Tuesday Evening Study
Class is from 8-9pm Pacific Time, after zazen and a short break (you can arrive or leave any time). Click here to view the practice schedule. You are welcome to join our class series for free at any time, at any point in the series, and there is no need to register. Each class can be accessible and enjoyable even if you haven’t attended previous classes in a series. Missed a Class? Classes and Dharma Talks are almost always recorded; click here for recordings.
2026 Winter Study Series
Reimagining Zen: Toward an Ethics of Interbeing
Join us for a ten-week journey as we ask ourselves how Zen and Buddhism apply beyond the personal sphere – in our social, cultural, economic, ecological, and political groups and systems.
Traditionally, Buddhism and Zen have focused on individual practice aimed at relief of individual suffering. However, there are many teachings that point us beyond our small selves toward our relationships: We should care for all beings without distinction, practice generosity without limit, actively work for the welfare of others, and accord with the truth of Interbeing – that we aren’t fundamentally separate from anything. As Zen teacher David Loy puts it:
“To realize that I am nothing (or, better, no-thing) is to become free, because there is no longer an insecure self inside that can never feel secure enough. Realizing that I am everything gives rise to compassion for others who are not really separate from me. Wisdom lived is love.” – Loy, David R.. A New Buddhist Path: Enlightenment, Evolution, and Ethics in the Modern World
How do we manifest the beautiful teachings about Interbeing in whatever communities we belong to, including Sangha? How do we manifest them as responsible citizens of our cities, states, and nations? How do we manifest them in our relationship to the natural world? Over the ten weeks, we will try to formulate an extended expression of Zen ethics to guide our practice after the class is over.
Domyo will prepare a short selection of readings for each week, available at least one week before the class. Please note that the class schedule will be flexible; if discussion of one topic is lively we may extend it into another week.
Study Schedule (Subject to Change! Readings will be available at least one week ahead):
Tuesday, January 6th – Reimagining Zen: How and Why?
Click here for a short reading excerpted from David Loy’s A New Buddhist Path: Enlightenment, Evolution, and Ethics in the Modern World
Tuesday, January 13th – Hatred Ceases Through Love Alone: Overcoming Our Self-Righteousness
The Buddha famously said, “Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule.” How do we really manifest this, even when standing in opposition to what we think is wrong? Can we see through our own sense of self-righteousness? Jonathan Haidt writes in The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion: “This book explained why people are divided by politics and religion. The answer is not, as Manichaeans would have it, because some people are good and others are evil. Instead, the explanation is that our minds were designed for groupish righteousness. We are deeply intuitive creatures whose gut feelings drive our strategic reasoning. This makes it difficult—but not impossible—to connect with those who live in other matrices, which are often built on different configurations of the available moral foundations.” Click here for the readings for this class.
Tuesday, January 20th – Happiness: Does It Come from Within or Without?
Buddhist practice is wonderfully liberating because it empowers you to let go of your suffering regardless of your circumstances. However, we can also get stuck in the fallacy that conditions don’t matter, thereby making it seem like helping beings (including ourselves) experience things like safety, health, freedom, justice, prosperity, and love are outside of the realm of Buddhist concern. Are we only interested in “spiritual” well-being, as if that can be separated entirely from conditions? Or do we work for the happiness of beings without worrying about distinctions like “material” or “spiritual?” You might also see this is a tension between “internal” and “external” practice. How do we balance internal work with working to make conditions more supportive and life-affirming for ourselves and others? Click here for the class reading.
Tuesday, January 27th – Expanding Our Sense of Kinship to Include All Beings
Humans evolved to look out for our own interests but also developed the capacity for completely selfless action when we closely identify with a group. When we feel as much concern for another’s wellbeing as we do for our own, you might call this a sense of “kinship.” The Buddha taught us to practice extending Metta, or loving-kindness – just as a mother would feel for her only child – to all living beings without discrimination. We will discuss the evolutionary psychology perspective on human altruism, ways that our sense of kinship gets activated, and the implications for the way we operate in the world.
Tuesday, February 3rd – Civil Discourse: Avoiding Mobbery, Dogmatism, and Coercion
Pamela Ayo Yetunde writes in Casting Indra’s Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community: “Mobbery is a process that centers on anger, energy, and power—it is the aggregation of personal anger into a collective anger that develops a power far beyond that of individuals. Mobbery entails using the energy of anger to find people who are angry about the same things you’re angry about, then together harnessing this anger in ways that place blame on others. By taking no responsibility for soothing one’s own anger and projecting blame collectively onto groups identified as “other,” a new shared reality is created and allowed to harden. The more that angry people gather and strengthen one another, the more their sense of power intensifies. Those identified as others are vilified and attacked, and this is repeated over and over again. This dynamic builds momentum while demonstrating how the power of anger can be exerted on others and how such acts can be interpreted as victories.”
Tuesday, February 10th – To Help Others Is to Help Ourselves
Tuesday, February 17th – Non-Separation from the Natural World
Tuesday, February 24th – The Inner Work Required for Sustained Bodhisattva Activity
Tuesday, March 3rd – Sangha as the Next Buddha
~ Annual Precept Study Begins Tuesday March 10th! ~