Kodo Conlin has practiced Buddhist meditation for nearly 20 years. He has trained in both the Zen and Theravada traditions, ordaining as a Soto Zen priest in 2015. Kodo served as shuso (head monk) at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in 2022. A participant in the 2021-2025 Insight Meditation Center Teacher Training with Gil Fronsdal and Andrea Fella, Kodo's training has included extended residential training at Tassajara, SFZC’s City Center, at Dhamma Siri in the tradition of S.N. Goenka, as well as long retreat at Spirit Rock and Insight Retreat Center. Kodo's teaching emphasizes a joyful, comprehensive freedom of the heart—liberation—available through the Buddhist path. He currently serves as San Francisco Zen Center's Director of Hospitality.
Moving aside from the notions of a good death or a bad death, we consider an exquisite death. The power of an encounter with mortality can set our lives in motion. How would we like to be companions for ourselves? In this talk we hear stories that changed Kodo's understanding of mortality, and how the Buddha accompanied the ill and dying.