UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud
Silent Thunder Order
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About This Podcast
A podcast of original teachings and music by Zenkai Taiun Michael Elliston Roshi, guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order.
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Recent Episodes
185: Metta Sutra / Loving Kindness Sutra
Welcome to another installment of my Dharma Byte column and UnMind podcast. We have initiated a Substack posting of the unexpurgated reference texts for this series, based on the manuscript for…
184: Surangama Sutra
In the introduction to “The Surangama Sutra, A New Translation” by the Buddhist Text Translation Society, the section on “The Reasons for the Teaching” explains six reasons for this particular sutra,…
183: Four Immeasurables part 4 -- Equanimity
The fourth and last of the immeasurables of Buddhism is translated as "equanimity" — in Sanskrit, upekkha. Has the ring of authenticity, doesn’t it? Equanimity, not so much. Too familiar, too…
182: Four Immeasurables part 3 -- Empathy
The third of the Four Immeasurables of Buddhism, as defined online, is sympathetic joy, or empathy, I have long taken to indicate the kind of genuine delight that one can feel at the good fortune of…
181: Four Immeasurables part 2 -- Compassion
The second of the Four Immeasurables of Buddhism, compassion is a term that is frequently bruited-about in Zen circles, the ubiquity of which extends to the customary reference to buddha-dharma…
180: Four Immeasurables part 1 -- Loving Kindness
From a downloaded document from one of my online dharma dialogs — dated June 8, 2016, but otherwise unidentified — we find the following definitions of the Four Immeasurables of Buddhism: Metta…
179: Connecting the Dots Part 6
APPROACHING THE SINGULARITYSiddhartha Gotama, the founder of Buddhism, known as the Buddha — as well as the Ancestors of Zen — struggled mightily to express the essence of the practice, meaning, and…
178: Connecting the Dots Part 5
This segment is excerpted from the introduction to a yet-to-be-published manuscript of selected podcasts from 2020 forward. The working title is "Speaking with One (Zen) Voice," the "Zen" in…
177: Connecting the Dots Part 4
From time to time over the nearly 50 years since the establishment of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center, a significant number of its members and its affiliates in the Silent Thunder Order have complained…
176: Connecting the Dots Part 3
In this third installment of my "DharmaByte" column and "UnMind" podcast, exploring the general subject of Zen in our Times, we turn to the last of three suggested topics from Hokai Jeff Harper,…
175: Connecting the Dots
As I mentioned in the last installment, when thinking about content for the next Dharma Byte or UnMind podcast, I turn to my collaborators for inspiration: Hokai Jeff Harper, publisher of the…
174: Zen in Our Time
"Zen in Our Time" and "Connecting the Dots" are themes that I have hit upon for 2025, forming the thread running through (one meaning of "sutra") all of my DharmaByte newsletter columns and online…
173: Connecting the Dots
ZEN IN OUR TIME“Connecting the Dots”Some of you A few may have undergone formal training, in Zen or other meditative traditions, or you may be a relative newcomer to Zen. The objective of this…
172: Zen Ps & Qs
Speaking of watching your Ps and Qs, when taking up the way of Zen meditation, it may seem all too easy to get things backward. In fact, according to the great Zen ancestors, getting it wrong is a…
171: Natural Meditation
In the new Thursday Workshop I have initiated for 2025, I am attempting to lay out in great detail what I believe to be the most natural way to meditate: zazen before Zen, so to speak. It may not be…
170: Happy New Moment
In the previous segment of UnMind, titled "the least important thing," I closed with a call for submissions; quoting myself: If you have any topics or areas of interest in Zen that you would like me…
169: The Least Important Thing
In the last segment of UnMind, we looked at the implications of Master Dogen's expression, "the most important thing in Buddhism," from Fukanzazengi, the set of instructions for zazen he composed…
168: Election Year Zen part 10
Well, now we know. That is, we know how the vote tally turned out. What we don’t know for sure is what will happen next. As I said in closing the last podcast, we are waiting for the next number of…
167: The Most Important Thing
DOGEN ON ZAZENUpon returning to Japan from China in 1227, at the age of 27, Master Dogen composed the first draft of Fukanzazengi, the tract in which he outlines the principles of seated meditation,…
166: Election Year Zen part 9
The DharmaByte™ version of this segment will post in the STO newsletter the first week of November. This UnMind podcast will drop on Wednesday after election day, which is November 5th. The next…
Frequently Asked Questions
UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud has published 99 episodes since April 2022, covering topics in Buddhism, Philosophy.
UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud is currently moderate with new episodes every 2 weeks. Average episode length is 15m.
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