Zen Center North Shore Podcast
Religion & Spirituality
We are delighted to welcome back Zen teacher, sangha leader, translator and scholar Taigen Leighton to ZCNS for a dharma talk on Dongshan’s Place Beyond Heat and Cold and Soto Zen Responses to Climate Breakdown.
Dongshan, the ninth century Chinese founder of the Soto Zen lineage, recommended going beyond heat and cold. This story and Dongshan's teachings of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi and the five degrees offer contexts for responses to our current climate crisis.
Resources: Taigen Dan Leighton, Just This Is It; Dongshan and the Practice of Suchness (Shambhala, 2015). Rebecca Solnit, "Dare we hope? Here’s my cautious case for climate optimism”
About the speaker:
Taigen Dan Leighton is a Soto Zen priest and Dharma successor in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. Taigen began formal everyday zazen and Soto practice in 1975 at the New York Zen Center with Kando Nakajima Roshi. He migrated to the Bay Area in 1978 and shortly thereafter began to work full time for the San Francisco Zen Center. Taigen practiced and resided for years at the SFZC City Center, Tassajara monastery, and Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, and received priest ordination in 1986 from Reb Anderson Roshi. Taigen also practiced for two years in Kyoto, Japan, translating Dogen with Shohaku Okumura Roshi, and practicing with several Japanese Soto Zen teachers. Taigen received Dharma Transmission in 2000 from Reb Anderson.
Taigen is author of Just This Is It: Dongshan and the Practice of Suchness; of Zen Questions: Zazen, Dogen and the Spirit of Creative Inquiry; of Faces of Compassion: Classic Bodhisattva Archetypes and Their Modern Expression; and of Visions of Awakening Space and Time: Dogen and the Lotus Sutra. He is co-translator and editor of several Zen texts including: Dogen's Extensive Record; Cultivating the Empty Field: The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi; The Wholehearted Way: A Translation of Dogen's "Bendowa" with Commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi; and Dogen's Pure Standards for the Zen Community: A Translation of "Eihei Shingi".
Taigen relocated to Chicago in 2007, and now is Guiding Dharma Teacher for the Ancient Dragon Zen Gate sangha. Taigen still teaches online at the Berkeley Graduate Theological Union, from where he has a Ph.D., and he has taught at various other universities. Taigen has long been an Environmental and Peace activist, currently working with Buddhist Peace Fellowship Chicago.
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