, please contact us at engaged@zenstudies.org.

Engaged at ZSS – Endless Knot Revisited

by

By Yuki Eric Michels

I dreamt recently that I was driving somewhere — I don’t know where, but I knew where I was going. I turned into the woods, onto a rocky dirt path, thinking I knew a shortcut. Quickly, the road narrowed until it barely seemed to be a road at all.

I’d gone the wrong way. What do I do? Tread back. Reverse, slowly and steadily, back the way I came until I’m on the road I had veered from. Return to the path I knew was right. I was on my way! I didn’t need a shortcut. As soon as I got back on that road, I knew to simply continue on.

I’ve made mistakes, and I’m suffering the consequences. I want my dreams back. I want a sense of hope and joy again. Yet, I’m reaping what I’ve sown, and I have to accept that. I know I’m not alone.

We all go through this together. We collectively face the consequences of our actions and inaction — and of others’ actions and inaction. I learned from Bhikkhu Bodhi that it is Buddhist dogma which conceives that “everything you experience is a result of your karma.”

There is always a multiplicity of webs of causation behind every event. Karma is one factor. Social and economic conditions are others, among many more. These other factors can create opportunities for karmic conditions to mature, or prevent them from maturing.

Additionally, our karma is not ours alone. To conceive of your actions as purely yours is to give false truth to the ego-identity. Who are you? What have you done alone?

We all share responsibility for the suffering in the world, and we are not the sole administrators of our own karma either.

I vow to remember this, and I vow to continue returning to this path. Thank goodness for this rare opportunity to encounter and take refuge in the dharma!

Shujo, muhen, sei – gan – do – o….

Locations

Dai Bosatsu Zendo
223 Beecher Lake Road
Livingston Manor, NY 12758

New York Zendo
223 East 67th Street
New York, NY 10065


DONATE

Contact Us

Dai Bosatsu Zendo
office@daibosatsu.org
(845) 439-4566

New York Zendo
office@newyorkzendo.org
(212) 861-3333