When UC Berkeley Professor Randy Schekman was 12, he scooped up a jar of pond scum and examined it under his toy microscope. “I just could not believe the world that was revealed,” he said during a campus event earlier this month. “This complex set of creatures that you can't see with your naked eye, and yet are moving and somehow mechanically inde…

(Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley) The Buddha taught transcending (and not identifying with) the thinking mind through present moment awareness. He also taught about using the thinking mind skillfully to incline toward wholesome, well-being inducing states. These two bodies of practice are different but each crucial in their own way, and su…

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Saturday, November 15th 2025 by Ross Blum.โดย Ross Blum

In the early 20th century, prominent figures in psychology, psychiatry and pediatrics in the U.S. began to promote a new standard for mothers: that they should serve as a constant, unchanging and wholly nurturing presence in their children’s lives. It was the best way, they claimed, to raise healthy and successful children. This ideal marked a shif…

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Saturday, November 8th 2025 by Gary Artim.โดย Gary Artim

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Thursday, November 6th 2025 by Judy Fleischman.โดย Judy Fleischman

(Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley) The Buddha taught that the two wings of awakening are wisdom and compassion. Compassion is much more than a concept, and it's more than a feeling. It's an understanding, a motivation, and an ever-growing collection of pragmatic responses to distress that we have available internally for ourselves and other…

The United States is in a moment like no other in recent history, says Deb Haaland, former President Joe Biden's secretary of the Interior Department from 2021 to 2025. Every day, she says, it seems a new pillar of the American government is under attack. But what makes this moment unique aren’t these crises themselves, but the attack on the idea t…

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Thursday, October 30th 2025 by Gerry Oliva.โดย Gerry Oliva

(Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley) We all have teachers who've inspired us to see life in a new way. Who have been your inspirations? What have you learned from them? I thought I'd share some ways that instructions from two of my teachers--Ram Dass and HWL Poonja (Papaji)-- have shaped how I see the world and how I practice. The talk includ…

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Wednesday, October 22nd 2025 by Linda Galijan.โดย Linda Galijan

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Saturday, October 18th 2025 by Dana Takagi.โดย Dana Takagi

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Friday, October 17th 2025 by Gerry Oliva.โดย Gerry Oliva

UC Berkeley is widely considered a leader in innovation and startups. Pitchbook university rankings from 2025 announced, for the third year in a row, that Berkeley graduates have founded more venture-backed companies than undergraduate alumni from any other university in the world. Some might wonder, says Chancellor Rich Lyons, if this entrepreneur…

(Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley) The Buddha's teachings point to the need for clear understanding of our own minds and hearts, along with intention, compassion, and practice. As the adage goes, we must become the ones we seek while we work to change (or even consistently comfort) the world. To do that, we need to know what's going on for …

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Saturday, October 11th 2025 by Mary Duryee.โดย Mary Duryee

(Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley) Suffering is the Buddha's 1st Noble Truth. Sometimes it can feel like it's all too much, especially in these days of extreme unpredictability. Legitimate reactions of anger, confusion and discouragement can lead to feeling of hopelessness or resigned acceptance. How can we use the practice to not only skil…

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Saturday, October 4th 2025 by Zenshin Greg Fain.โดย Zenshin Greg Fain

In this Berkeley Talks episode, renowned marine ecologist Jane Lubchenco discusses how a persistent narrative that the ocean is “too big to fail” has led to its degradation. While many now believe its problems are “too big to fix,” Lubchenco explains why we need to embrace a new narrative: That it’s too central to our future to ignore. “There is a …

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Saturday, September 27th 2025 by Susan Moon.โดย Susan Moon

(Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley) Seeing sacredness, not only around us, but focusing inside the one who is perceiving. This mind/body (YOU) that is interacting with the world around it. I use Ram Dass's practice of seeing beyond this mind/body by abiding in the perspective "I Am Loving Awareness". This is where the devotional and non-dual…

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Saturday, September 20th 2025 by Linda Galijan.โดย Linda Galijan

In his 2023 book The Entanglement, UC Berkeley philosopher Alva Noë argues that human nature is not a fixed phenomenon, and that art acts as a kind of “strange tool” that actively changes us. “Life and art are entangled,” says Noë, who spoke about his research at a Berkeley event in June 2023. “To say that life and art are entangled is to say not o…

(Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley) With so much violence and insensitivity all around us, we can lose touch with our love for what is sacred. All that is required is a heightened sensitivity to tune into what is always around us.โดย James Baraz

Fascism, grieving, and keeping our eyes on the prize.โดย Mushim Patricia Ikeda

(Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley) The Buddha said that "Hatred will never end by hatred, by love alone will it end". He also taught that we can exacerbate our suffering with the stories and beliefs we have going on in our minds. The remedies he shared to cope with suffering fall under the umbrella terms 'wisdom' and 'compassion'. Join Eve …

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Saturday, September 6th 2025 by Zenshin Greg Fain.โดย Zenshin Greg Fain

As the science director at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, Emiliana Simon-Thomas thinks a lot about how prosocial emotions and behaviors — like compassion and gratitude — influence our well-being and society as a whole. And recently, she’s been more deeply exploring the effects of forgiveness. “Forgiveness is an idea that most people end…

(Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley) Most of us like to have some sense of security thinking planning ahead or knowing what to expect can help us be more at ease. But the real freedom comes from realizing we really don't know how things will unfold. Although that might seem unsettling, it can allow us to be more at ease with the fundamental u…

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Saturday, August 30th 2025 by Linda Galijan.โดย Linda Galijan

(Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley) A discussion of meditation techniques to evoke Equanimityโดย JD Doyle

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Saturday, August 23rd 2025 by Peter Overton.โดย Peter Overton

For UC Berkeley’s Jennifer Doudna, the revolutionary discovery of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing began 15 years ago with a meeting at the campus’s Free Speech Movement Cafe. “This is a quintessential story about Berkeley,” begins Doudna, a professor of molecular and cell biology and of chemistry, in a lecture she gave on campus in April. “The research th…

(Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley) Working with the Anapanasati Sutta in some depth. There are 16 steps in four tetrads that the Buddha lays out regarding how to practice this way. It is more than simply keeping one's attention on the experience of breathing. Some of the steps will likely surprise you. I thought it would be interesting to h…

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Saturday, August 16th 2025 by Zenju Earthyln Manuel.โดย Zenju Earthyln Manuel

(Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley) The Buddha's third foundation of mindfulness - mindfulness of mind states - give us directions that allow us to see mental-emotional patterns clearly without negative judgment or identification. This approach to habits we often identify as "self" gives us a very helpful way to work difficult emotions. The …

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Saturday, August 9th 2025 by Taigen Dan Leighton.โดย Taigen Dan Leighton

Every spring semester, UC Berkeley Assistant Professor Shereen Marisol Meraji teaches a class on race and journalism. In the course, she and her students explore how colonialism and the legacy of its systems — including forced displacement of Native tribes, slavery and Jim Crow — continue to affect us as a society, and how journalists can meaningfu…

(Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley) The Buddha's second foundation of mindfulness - vedana in Pali or 'feeling tone' - is a powerful and often under-utilized teaching and practice that can help us work skillfully with difficult emotions. The motivation that the Buddha stated repeatedly for his teachings and practices was to find direct ways …

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Saturday, August 2nd 2025 by Ryushin Andrea Thach.โดย Ryushin Andrea Thach

(Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley) An exploration of emotions, and the Buddha's teaching on mindfulness as an antidote for working with them. The motivation that the Buddha stated repeatedly for his teachings and practices was to find direct ways to end suffering. This intention applies as much today as it did in his time almost 2,600 years…

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Saturday, July 26th 2025 by Ellen Webb.โดย Ellen Webb

In this Berkeley Talks episode, economist Gabriel Zucman discusses how wealth inequality and billionaire wealth has soared in recent decades, prompting the need for a global minimum tax of 2% on billionaires. “The key benefit of a global minimum tax on billionaires is not only that it would generate substantial revenue for governments worldwide — a…

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Saturday, July 19th 2025 by Zenshin Greg Fain.โดย Zenshin Greg Fain

Talk given by Jiryu Rutschman-Byler honoring Sojun Roshi’s role as coeditor of the new Suzuki Roshi book, Becoming Yourself. Jiryu worked closely with Sojun Roshi and others to bring this project to completion. For information about other events around the launch of this book, check out www.becomingyourselfbook.com/events.…

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Saturday, July 12th 2025 by Linda Galijan.โดย Linda Galijan

Today we are revisiting an October 2023 Berkeley Talks episode in which Ezra Klein, a New York Times columnist and host of the podcast The Ezra Klein Show, discusses the difficulties liberal governments encounter when working to build real things in the real world. He joins in a conversation with Amy Lerman, a UC Berkeley political scientist and di…

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Saturday, July 5th 2025 by Sue Oehser.โดย Sue Oehser

A talk given at Berkeley Zen Center on Friday, August 8th 2025 by Mary Duryee.โดย Mary Duryee