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Bringing together the best from the many diverse forms of Zen, Theravada, Mahamudra, Developmental Psychology and Integral Theory, Cosmopolitan Zen offers a broad inclusive vision of 21st Century Zen Buddhism. Hosted By Ekai Joel Kreisberg.
Episodes
Monday Jun 08, 2026
Monday Jun 08, 2026
Suffer Well: Insights from Buddha's Teachings - Ming Po Larry Matthews - April 4th, 2026
Ming Po gives a talk inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh teachings that true peace comes from accepting yourself, staying present through mindful breathing, and meeting suffering with awareness and kindness, allowing it to transform rather than control you.
Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action.
Friday May 29, 2026
Friday May 29, 2026
Seven Bodhisattva Archetypes - Manjushri - Jozen Jonathon Fielder - April 12th, 2025 - SPP25
Faces of Compassion - Week 2 - Our next exploration is of Manjushri as a Bodhisattva archetype. Manjushri is a bodhisattva embodying supreme wisdom and clear seeing. He is often depicted with a sword (symbolizing the cutting away of ignorance) and a scripture (representing the transmission of wisdom) - Seven Bodhisattvas with a dharma talk by Jozen Jonathon Fielder.
Jozen Jonathon Fielder offers his teachings and his wisdom tireless through several sanghas. Having been ordained as a Hollow Bones Zen priest, he continues to lead a regular practice as part of the Virtual Zendo. As a martial arts teacher and dharma teacher, he is an associate clergy member of Shining Bright Lotus. Recently he has begun to develop his own dharma center Iron Mountain Zendo in the UK.
https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/iron-mountain-zendo
Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action.
Friday May 15, 2026
Friday May 15, 2026
This talk introduces Rohatsu—the traditional period honoring the Buddha’s awakening—and places it in the context of winter’s darkness and the symbolic “birth of the light.” Roshi Ekai reflects on the masculine framing often found in Zen history and highlights overlooked feminine perspectives through stories such as the family koan of Layman Pang, his wife, and their daughter Ling Zhao. Their responses illustrate effort, ease, and the middle way, pointing toward a more natural, inclusive wisdom rooted in everyday life and nature. He emphasizes relaxing into practice, recognizing the ever-present Dharma, and acknowledging the cyclical nature of birth and death, weaving in personal reflections on loss during this season.
Friday May 08, 2026
Friday May 08, 2026
FPP25 - The Dignity and Disaster of My Ego - Emyo Darlene Tataryn
Fall Practice Period - October 25th, 2025
Emyo gives a Dharma talk entitled, The Dignity and Disaster of My Ego. Based on Keith Martin-Smith's book, When the Buddha Needs Therapy, for our Fall Practice Period.
https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/fallpractice25
Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action.
Friday Apr 24, 2026
Friday Apr 24, 2026
Letting It Out: Extending the Love that We Receive - Nanda Nina Lynch - January 31st, 2026 - WPP26
This talk by Nanda Nina Lynch explores the Buddhist teaching that true happiness comes not from self-centered striving, but from love and compassion for others. Drawing on Shantideva, Makransky, and bodhisattva teachings, it explains that our true nature (Buddha nature) is inherently loving, open, and connected to all beings. When we act with kindness, we awaken well-being in ourselves and others; when we act from anger or self-interest, we perpetuate suffering (karma and samsara). Difficult interactions don’t “put” emotions into us but trigger what’s already inside, offering opportunities for awareness and growth. In dark times, even small acts of care matter. The session concludes with a guided meditation cultivating gratitude, self-inclusion, and boundless compassion, letting love radiate outward like sunlight to all beings.
Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action. https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/
Friday Apr 17, 2026
Friday Apr 17, 2026
Compassion as a Liberating Power: Bring Difficulties into Compassion - Jozen Jonathon Fielder - February 7th, 2026 - WPP26
This talk marks the final week of a winter practice series based on Awakening Through Love and focuses on compassion as a liberating power. After briefly recapping earlier weeks—love as our true nature, letting be, and extending love to others, Jozen explores Mahayana and Zen teachings that emphasize non-dual compassion, compassion that makes no distinction between good and bad, self and other. Drawing on Dzogchen teachings, Zen koans, and the Dalai Lama, the talk explains that **wisdom (emptiness) and compassion must arise together, as both reveal the shared causes of suffering and the shared potential for freedom. The session culminates in a guided loving-kindness (metta) meditation, progressively extending compassion from oneself to loved ones, neutral people, difficult people, and ultimately all beings, affirming the insight that self and reality are not separate.
Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action.
Friday Apr 10, 2026
Friday Apr 10, 2026
In this talk, originally made for Hollow Bones Zen, Ekai explains that Mondo Zen is not just a facilitation process but an ongoing path that blends genuine insight with emotional maturity, rooted in zazen, koan practice, and community support. The first set of koans deepens direct realization of clear, compassionate awareness, while the emotional koans help practitioners work skillfully with triggers by feeling what lies beneath reactions and choosing compassionate responses. Practicing with teachers and sangha keeps this inquiry alive in daily life, allowing insight and emotional wisdom to grow together and be expressed in the world.
Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action.
Friday Apr 03, 2026
Friday Apr 03, 2026
Ekai Roshi explains the Zen koan “Does this clear, deep heart-mind come and go?” and emphasizes that while awakened awareness (clear, deep heart-mind) is ever-present, our sense of self or ego “comes and goes” and often obscures it. Meditation practices like concentration (shamatha) can quiet the mind and reveal this awareness, but deeper insight practice (vipassana) is needed to understand how our habits and conditioning interfere with it. The speaker highlights the Five Hindrances, laziness/lethargy, doubt, aversion, agitation and desire, as common mental patterns that cloud awareness. By recognizing how these hindrances arise in our own experience, practitioners can develop insight, stabilize awakened awareness, and continue the ongoing training that follows initial awakening.
Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action.
Tuesday Mar 31, 2026
Tuesday Mar 31, 2026
Spirituality and Spiritual Identity - Roshi Ekai Joel Kreisberg - FPP25 - October 18th, 2025
The talk introduces a six-week Shining Bright Lotus series on Junpo Roshi and Keith Martin-Smith’s When the Buddha Needs Therapy, exploring how Buddhism can meet modern psychological and emotional realities. It focuses on spiritual identity, the blending of meditation and therapy, and the difference between concrete practices, subtle emotional and conceptual life, and awakened awareness itself. Emphasizing Junpo’s innovation of emotional koans, the talk frames emotional triggers as opportunities for compassion, maturity, and integration. Buddhism is presented not just as meditation, but as a holistic path of meditation, ethics, and study, all oriented toward relieving suffering and embodying the bodhisattva vow in everyday life.
https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/fallpractice25
Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action.
Friday Mar 27, 2026
Friday Mar 27, 2026
How to Work with Emotional Koans - Ekai Joel Kreisberg Roshi - February 21st, 2026
Ekai Joel Kreisberg Roshi explains that traditional Rinzai koan training, systematized by Hakuin Ekaku, treats awakening (kensho) as the starting point of practice. Junpo Denis Kelly Roshi recognized that insight alone does not ensure emotional maturity, so he extended koan inquiry into the realm of feelings through “emotional koans.”
These examine emotions such as anger, shame, and disconnection as learned, constructed responses that arise because we care, and for which we are responsible. Practitioners slow down, welcome emotions as information, return to awakened awareness, and respond with compassion.
The work continues through daily reflection or journaling, teacher dialogue, applying inquiry during meditation, and sharing the practice with others, uniting awakening with emotional growth.
Our mission is to foster a diverse, inclusive community, dedicated to awakening through Buddhist teachings promoting personal and interpersonal healing with ethical compassionate action.