About
Kodo Conlin is a meditation teacher in the Meditation tradition.
Teaching focus
His teaching pairs Soto Zen shikantaza with classical Insight practice. The combination reflects the wider current of cross-tradition Western dharma where Zen and Insight inform each other. The work draws on Zen practice as the foundational framework, taught with care for the textures of present experience rather than as abstract doctrine. Zazen sits at the center of the practice, with breath and posture as the steady anchors. Koan practice or shikantaza enters depending on the lineage stream, and the teaching emphasizes direct present recognition rather than discursive elaboration. Lovingkindness gets serious time on retreat, treated as central practice rather than supplemental, and the broader brahmavihara framework offers additional ground for the slower work of equanimity and forgiveness. Daily-life integration runs through the recorded teaching as a steady concern. The same awareness that opens during a sit is the awareness that meets traffic, family, and work, and the teaching keeps coming back to that continuity rather than treating retreat as a separate world. Across the recorded teaching runs a steady commitment to the actual work of practice, the slow unfolding that doesn't always make for inspirational soundbites but that carries the path forward across years of sitting. A consistent thread runs through the recorded archive: the willingness to be specific about what to do in this moment rather than gesture at long arcs of advanced practice. That specificity is part of what makes the teaching usable in ordinary daily-life practice.
Background
Kodo Conlin is a teacher associated with the Zen and Insight tradition descended from the Burmese and Thai vipassana lineages as carried into the West. Kodo Conlin is a teacher whose work bridges Zen and Insight traditions. The Dharma Seed archive holds about eight talks. He publishes additional teaching through kodoconlin.com. The Dharma Seed archive at dharmaseed.org/teacher/1415 currently holds about 8 talks across 2 recorded retreats, a focused body of work that rewards careful listening. Teachers with smaller public archives still represent serious training and ongoing practice, even when the public footprint is limited. Listeners may want to combine the available recordings with the websites of the centers where these teachers offer programs. Students often note a warm, grounded presence and an ability to slow practice down to its actual texture rather than rush through technique. Like many teachers in the wider Insight community, this teacher's path includes time on long silent retreat, ongoing study with senior teachers, and gradual integration of teaching responsibility through co-teaching and small local programs before stepping into broader retreat work. That apprenticeship model shapes the careful pacing of the teaching. Students who follow a single teacher's archive over time tend to pick up not only practice instructions but a quality of attention, the way the teacher meets restlessness, doubt, or sudden opening, and that transmission across recordings is part of what makes a sustained body of recorded work valuable for practice over years rather than weeks. Cross-tradition teachers like this one occupy a useful position for students whose practice doesn't fit neatly into a single lineage. The combination of Zen and Insight that runs through the work reflects a broader trend in contemporary Western dharma where the once-firm boundaries between schools have softened in practice.
Lineage
Conlin teaches across Zen and Insight Meditation lineages, drawing on training in both traditions. The teacher works as a layperson, in keeping with the broader Western lay-teacher form of the tradition. He teaches through kodoconlin.com and at dharma centers across both Zen and Insight traditions.
What to expect
Retreats and programs follow the format of the specific tradition being taught. Online courses and ongoing programs run through kodoconlin.com. Retreats run on a Zen schedule with multiple zazen periods, kinhin walking practice, and dokusan or work practice depending on the lineage. The pacing is structured and the silence is firm. The atmosphere is warm and committed rather than performance-oriented, with serious dharma underneath an accessible surface. For practitioners working at distance, recorded talks and online programs often offer a good initial point of contact, with in-person retreat following once the teaching voice and approach have become familiar.