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Study Guide

The Everyday Zen Study Guide is designed for students who want to develop their Zen or Buddhist practice through concentrated study. It is used by Everyday Zen practitioners, as well as by students of other groups and traditions.

For years, Zoketsu has been lecturing on a group of key texts and topics that he feels are particularly important for a basic understanding of Zen and Buddhist practice. These lectures are delivered most often at the San Francisco Bay Area Dharma seminars (see Programs and Events) but are frequently repeated at other places as well. The texts are mostly traditional Buddhist and Zen texts, but the approach to them is unorthodox, geared to a way of practice that assumes and honors everyday life in the post-modern world.

These texts and Zoketsu’s commentaries on them constitute the Everyday Zen Study Guide. The Topics below are listed in a suggested order of study, but students are free to pick and choose and to proceed according to their interests. 

Study Guide Topics

1. Suzuki Roshi

2. Precepts

3. Zen Forms: Ritual & Liturgy

4. Buddhist Psychology

5. Compassion

6. Mahayana Sutras

7. Pali Canon

8. Emptiness Teachings

9. Zen Koans

10. Dogen Studies

11. Women in Buddhism

12. Contemporary Scholarship

13. Other Zen and General Buddhist Studies