Brad Warner - An Innocent Mind (Choosing Free Will)

03/29/21 • 37 min

Angel City Zen Center - Beginners Only Podcast

"Your life is predetermined. And to be free, you must first be aware that your life is predetermined, that it is conditioned, that all your responses are more or less the same as those of everybody else throughout the world…

But in going into it very deeply, you will also find that you can be free from all this conditioning…. You can be free from it all. Then you will know what it is to have an innocent mind, and it is only such a mind that can find out what is truth." - J. Krishnamurti

Brad Warner gives us an intricate look at free will in Zen and life in general. Does it exist? Would we notice if it did?? How much can we control and how free are we when we try??? Bonus rounds! Brad may have (or may not, but possibly) found us the quote that knocked Leonard Cohen off his depression. Also, what's the best Rush album?? Find out here!

Previous Episode

Dave Cuomo - Fringe Benefit

"If you want to make peace with yourself and not hate zazen, it's going to help to like yourself, or at least just accept yourself the way you are. I promise, you're great and you're worth it. And it'll help.

And fringe benefit, you might find yourself a little happier and nicer, your whole life might improve in every way you ever wanted it to. But that's not why we're here, that's not the point of zazen.” - Dave Cuomo

In a wide ranging talk full of surprises and conundrums, Dave delves into Dogen’s Fukanzazengi (Instructions for Zazen) and the older Chinese text that preceded it to answer the question of whether Zen is something that can be taught, or whether it’s something we can only experience. And bonus! In the latter half Dave treats us to his own "What Am I Doing Here" talk as he shares his experience of how he came to Zen and why he's so stuck on it, along with a sincere inquiry into whether it's a practice we can learn or something that has to come and find us when it's ready.

Next Episode

Emily Eslami - Love Potion ((#)9th Precept - No Giving Way to Anger)

"When you get mad at yourself, that means you’re mad at another self. Maybe you turn your face and see yourself. Or you see yourself as other. This is very hard...
If you become angry, you don’t stop being Buddha. Anger appears, that’s all." - Kobun Chino

In the latest installment of her ever timely precept series, Emily takes on that molten hot lava of an emotion, anger. What do we experience when we feel it? How can we feel it and not be consumed by it? How can we use it skillfully when we need to? In this inspiring talk she shows how what exists at the bottom of anger is pain. And how sitting with it is to experience the path of the Boddhisatva – and of Zen meditation itself.