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Zen and Ecodharma Talks by Kritee KankoAuthor: Boundless in Motion
Kritee Kanko, Ph.D., is a climate scientist, educator-activist, grief-ritual leader, and a Buddhist Zen priest who lives in Colorado (United States) and Rajasthan (India). This podcast offers her teishoes/talks that were given during residential retreats as well as half-day sits. She addresses how we can prepare ourselves spiritually and psychologically to confront the societal challenges of our times, how do contemplative practices need to change to be able to offer a non-dual response to our socio-ecological predicament and what will it take to create a spiritually rooted movement. Language: en Genres: Buddhism, Religion & Spirituality Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Goso's Buffalo Passes Through the Moon Gate — Mumonkan 38
Saturday, 25 April, 2026
How can you become fully enlightened like a Buddha? If you were a Buffalo, how can you be enlightened from head to tail? Or is that a delusional goal?In this talk, Sensei Kanko (Dr. Kritee) explores the koan of a buffalo passing through the window ( or a in Chinese architecture). In the koan, Buffalo’s head, horns, and four legs all make it through the window, but the tail cannot. What is this stubborn little tail that nags at us after years, even decades, of practice, therapy, and healing? Which patterns of unlovability, shame or inadequacy do we keep circling around or trying to hide from others? Drawing on personal stories — her arrival in the U.S. a week before 9/11, her early depression, and a recent health scare with her mother — Sensei Kanko offers a trauma-informed reading of this koan. She suggests we replace the word "ego" with "trauma," and invites us to hold the tail with tenderness rather than trying to eliminate it. She also gestures toward a deeper, absolute dimension of the koan, where the distinction between tail and enlightenment begins to dissolve — pointing, as Dogen did, to how the very sense that "something is missing" can itself be a mark of Dharma filling body and mind.Sensei Kanko gave this talk during a recent half-day sit (Zazenkai) in April 2026.If this talk speaks to you, consider joining Sensei Kanko and Imtiaz Rangwala for the upcoming Zen sesshin at Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center from May 11–17, 2026, which includes a "Solo" day of practice in nature. Details and registration are available at www.boundlessinmotion.org.Thank you for listening to the Boundless in Motion podcast. You can access more information about our programs and retreats by going to www.boundlessinmotion.org or www.kriteekanko.com.
