Teisho Today Archives
Welcome to the Teisho Today archives, where we present our most recent Daily Zen Journals as audio files for your enjoyment. Over time, we aim to have the entire library of journals available in this format; however, this is a work in progress, as the first journal was released in 1998, and this is now 2025!
Join us on this journey as Daily Zen evolves and grows into the present moment, heading into our 25th year.
The Teishos are also available wherever you get your podcasts.
Source-Ancestral Discourses
I often wander these coastal mountains with friends, monks, and masters of the Way. Karmic transformations brought us together here, mind and spirit, searching for the insight beyond words that understands the Way.
Everyone Instantly Becomes a Buddha
Many Chan practitioners ask questions about the Dharma. The Dharma that is spoken is originally not the true Dharma. As soon as you try to explain things, the true meaning is lost. If you realize that this Mind is originally the Buddha, then at that very instant there is nothing more to do.
Treasury of the Eye of True Teaching
You should each believe your own mind is Buddha. This mind itself is Buddha. The great teacher Bodhidharma came to China from South India, transmitting the supreme vehicle’s teaching of one mind, to get you to wake up.
Tsung Ching Record of Hui Hai – Part 3
Once our Master took his place in the assembly hall and said, “It is far better for all of you to be unconcerned people. Why all this craze for karmic activities…toiling and moiling the whole day through, telling people you are practicing Ch’an and studying the Way, holding forth about your understanding of the Buddha-dharma? This sort of thing is no use at all.
Mind is Formless
You people seek to measure all within the void, foot by foot and inch by inch; I repeat to you that all phenomena are devoid of distinctions of form.
Huang Po – Questions and Answers
All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but One Mind, beside which nothing exists. This Mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible. It is not green nor yellow and has neither form nor appearance. It does not belong to the categories of things which exist or do not exist, nor can it be thought of in terms of new or old.
Dharma Talks – Part 2
Dull-witted as I am, I think if I put my mind to it, I could probably remember a couple of anecdotes to tell people. But that would be like feeding them poison. I don’t want to do that.
Discourses of Master Po Shan – Part 2
In ancient times people could enter Dhyana while tilling the land, picking peaches or doing anything. It was never a matter of sitting idly for prolonged periods, engaged in forcefully suppressing one’s thoughts.
The Basis of Awareness
Expand enlightenment, and the mind is always calm; go along with things, and consciousness runs at a gallop.
On the Transmission of Mind – Part 4
People are often hindered by environmental phenomena from perceiving Mind, and by individual events from perceiving principles; so they often try to escape from environmental phenomena in order to still their minds, or to obscure events in order to retain their grasp on principles.
Selections from the Song of Awakening – Part 2
What then is this transparent jewel whose breadth, height, and depth are without limit, within which the past, the present, and the future transpire?
One Practice Samahdi – Part 2
Deluded people are unaware, so they turn things upside down with their attachments. There are hundreds of such people who teach the Way like this. But they are, you should know, greatly mistaken.
Bodhidarma’s Bloodstream Sermon – Part 2
To find a buddha, all you have to do is see your nature. Your nature is buddha. And the buddha is the person who’s free, free of plans, free of cares.
Essentials for Cultivating the Mind – Part 3
One who comprehends the mind that is the source of all dharmas always understands everything.
On Gardens and The Way
A passage about gardens and how they can connect us with our practice
Guidelines for Studying the Way
Fearing the swift passage of sunlight, practice the Way as though saving your head from fire.
Always Mindful
Whether deep in the mountain valleys or in the bustling villages and towns, they never turned their back on being mindful for an instant.
Dreaming Asleep and Awake
Sincere and rigorous practice lets us calm both body and mind, which in turn allows us, day by day, to reduce our karmic obstructions.
Other Ways to Do Zen
Though sitting in the upright position is the very best way to perfect your body, there are innumerable occasions when you must get bodily involved in the things and conditions of the worldly.
Opening the Hand of Thought – Part 2
The feeling of opening one’s hand is a manifestation of non attachment.
Stillness in Action
While Takashina Rōsen’s piece sounds so simple, it embodies a deep principle of practice. And one that is easy for everyone to relate to.
Buddhism is Natural Truth
There seems to be as many descriptions of Buddhism as there are teachers and schools; each represents a different way of interpreting the essential teachings of Buddha.
Advice and Encouragement
With the change in colors and the sense of pause before the next step in the natural world, what better time than now to recharge our practice?
Discourse of Master Han Shan – Part 2
Such simplicity and clarity breaks through our tendency to complicate practice, something we all have done and still do at times.
Absorption in the Treasury of Light
Unless you form an alliance with the family of Buddhas lifetime after lifetime, how can you grasp what you hear in a lecture like this? Make sure that you do not become further estranged and further remote from it.
