Zen and Ecodharma Talks by Kritee Kanko

About Zen and Ecodharma Talks by Kritee Kanko

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.

Publisher

Boundless in Motion

Category

religion & spirituality

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

13 Feb 2022

Latest episode

19 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

32 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   19 Sept 2026

   Moshan's Mountain Summit — Hidden Lamp 25 (September 2019)

   With scandals and power misuse being common in Zen, Tibetan and other sanghas, what could a healthy teacher-student relationship look like? Can a rock, a river, or a fellow retreatant be your teacher? And what does it take to put down our hats and trust the universe? This talk, one of earlier teishos Sensei Kanko gave in her teaching career, falls roughly into two parts. In the first, she offers detailed practical instruction on breathing technique and koan practice in her lineage. In the second part, roughly 17 minutes in, she turns to the koan itself: the monk Guanxi arrives at Moshan's mountain and refuses to bow or remove his traveling hat, demanding that this woman teacher transform herself into a man. Sensei Kanko uses the story in this koan to address what Buddhist practitioners face when meeting a new teacher (such as a less experienced one, like she was at the time), a new sangha, or a new practice place, and to offer her own vision of a less hierarchical and warmer student-teacher relationship. She speaks candidly about the power embedded in a spiritual teacher's role, why that power must be held skillfully, and why she asks her students to be her mirror. The story in the koan also shows a student who challenges his teacher rudely and is still received — and the unskillful challenge becomes a learning point for both. In these times when many practitioners are shaken by scandals or doubting the spiritual traditions altogether, Sensei Kanko offers a path that holds firm to the gifts of tradition and rigorous meditation practice while fully acknowledging its limitations and the need for humility and openness to feedback. She closes with instructions for nature practice — posing a question to a river or a tree, and reading the patterns in the natural world — as a way of recognizing that teachers abound: trees, moose, rocks, creeks, clouds, lichen, sunlight, and each other. Sensei Kanko gave this talk on the third day of a Zen retreat (sesshin) in September 2019. Thank you for listening to the Boundless in Motion podcast. You can access more information about our programs and retreats by going to boundlessinmotion.org or kriteekanko.com

2. 

   15 Aug 2026

   Ukyu's Unfair Blows – Hekiganroku 75 (May 2026)

   Why do we need silent meditation retreats in these times of polycrisis? Is it normal for painful memories or emotions — or resistance to spiritual practice — to arise at the very beginning of a retreat, and how should we work with that? What is the purpose of our "weird" Japanese chants? What did the early Western Buddhist teachers leave out when they brought Buddhist teachings from the East? And how should we relate to the unfair blows we receive in life? In this talk, Sensei Kanko addresses the common questions and challenges that arise for new practitioners in Zen tradition, but fills them with vibrant stories, new and old, from her own life. Drawing on the koan's strange exchange of blows between a traveling monk and the teacher Ukyu, she invites us to excavate the unfair blows we carry from our closest relationships, our ancestors, and our lands — and to consider whether we can meet them with something deeper than the urge to strike back. Along the way she offers concrete, trauma-informed instructions for working with exhaustion and pain on the cushion, from extending the out-breath into the lower belly to scanning the body for the sensations that are simply okay. A talk for both long-time practitioners and those new to this path, the result is an excellent collage of Kanko’s teaching, which uniquely integrates the rigorous Rinzai Zen lineage with a trauma-informed, gentle and loving approach that weaves reindigenizing and traditional Buddhist ideas into a polycrisis-informed, modern, engaged Buddhist path. Sensei Kanko gave this talk on the first full day of a Zen retreat (sesshin) in May 2026. Thank you for listening to the Boundless in Motion podcast. You can access more information about our programs and retreats by going to boundlessinmotion.org (boundlessinmotion.org) or kriteekanko.com (kriteekanko.com)

3. 

   13 Jun 2026

   Ryonen Scars Her Face — Hidden Lamp 31

   Why did the 17th century Zen practitioner Ryonen Genso burn her face to enter a Zen temple? What is this path worth? In this talk, Sensei Kanko challenges us to think what is possible when we move past healing alone and ask the most fundamental spiritual question: who am I? Naming the shadow of patriarchy in Buddhism but refusing to let Ryonen's story end there, she asks what burning question made this Japanese woman willing to scar herself. Using an infinity symbol, Kanko distinguishes the Western project of building a "healthy ego" from the non-dual path of dropping ego altogether — and points beyond both to Mu, the ground of being, asking what we are willing to let go of to touch that source. Sensei Kanko gave this talk on the second-to-last day of a Zen retreat in May 2026. 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.

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