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Zen talks by A. Jesse Jiryu Davis, senior student at the Village Zendo.
Certain topics seem off-limits in Zen, like: What's the goal of meditation? How do I get better at it? What is everyone else experiencing wh...
Which animals are sentient, and how can we liberate them from suffering? I review the philosopher Jonathan Birch's book "The Edge of Sentien...
This is a dharma talk I gave at the Village Zendo December 12, 2024, about my mother's brain surgery and end-of-life decisions. Here's the v...
You can find yourself in a critical situation without warning. Is Zen practice preparing you? Here's a dharma talk I gave to the Village Zen...
Bodhisattvas smile, though they hear the suffering cries of the world. You should smile too! A Zen talk I gave against doomerism.
Rich countries and drug firms act selfishly the COVID pandemic. Selfishness is natural, but we can strengthen our universal goodwill through...
The United States as we know it will someday come to an end. It's shocking to see how vulnerable our democracy is, but as Buddhists we aren'...
Buddhists must respond to the current political crisis, just as abolitionists like Frederick Douglass did in the 19th Century. A talk at the...
Our leaders are plainly untrustworthy. And when we hear about toilet paper hoarders, or protestors storming the Michigan governor's office,...
Japanese Americans founded our practice, and they preserved and adapted it to life in the internment camps during WWII. Today we must adapt...
Panic obliterates the self. We need a strong self to face fear in meditation and all of life. Dharma at the Village Zendo, February 23, 2020...
On a visit to some Buddhists incarcerated on a jail barge, I had to improvise how to practice Zen, just like we always have to improvise our...
Everyone deserves a place where we can practice together. Everyone deserves the opportunity for redemption. A talk I gave at the Village Zen...
Meditation can transform your life, but it only works if you sit regularly. You can establish a strong, serious practice following these fiv...
When you do something with attention, your self merges with your activity. Watch how the self shifts and moves, and you'll start to see thro...
We waste our lives chasing temporary, superficial things, and our disappointment leads to grief. Here's a practice that loosens greed's grip...
When we practice mindfulness of what we're experiencing here and now, we can be at peace and free of worry. But we can go much deeper than t...
Each new year, Americans resolve to work harder and be more austere, for no reason. Let's stop torturing ourselves.
The old stories all have the same punchline: the monk was suddenly enlightened. What really happens when we have an experience of insight? T...
If we treat the Zen precepts as a set of rules to obey, that's just conformity. Let's use them instead as a tool for busting the hierarchy!...
What if you knew you had 30 minutes to live? Would you want to be awakened?
In the Blue Cliff Record, Case 32, a monk named Jo asks Master Rinzai, "What is the essence of Buddhism?" In response, Rinzai grabs the monk...
A monk asked Unmon, "What is Buddha?" Unmon replied, "A dry shit stick." Why? Where is Buddha in this regular, shitty, unsatisfactory experi...
Running a half marathon, serving a prison term, practicing Zen for a lifetime: I'm trying to learn how people make friends with time, and ho...
So often, I find myself lashing out at someone I intended to help. The expectation that my generosity would require only a certain amount of...
My mother plans to die at 85. What will that final year be like?
To focus the mind, you first have to understand and accept the mechanism of mind-wandering.
My father-in-law is a soldier and my mother is a peace activist. On Memorial Day weekend, 2017, I describe how Buddha's Middle Way allows us...
On the 15th anniversary of 9/11, I describe my difficulties practicing nonviolence in a world full of violence.
Women have been systematically excluded from computer programming for decades. But it wasn't this way in the past, and it doesn't need to be...
Practice with fear and overcome it, bit by bit, for the sake of a whole and liberated life. A talk I gave at the Village Zendo on April 7, 2...
Being satisfied with what I have. A talk I gave at the Village Zendo in December 2015.
On the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, I talk about our double complicity in the history of WWII, both as Americans and as Zen...
Living on the streets of New York, for just a few days, and depending on generosity to get by.
The second of the Four Vows is, "Desires are inexhaustible, I vow to put an end to them." What do we really mean when we make this promise,...
For my first dharma talk at the Village Zendo I take up the Book of Serenity Case 15, "Yangshan Plants His Hoe." The koan may seem obscure,...