Auckland Zen Centre
309 episodes listed below
Slow Zen talks for lifelong practice.
AZC Weekly talks gathers Zen teachings from Auckland Zen Centre in a calm, sustained format. The talks move from practice commitments and sesshin study to koans, Dogen, contentment, peace, war, grief, and ordinary life.
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AZC Weekly talks is a spacious collection of Zen teachings recorded at Auckland Zen Centre. Its center of gravity is practice, not personality. The talks are usually solo teisho, moving at a pace that lets an image, a line of scripture, or a practical instruction settle before the next thought arrives. Recent episodes show the range clearly. A term intensive becomes a teaching on commitments, family life, contentment, and dropping the inner critic. A talk on peace and war begins with Mars and the ancient personification of violence, then moves through Te Porere, Bodhisattva vows, news consumption, Hiroshima, and the danger of becoming fascinated by destruction. A nature koan about a buffalo passing through a window becomes a meditation on awakening, limitation, service, and the small remaining tail that keeps a practitioner honest. The Dogen series draws from Fukan Zazengi, Shobo Genzo, Shobo Genzo Zui Monki, and Eihe Koroku, returning again and again to effort, ordinariness, experience, and helping oneself and others. The show can be doctrinal, but it rarely feels abstract. Buddhist terms such as zazen, sesshin, koan, Bodhisattva vows, and non-separation are carried through stories, memories, physical images, and concrete advice. A listener hears about online opening ceremonies, weekly check-ins, sitting practice, vows, family negotiations, old habit patterns, and the stubborn need for patience. The archive also makes room for named teachers and texts, including Sister Elaine McInnes, Patrick Gallagher, Ruben LF Hart, Reiho Masunaga, Francis Dogen Cook, Hakuen, Rumi, and Master Dogen. Those references are not decorative. They serve the central question of how a person practices in ordinary conditions, with pain, grief, aspiration, distraction, and limited time. The show's best moments are plain and searching. It does not sell transformation as speed. It treats Zen practice as repetition, humility, ethical care, and embodied attention. For listeners used to highly produced spirituality podcasts, its minimal format may feel austere. For listeners seeking a real teaching-room atmosphere, that austerity is part of the appeal.
Made for: For listeners interested in Zen meditation, koan study, Dogen, sesshin practice, and Buddhist ethics taught in a patient, reflective style. It especially suits people who prefer sustained teaching over interviews or self-help pacing.
What sets it apart: Its strength is the recorded teaching-room feel: practical practice guidance sits beside scripture, koans, personal recollection, New Zealand history, and moral reflection. The show preserves the pauses and circling movement of live Zen instruction rather than compressing it into tidy takeaways.
In this podcast you can find almost all the talks given at the Auckland Zen Centre, back to 2016. Most talks are by Roshi Amala Wrightson, but there are also talks from Sensei Richard von Sturmer and senior students too.
Based on 4 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Zen texts and koans become practical instruction on humility, attention, commitment, and carrying insight into daily conduct.
AZC Weekly talks moves between close attention to Zen texts and the practical work of sustaining meditation in ordinary life. Roshi Amala-Rypeson teaches through accounts of Tangen Roshi, drawing out questions of awakening, humility, gratitude, and the danger of treating…
A buffalo's tail won't clear the window; you get a Zen question that won't leave you alone.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded look at a short practice container built around commitment, contentment, and ordinary life.
Roshi Amala-Rypeson's talk on the Auckland Zen Centre's term intensive keeps things practical. It is framed as four weeks of Wednesday check-ins, an online opening, and a direct request that participants name their commitments. The point is not ideal conditions.
A calm Zen talk that ties peace and war to practice, history, and conscience.
This teisho moves from peace and war with a steady, unsentimental eye. It passes from Mars and Ares to Te Porere, where the trench fortifications keep the battle close to the ground, then widens to the Bodhisattva vows and current news from Lebanon and Iran.
A slow, lucid koan talk that turns a buffalo and a window into a lesson on practice.
This Zen talk uses Wutsu's Buffalo Passes Through the Window to build a plain lesson about partial passage: the buffalo gets its head, horns, and four legs through, but the tail stays behind.
A slow Zen talk about humility, self importance, and the ordinary work of practice.
Roshi Amala-Rypeson gives a calm Zen teaching about the way practice can slide into self regard, and how easy it is to start feeling special when the work should be pushing the other way.
A patient Zen biography where repetition feels like ancestral memory and intimacy carries the weight.
Roshi Amala-Rypeson uses Tangan Harada Roshi's life to open a day-one Teisho on the summer seven-day sesheen, and the repeated biographical material settles the talk into an ancestral register.
Generous Buddhist conversations without the rush.
Roshi Amala-Rypeson speaks from the Auckland Zen Centre about the coming term intensive.
Sensei Richard von Sturmer offers a teisho on peace and war.
Sensei Richard von Sturmer takes up Wutsu's buffalo koan.
This episode features Roshi Amala Ripeson discussing the three fruits of Zen practice, drawing from the book 'The Flowing Bridge' and exploring the work of Zen teacher Elaine McInnes and her prison rehabilitation efforts.
This episode continues a series on Master Dōgen's teachings, focusing on the theme of effort in spiritual practice as explored in Soto Zen texts.
A Zen Buddhist teacher reads and comments on Dogen's Fukan Zazengi during a summer retreat.
A Zen Buddhist teacher discusses Master Dogen's Fukan Zazengi during a summer meditation retreat.
A Zen Buddhist talk from the Auckland Zen Centre, featuring Sensei Richard von Sturmer reading and commenting on Dogen's teachings during a summer Sesshien.
A Zen Buddhist teacher reads and discusses Dogen's Ehe Koroku during a summer sesshin at the Auckland Zen Centre.
A Zen teacher introduces a session on the biography of Master Dogen, founder of Soto Zen Buddhism.
Sensei Richard von Sturmer introduces and discusses the Zen koan 'Jiao Zhou's Cypress Tree in the Courtyard' from the Mumonkan.
A Zen Buddhist teacher explores the concept of not-self (emptiness of self) as part of a series on the three marks of existence.
A Zen Buddhist talk by Sensei Richard von Sturmer on the life and teachings of Soen Nakagawa Roshi, part of a series on Dharma ancestors.
A Zen Buddhist teacher continues a series on teachings from Ichi Tante, using the metaphor of a buttercup breaking through asphalt to illustrate spiritual power.
Roshi Amala-Rypeson teaches on day five of a spring seven-day session at Auckland Zen Centre.
Roshi Amala Wrightson introduces the spring seven-day Zen session, explaining core practices like breath counting, shikantaza, and koan work.
A Zen Buddhist teacher continues a series on the three characteristics of existence, focusing on suffering and impermanence.
Sensei Richard von Sturmer introduces a series on nature koans, beginning with the case 'Jingqung's Sound of Raindrops' from the Blue Cliff Record.
A Zen Buddhist teacher discusses the concept of impermanence (anicca) as one of the three marks of existence.
A Zen practitioner shares his personal experience of grief after his father's death, offering a Dharma talk on coping with loss.
This episode explores the significance of Jukai, a Buddhist precept ceremony, tracing its origins to early Buddhism and explaining its role in Zen practice.
A Zen talk by Sensei Richard von Sturmer on Linji's Great Enlightenment koan from the Shoyuroku collection.
Roshi Amala-Rypeson delivers a teisho on Mumonkan case 46, 'Step Forward from the Top of a 100-Foot Pole,' exploring the Zen teaching of letting go of attachment to enlightenment.
Roshi Amala Wrightson delivers a Zen Buddhist teisho on the concept of non-abiding, the third of the Sixth Ancestor's three antidotes to self-grasping.
Roshi Amala-Rypeson introduces a koan from the Shoyoroku during an autumn urban retreat at the Auckland Zen Centre.
This episode features Roshi Amala-Rypeson discussing the essential attitudes for Zen awakening practice, focusing on great faith, great doubt, and great determination as explored in the book 'Throw Yourself Into the House of the Buddha'.
Roshi Amala-Rypeson opens the day by setting the retreat, the book, and the reason for returning to Tangan Harada Roshi in context.
Roshi Amala Ripeson leads a Zen Centre discussion on Parihaka Day, connecting it to Guy Fawkes Day and U.S.
This episode continues a Zen Sesshin by reading from 'Subtle Sound' about a monk's journey to enlightenment through a koan-like exchange with masters Hogan and Seho.
A Zen teacher reads and comments on a text about peace of mind during a spring meditation retreat.
A Zen Buddhist talk on emptiness, referencing Nagarjuna and Thich Nhat Hanh, from a meditation retreat.
This episode is part one of a two-part teisho by Sensei Richard von Sturmer exploring the teachings of Nagarjuna, the 14th Zen ancestor and founder of the Madhyamika school in Buddhism.