Sensei Joshin Byrnes is a Zen priest and teacher in the White Plum lineage of Soto Zen; earlier in life he was in the Dominican Order of the Catholic Church. In 2017 he founded Bread Loaf Mountain Zen Community in Vermont and virtually to be a hub for community-engaged Zen practice. Alongside his religious vocation, Joshin spent much of his career working for social change nonprofits in the areas of HIV/AIDS and prevention, child welfare, homelessness, and community based philanthropy.

In this episode, Deepa and Daniel center their dialogue with Joshin on the concept of literal and metaphorical cooking in Zen and Sufism, the home traditions of Joshin and Deepa respectively. Together they explore: grandmother-cooked family meals, Zen master Dogen's Instructions to the Cook, various metaphors of 'cooking your life, 'kissing' the parts of ourselves we may consider 'garbage,' the way our attitude and energy affect food, Dogen's 'three minds,' prasad (food offerings), being more connected to taste apart from eating, the multi-sensory nature of food, Joshin's experience of taking communion on a 'street retreat,' the 'community living room' at BLMZC, potlucks, fasting and the increased appreciation it brings, skillful hunger as opposed to destructive hunger, insatiable appetites for spiritual experience, finding a balance of 'spices,' ritualistically feeding hungry ghosts, Mevlana Rumi's poetic imagery of cooking, Deepa's experience of learning to 'whirl' with the Mevlevi Order of Sufism, learning to want the unwanted, Dogen getting schooled by an old Zen cook, 'slender sadness,' and the Zen concept of 'one taste.'

If you’re interested in residential practice at Bread Loaf Mountain Zen Community send a note to info@BLMZC for more information.

Bread Loaf Mountain Zen Community

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Robert Wing Sensei is the founder of the Mountain Warrior Institute, Warrior of the Heart seminars, and the director of Wise Actions. As an Aikido practitioner, Wing Sensei is a student of both Koichi Kashiwaya Sensei and Hiroshi Ikeda Shihan, and founder of the Aikido curriculum at Naropa University, where he continues as the senior teacher of its Aiki-ken and Aiki-Jo club on campus in Boulder, Colorado.

In this episode, we talk with Wing Sensei about three types of language (representational, immediate, and structural), Aikido as a structural language, the asking of ‘physical questions’ in the martial arts, ‘internal martial arts,’ the meaning of ‘ai’ (harmony) and ‘ki’ (energy), ‘effective distance’ and ‘joining’ in Aikido, the idea of conflict and ‘entering and turning’ into it, fighting and not-fighting, his seminar 'the Art of Hosting Important Questions,' and centering and the effective use and right application of power.

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Rabbi Tirzah Firestone is a fellow student of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, an author and psychotherapist focusing on intergenerational trauma, and one of the senior rabbis of the Jewish Renewal movement. Tirzah is the author of Wounds into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma, The Receiving: Reclaiming Jewish Women’s Wisdom, and the newly republished With Roots in Heaven: One Woman’s Passionate Journey into the Heart of Her Faith.

In this episode, we talk about the evolution of Tirzah's work on intergenerational trauma, pros and cons of the popularization of the concept of 'trauma,' Tirzah's recent teaching trip to Berlin amidst the rise of Neo-Fascist politics, Jewish & Israeli reactions to the events of Oct. 7th as an unhealthy trauma response, the conflation of Jewish identity with Jewish nationalism, the search for authority in the opinions of Reb Zalman (Tirzah and Netanel's teacher), Reb Zalman's desire to pray across dividing lines and include God in worldly decisions and problems, the 'seeds' we inherit from our ancestors and which we choose to water, the potentially transformative impact of psychologically based ancestral healing, and the image of the two cherubs atop the Holy of Holies as a metaphor for masculine/feminine balance.

You can learn more about Tirzah and her work on her website.

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