Shining Bright Lotus Meditation Society

12/27/2025

Release 2025 and Set Your Intentions for 2026!
Join us online for this community gathering to bring in the New Year with the biggest Buddhist ceremony of the year: Joya no Kane, or the Tolling of the Temple Bells. In the Buddhist tradition, ringing the bell 108 times rids us of the 108 delusions that we suffer on earth. Through this ritual, we purify ourselves of the past year’s three poisons: greed, anger and delusion.

This event will include the morning service, Qi Gong, and the 108 Bells ceremony of purification and release, opening up to a new year of awakening, and liberation.

In the Buddhist tradition, ringing the bell 108 times rids us of the 108 delusions that we suffer on earth. Through this ritual, we purify ourselves of the past year’s three poisons: greed, anger and delusion.

12/27/2025

Non - Meditation - Roshi Ekai Joel Kreisberg https://shiningbrightlotus.podbean.com/e/non-meditation-ekai-joel-kreisberg-weekend-sangha-practice-january-25-2025/

Dharma Reflection - Weekend Sangha Practice - January 25, 2025 Ekai delves into the difference between dharana, shamata or concentration practice and non-meditation, silent illumination or shikantaza, or just sitting, being with what arises. The distinction helps one recognize the value of both types of meditation.

12/23/2025

8 Brocades Qi Gong with Jozen Jonathon Fielder https://youtu.be/YFjXaLZvcqE
Enjoy a qigong session with Jozen Jonathon Fielder. Eight Brocades Qigong. https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/events/eight-brocades-qigong

12/23/2025

The Dignity and Disaster of My Ego - Emyo Darlene Tataryn https://youtu.be/B04LRyv3OQ4

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.

12/19/2025

Three Refuges - Nanda Nina Lynch https://shiningbrightlotus.podbean.com/e/three-refuges-nanda-nina-lynch-dharma-reflection/

Nanda gives a Dharma Reflection and brief meditation on the Three Refuges.

In Buddhism, the three refuges, also known as the Three Jewels or Triple Gem, are the Buddha, the Dharma (teachings), and the Sangha (community). They represent the foundational elements of Buddhist faith and practice, guiding practitioners towards enlightenment.

12/15/2025

Why there are no victims - Kenshin Cian Whalley https://youtu.be/53UQPJelmoU

Kenshin Cian reflects on a lifetime of examining the difference between real victimization and the identity of victimhood, sharing how early childhood trauma shaped his unconscious patterns in relationships. Through Mondo Zen practice, shadow work, and metacognitive awareness, he realized that while harm is real, the ongoing story of being a victim is a choice shaped by conditioned parts of the self. He describes catching himself strategically allowing suffering to influence outcomes, seeing clearly that a deeper awareness was always present and choosing. Recognizing this “choice point” allowed him to step out of the victim–rescuer–persecutor cycle, reclaim his disowned power, and respond from presence rather than trauma-driven parts.

12/13/2025

When Does the Buddha Need Therapy? - Daiden Dan Pecaut https://shiningbrightlotus.podbean.com/e/when-does-the-buddha-need-therapy-daiden-dan-pecaut/

Daiden Dan Pecaut’s talk centers on awakening as the process of seeing through the ego and returning to embodied wholeness. He describes the ego not as a fixed entity but as a shifting collection of stories, memories, and defenses. Zen, he says, doesn’t destroy this process but places it in proper perspective, allowing the deeper self, Buddha-nature, to lead.

Daiden stresses that awakening isn’t about gaining anything new but realizing what’s already present. Yet, he acknowledges that modern practice must include healing the psyche and body, since traditional Zen often bypassed trauma. Integrating Zen, shadow work, and embodiment, Daiden teaches that awakening matures through the body. Where breath, awareness, and being are one.

12/08/2025

Remembering the Light - Awakening to What Is - Roshi Ekai Joel Kreisberg https://youtu.be/LaAJu-YPZw8

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.

Shiningbrightlotus.org

12/06/2025

Ekai gives a talk about the Origins of Our Practice https://shiningbrightlotus.podbean.com/e/origins-of-our-practice-roshi-ekai-joel-kreisberg/

Ekai Roshi Joel Kreisberg discusses the origins of our lineage and practice. Bridging ancient teachings with 21st-century understanding, translating traditional koans like “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” into accessible insight questions such as “Can you listen without an opinion?” Ekai explains how zazen, koan inquiry, and daily mindfulness form complementary “technologies” of awakening—ways of recognizing no-self, interconnection, and pure awareness in everyday life.

For more information, visit: https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/

12/03/2025

https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/sblms-blog/renewing-our-vows The latest blog emphasizes winter as a time for renewal and describes how the community revisits the Buddhist Precepts as guiding principles for compassionate, mindful living. It highlights their seasonal ceremony as an invitation to recommit to clarity, ethics, and shared well-being.

Join us tomorrow for our Precept Renewal Ceremony. Click the link below for more info.
https://www.shiningbrightlotus.org/events/recommitment-ceremony-dec4

To study the Precepts is therefore to step fully into the Sangha — to take responsibility not only for our personal conduct, but for the well-being of all beings with whom we practice.

12/01/2025

Can you choose enlightenment? - Kogen Keith Martin-Smith https://youtu.be/tazmsPOgZz0

Keith Martin-Smith reflects on writing *When the Buddha Needs Therapy* as a way of distilling what he learned from his teacher Junpo, who passed soon after the book was finished, leaving Keith to continue his path without a direct guide. Over the past four and a half years, he found his way back into training through new teachers and by studying Hakuin, the Rinzai master who revitalized Zen by emphasizing embodied practice, rigorous discipline, and the integration of awakening into everyday life. Keith describes Hakuin’s teachings on the four ways of knowing, the need for great faith, great doubt, and great determination, and the danger of mistaking partial insight for complete awakening. He shares Hakuin’s metaphors—like the fire lotus, blooming stronger in the flames of ordinary life—and the bamboo tube with the trapped rat, illustrating that true awakening cannot be chosen conceptually but emerges when one realizes there is no way forward, no way back, and no place to remain.