# How Practice Takes Shape (The Role of Vow)

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/zen-mind-898115/how-practice-takes-shape-the-role-of-vow
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/zen-mind-898115/how-practice-takes-shape-the-role-of-vow.md
Podcast: [Zen Mind](https://stenobird.com/podcast/zen-mind-898115)
Published: 2026-05-14T10:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2170403/episodes/19174232-how-practice-takes-shape-the-role-of-vow.mp3
Audio file: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2170403/episodes/19174232-how-practice-takes-shape-the-role-of-vow.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/zen-mind-898115/episodes/how-practice-takes-shape-the-role-of-vow
Duration seconds: 3191

## Resource

This talk was given during a zazen intensive at the Boulder Zen Center. The talk holds a question often left unasked: what is the role of vow in Zen practice? It opens with a confession of skepticism. Vow can become superego, a new identity to monitor against. The talk works through this tension by tracing how way-seeking mind emerges from the friction of misrepresenting ourselves as substantial, separate selves within a reality that is undivided activity. Just sitting already contains the dy...

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## Transcript

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