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Zen Studies Podcast!
Study Buddhism Online for Free
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I offer all of the content on the Zen Studies Podcast for free, because I want the Dharma (Buddhist teachings) to be available to everyone. Plus, I enjoy creating episodes – audio and text – about this ancient, incredibly rich spiritual tradition.
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Recent Episodes
336 – Finding the Edge of Your Practice (1 of 2)
To keep your Dharma practice lively, it’s important to regularly identify the "edge” of your practice. This is your growth point – the current limit of your understanding and your capacity to embody it. Of course, you don’t have a single practice edge; it might be more accurate to say it’s important to identify something on your growth “perimeter,” or find one of your many edges, so you can focus your practice or have a dialogue with a teacher. I discuss what an edge is, what it means to find one, why this is important, and how to go about it.
335 – Six Useful Lessons from the Buddhist Teachings on Rebirth (2 of 2)
This is second episode of two on this topic. In the first episode (334), I identified existing episodes of the Zen Studies Podcast on - or related to - rebirth that you might want to listen to for context and background. Then I discussed the way you are free to believe in rebirth, disbelieve, or remain agnostic about it. Finally, I talked about the first useful lesson we can take from the teachings of rebirth: The basic laws of karma, or behavioral cause-and-effect, as portrayed in the cosmology of the Six Realms. In this episode I cover five more useful lessons from the Buddhist teachings on rebirth.
334 – Six Useful Lessons from the Buddhist Teachings on Rebirth (1 of 2)
Zen practice is not dependent on rebirth being true or untrue, and I suspect most Dharma teachers would say the same of their lineage traditions. As long as you practice, it doesn’t matter whether you believe in rebirth, disbelieve, or maintain an agnostic attitude. Nevertheless, the traditional narratives and imagery of rebirth teachings contain many valuable lessons for us.








