The World Through Zen Eyes Podcast

Bonus Track #10: Why did the Buddha bow to a pile of bones (Mother's Day 2026)

FAN MAIL - Send us a comment or a topic suggestion [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2445898/fan_mail/new] Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2445898/support] Dr. Ruben Lambert can be found at wisdomspring.com Ven. MyongAhn Sunim can be found at soshimsa.org

Bonus Track #9: 2026 Buddha's Birthday Celebration

FAN MAIL - Send us a comment or a topic suggestion [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2445898/fan_mail/new] You know how to show respect when it’s obvious and ceremonial. The harder question is what you do when it’s ordinary, messy, and nobody is watching including how you treat your own mind. We start with kongyang, the Buddhist practice of offering, and strip it down to its real function. Incense, fruit, water, flowers, chanting, even the way we present ourselves become training tools for humility, gratitude, and intention. Then we widen the lens: the Buddha’s post-awakening insight that everyone has Buddha nature, which means everyone is a future Buddha. If that’s true, why do we reserve our deepest reverence for a distant ideal, while treating the people closest to us and ourselves with impatience, entitlement, or neglect? The conversation lands on a sharp mindfulness practice: every thought that arises is effectively an offering to your own Buddha nature. So what are you placing on that inner altar all day long? Worry, anxiety, jealousy, anger, self-hate? We talk about ego, preference, and the ways we “split” ourselves into the part we praise and the part we punish, then bring it back to daily life: traffic, chores, relationships, and the moments where practice leaks out the fastest. If temple is the training ground, life is the real ground. If this hit a nerve, subscribe, share this bonus track with a friend, and leave a review with the one “offering” you’re ready to stop giving yourself. Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2445898/support] Dr. Ruben Lambert can be found at wisdomspring.com Ven. MyongAhn Sunim can be found at soshimsa.org

Ep 36. - Poetically torturous or tortuously poetic

FAN MAIL - Send us a comment or a topic suggestion [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2445898/fan_mail/new] No guest, no co-host, no listener questions, and somehow we still end up with a full map of the mind. I’m MyongAhn Sunim flying solo while Dr. Lambert is tied up, so I reach for the most honest material I have: a stack of poems and rants that hold my earlier urgency, my current doubts, and the small moments that keep practice real. We start with “The Beast Of Time,” a fierce meditation on impermanence that treats time like a hungry animal and spiritual life like an emergency. Then I step back and name what I hear in that voice: a juvenile kind of spirituality that can wake you up, but can also turn into disgust for ordinary life. The turning point is classic Buddhism and Zen: the lotus grows from mud. No mud, no lotus. If daily life is the mud, then awakening depends on meeting it, not fleeing it. From there we move into poems that celebrate mindfulness in the mundane, the felt weight of responsibility in “Monk’s Robe,” and a fast, funny collision of culture and psychology in “Entangled Minds.” “Life Is An Adventure” turns a normal morning into a monster story, and “Merciless Children” asks the hardest question of all: what happens when we drain the great mother that sustains us. We close with the strange true tale behind “The F Word,” sparked by an email that accidentally sent a single letter and created a whole piece about conflict, forgiveness, friendship, and freedom. If you like Zen, Buddhism, meditation, poetry, and practical spiritual growth that doesn’t pretend life is tidy, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review, then send us the topics or questions you want us to answer next. Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2445898/support] Dr. Ruben Lambert can be found at wisdomspring.com Ven. MyongAhn Sunim can be found at soshimsa.org

Bonus Track #8: External and Internal Influences

FAN MAIL - Send us a comment or a topic suggestion [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2445898/fan_mail/new] Your mood might not be “you” as much as it is weather, sleep, hormones, and the stories your mind tells about all of it. We dig into the hidden drives that push us day to day and how seasonal change can amplify everything from motivation to irritation, especially during spring and fall. When climate change stacks disruption on top of normal cycles, it gets even easier to confuse external forces for personal intention and then wonder why you feel off. From there, we get practical: meditation isn’t presented as a performance of calm, but as a way to organize the mind so cause and effect becomes visible. When you can name what’s actually driving you, you stop living as one reactive “clump” of self and start making cleaner choices. That doesn’t erase responsibility, it strengthens it, because you can recognize a surge of anger, craving, or stress and still decide not to act it out. We also take on the ego’s favorite habit: turning everyday friction into a conspiracy against you. The rude shopper, the missing cookie, the bad day suddenly becomes a personal attack, and that creates a constant hum of stress. We explore Buddhist psychology around anger at the world, the ways people seek discharge through habits, and the deeper truth that you can’t contort reality, but you can change the world within you. We close with a grounded teaching on the past: let it inform the present without deforming it, keeping the lesson while dropping the guilt. If this helped you see your patterns more clearly, subscribe for more, share the episode with a friend who’s been feeling off lately, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show. Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2445898/support] Dr. Ruben Lambert can be found at wisdomspring.com Ven. MyongAhn Sunim can be found at soshimsa.org

Ep. 35 - A Question About Questions

FAN MAIL - Send us a comment or a topic suggestion [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2445898/fan_mail/new] A Zen question isn’t a polite request for information. It’s a blade that can cut straight into the habits that keep us stuck. We talk about the role of questions in Zen Buddhism, from the way sutras begin with someone asking the Buddha, to the strange training stories where a teacher makes you “earn” the right to ask. Why would a master demand effort like 3,000 bows, or tell you to show up at 3 a.m.? We unpack what that kind of obstacle is really testing: sincerity, commitment, and whether you want freedom from suffering or just a comforting explanation. Along the way, we explore what it means to “question the question” and why the source of a question matters as much as the words. We also dig into teacher-student dynamics in spiritual practice. Modern skepticism has real reasons, but if we only seek confirmation of what we already believe, we stop learning. We share Zen training moments where answers are immediate, inconvenient, or even seemingly contradictory, not as word games, but as a way to stop ego posturing and interrupt mind-made stories. Then we connect it to the Buddha’s poisoned arrow teaching and the problem of information overload: more knowledge is not always more wisdom, especially when it feeds anxiety, greed, and mental noise. We close with classic Zen methods like koans, the idea of questions as generosity to others, and the memorable heaven-and-hell challenge that reveals how fast the mind builds its own prison. If you’ve been craving clarity through mindfulness, meditation, or Zen practice, this is a practical reset on what to ask, how to ask it, and what a real answer should do. Subscribe for more, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review with the question you’re working on right now. Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2445898/support] Dr. Ruben Lambert can be found at wisdomspring.com Ven. MyongAhn Sunim can be found at soshimsa.org