Good Podcast: Guo Gu

It's always illuminating to hear from Chinese teachers and students.

We tend to forget that Zen is a mispronunciation of Chàn, a practice model that originated in China. Over the centuries, given the vicissitudes of history, Chàn faded mostly away as an active denomination, but a 19th century restoration movement has steadily gained ground.

My own admiration for Chàn – historical and current – is a matter of record. Encounters with our rootstock have informed my practice from the first, providing depth and balance to an otherwise comparatively narrow Japanese schooling. It's worth noting that Dōgen himself was a Chinese-trained bilingual sinophile, and while he dedicated his life to founding a self-sufficient Japanese Chàn lineage, he had no intention of rejecting its Chinese heritage or principles.

So it's heartening to see disciples of modern Chàn show up in Zen circles.

The above teisho, delivered at San Francisco Zen Centre on 16 June 2026 by Chàn teacher Guo Gu, is an excellent example of the sort of guidance we lost when our ancestral tradition went 404, and the wealth we're regaining as it returns. (It may help that Guo Gu's path to enlightenment practice reflects those of many ancient Ancestors.) It's all here: the sardonic humour, the laconic common sense, the notion that we're our own worst obstacle.

All the stuff that makes Zen Zen, what.

Audio of this talk can also be accessed in SFZC's own online teisho archive, or downloaded to your desktop or mobile device wherever you get your podcasts.

Note particularly how Guo Gu clears the decks on the matter of shikantaza. Just that brief teaching advances my practice significantly.