In her opening night lecture, Baden Roshi discusses becoming aware of our lived experience within interlocking systems of suffering. She turns toward the role of attentionality, still-ness, and contemplative tradition in forming a kinder, more compassionate world.

Nicole Baden, founder of the Dharma Academy, and Rahshaana Green, Director of Equity at the Nalanda Institute, discuss stability and resiliency as qualities rooted in one’s values and nourished by a curious engagement of one’s own experience. The conversation develops into a discussion of belonging both as a fundamental human need and as a fundamental human birthright, culminating in Rahshaana leading a guided embodiment practice.

Ryuten Paul Rosenblum Roshi began his study of Zen directly with Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in San Francisco. Shosan Victoria Austin Roshi began her Zen practice in 1971 and joined the San Francisco Zen Center in 1975. Now, on the launch of the Dharma Academy, they sit down with Tatsudo Nicole Baden Roshi to reflect on foundational teachings of Suzuki Roshi, and how those teachings formed and are still shaping Western Sanghas.

In "The Teachings of Life," Valerie Brown and Ravi Welch explore how to respond compassionately and wisely in a polarized, divisive, attention deprived world. Drawing from their personal experience, they emphasize inquiring into one’s own motivation to understand one’s own reactions. From here, a ground of deep being and agency is established, allowing for a pathway to a connected response. This, however, is not an easy path, and Valerie and Ravi discuss the close relatives of hopelessness and helplessness, and the shadows these felt states can cast in an already fraught situation. Still, both teachers profess a faith that the path of wisdom and wise action is paved with deep insight into our interconnected being and our motivations.

Sarabinh Levy-Brightman, a lay Zen practitioner and educator, reflects on how Zen practice has influenced her life, particularly her work in education, and discusses the challenges young people face in a disconnected world. She recounts her transformative encounter with Baker Roshi, which highlighted the importance of embodied presence and relationality in teaching and learning. She critiques an education system that often ignores somatic experience, instead advocating for practices that awaken the "thinking sensing body" in students.

Four Zen Abbots, moderated by Abbot Tatsudo Roshi, gather to discuss what Zen can do to meet the state of the world today. Each picks up a different thread and certain through-lines appear: appropriate response, the importance and role of zazen, and non-separation. To feel deeply and fully the suffering that is happening and to name it with honesty. To trust the response arising from zazen and to question and challenge its efficacy. To treat all beings with reverence. To allow that Buddhism has a political history, and that our understanding of Buddhism is as culturally conditioned as the rest of our minds. To challenge the conditioning of our assumptions. These are some of the teachings and suggestions offered by these teachers as they reflect on one question: “what can Zen offer in the urgent times of this polycrisis?”

In this capstone talk, Tatsudo Roshi explores pathways for living wisely and compassionately amidst uncertainty and systemic suffering. She begins by outlining three core assumptions: the existence of systemic suffering, the possibility that the world could be otherwise, and the necessity of a mindset shift for such transformation. She uses the Buddhist teaching of the Three Worlds (Tridhatu) as a lens for understanding these assumptions. We begin in a world governed by our preferences (Kamadhatu) and, through practices like Baker Roshi’s art of knoticing, walk through the world of Rupadhatu to understand ourselves as sentient, feeling bodies on a living Earth. This spaciousness leads us to Arupadhatu, the world of potential and possibility—to fully engage with and realize the proposition that the world truly could be otherwise.