Upaya Zen Center's Dharma Podcast

In part four of Upaya’s The Way of Haiku program, Natalie Goldberg (author of Three Simple Lines: A Writer’s Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku) provides us with exercises and prompts for writing our own haiku. We also get to listen to participants in The Way of Haiku program read their haiku to Natalie and then hear her comments and tips. And if you’re curious about the one haiku that brought Natalie Goldberg to Japan and the grave of the Busan, you’ll find out about it here. To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here.  

In Part 3 of Upaya’s The Way of Haiku series, Natalie Goldberg (author of Three Simple Lines: A Writer’s Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku), explores the relationship between haiku and Zen. When we practice haiku, as when we practice Zazen, we practice dropping below the discursive mind. Writing haiku, Natalie explains, is about dropping right into your own body, just as it is. And being in touch with your own body puts you in a perfect place to compose haiku. The practice of haiku is averse to spiritual bypassing, whereby we use the tools of spirituality to avoid dealing with whatever is arising in the present moment. In light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Natalie speaks of Nick Virgilio, an American haiku poet, who wrote about the horrors of  America’s invasion of Vietnam, and of his mother’s interminable sorrow at losing one of her sons, Nick’s brother, to the war. The practice of haiku excludes nothing painful or joyous of the past, present, or future, but brings it all to bear upon our present, not so that we become attached to or bogged down in the present, but so that we can process and release it. Throughout this episode, Natalie provides practices for dropping into the present moment, below the monkey mind, and composing your own haiku. To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here.  

Clark Strand, author of Seeds from a Birch Tree: Writing Haiku and the Spiritual Journey, introduces us to the practice of writing haiku. Haiku, Clark explains, is a communal practice, sometimes humorous, often sorrowful, and traditionally grounded in the natural world. While some haiku masters did write in solitary mountain retreats, even the most reclusive of them tended to be involved in haiku communities. Clark discusses the call and response approach to writing haiku in which one poet presents an opening verse and another poet responds with a verse that could be humorous, argumentative, or even erotic. Clark gives us the opportunity to experience this communal approach to poetry as he reads and analyzes numerous haiku submitted by participants in The Way of Haiku: From Pathos to Play program. Part 1 of this series is episode #1952, titled Awakening Through Haiku with speaker Natalie Goldberg. To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here.

Dr. Wendy Dainin Lau speaks about her journey from working as an Emergency Medicine physician in some of New York’s busiest hospitals to living at the Prajna Mountain Refuge with Roshi Joan Halifax, travelling to Nepal with Upaya’s Nomad’s Clinic (of which she is now co-director), and ordaining as a Zen priest. For Dainin, the path has been one of unlearning: unlearning what her socio-cultural conditioning has taught her about what it means to be in a female body; what it means to be a daughter; what it means to be “spiritual”; and what it means to be a healer. Dainin discusses the fear that can arise in these liminal spaces of unlearning in which some of our most cherished identities are in flux. She encourages us to continue practicing through these intense and transformative experiences, and to not isolate ourselves but share what we’re going through with a teacher or trusted friend. The practice of unlearning can be (and very often is) painful; and yet it’s only through this shedding of what we already know that we can learn who we really are.

Taking a cue from Bonnie Myotai Treace’s essay Will You Sit with Me?, Sensei Monshin Overley explores the matter of diligence in love. What does it mean to love diligently? Is it even possible to love without diligence? While our popular culture often represents love as a passive feeling, Monshin suggests that we consider love as a caring activity that we show up for even when we may not feel like it. Monshin insists that diligent love must include self-love, not practiced out of a  fearful protection against the difficulties of relationship, but rather out of an acknowledgment of the non-separation of self and other—that just as to care for others is to care for oneself, to genuinely care for oneself is to care for others. It is often said in Zen that the path and the goal are one; that when we sit on the cushion we are practicing awakening itself, not practicing in order to eventually be awakened at a later date. In the same way, when we love, actively, diligently, we keep both eyes on the beloved, thinking neither of reward nor reciprocation—thinking of nothing, really, but only attending to the one right in front of us.

In this final segment of Upaya’s series on The Shamanic Bones of Zen, Osho Zenju Earthlyn Manuel focuses on ritual as a form of celebration. In Zen, Earthlyn explains, we begin by receiving the teachings of the ancestors. When we put these teachings into practice, through the rituals of zazen and liturgy, we celebrate the ancestors of what they’ve given to us. And this celebration leads to a sense of gratitude, not only for the ancestors of the past, but for the present moment, for our lives just as they are right now. The purpose of engaging in ritual, Zenju teaches, is not to think about or conceptually engage with the teachings, however profound they may be. The purpose is to initiate our attention into life with a spirit of celebration and gratitude. Click here to order your copy of The Shamanic Bones of Zen. For Program/Series description and to access the entire series, please click on the link below:Upaya Podcast Series: The Shamanic Bones of Zen 2022

In part two of Zenju Earthlyn Manuel’s three part series on The Shamanic Bones of Zen, Zenju explores the power of ceremony and embodied ritual practice. Ritual, Zenju insists, is not about perfection, but about moving in “spirit time”: responding to the moment however it happens to arise; and not only responding to it, but celebrating it. The Shamanic Bones of Zen, Zenju tells us, is both about the lighter, celebratory side of Zen, and also the deeper side of Zen, which we experience when ceremony is personalized: when it is deeply felt in the body; when it lights us up from within. Ritual ceremony, however intricate it may be, is not about controlling the moment, but about letting oneself go into the particular, unrepeatable moment just as it arises. Click here to order your copy of The Shamanic Bones of Zen. For Program/Series description and to access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: The Shamanic Bones of Zen 2022

When you lose all that defines you, what is left? Hoshi Fushin James Bristol invites us to an intimate exploration of loss, or what he calls breathlessness. In this space of loss, confusion, and unknowing, we are invited to ask the fundamental question of a life: Who am I? Prior to everything I’ve gained–my career, my family, my house, and so on–and after everything I’ve lost, who am I? In his characteristically gentle manner, Fushin explores this question by way of personal stories of loss, practical suggestions for practice, and an appeal to the poetry that surfaces only when we drop everything we’ve been holding on to.

Join celebrated author and Buddhist teacher Zenju Earthlyn Manuel for a journey through The Shamanic Bones of Zen, her new book on the connections between and Zen practice and shamanic or indigenous spirituality. In this first of a three part series, Zenju encourages us to explore and cultivate the shamanic or magical elements of Buddhism, and to experience the forms of Zen ritual not as empty rules but as opportunities to stop and open up to the present moment. Click here to order your copy of The Shamanic Bones of Zen. For Program/Series description and to access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: The Shamanic Bones of Zen 2022

Join Matthew Kozan Palevsky for a deep dive into Dogen’s great question: if everything is already Buddha, that is, Awake just as it is, then why practice? Why do anything? Kozan explores Dogen’s early and later teachings on the vital importance of taking cause and effect seriously, and never using the “absolute view” as an excuse to abdicate from our responsibility to care for each other and our planet.

In this final talk of Upaya’s 2021 Rohatsu Sesshin, Roshi Joan Halifax suggests that we will never discover who we really are by running away from our pain, but only in lovingly touching our difficulties, just as they appear in the present moment. When we’re really present to what is happening right now, we will discover that we have the capacity and the freedom to treat ourselves and others with patience and compassion. And this, Roshi Joan points out, is precisely what we practice on the cushion: being present in an unconstructed way that is precise, warm, and inclusive. When we relax into the present as it is, without aggression, without resistance, we may understand what Dogen means in his Mountains and Rivers Sutra when he says that the Great Way is to flow like water and be still like the mountains. To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here. For Program/Series description and to access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: Rohatsu: Mountains and Rivers 2021

Roshi Enkyo O’Hara continues Upaya’s Rohatsu series on Dogen’s Mountains and Rivers Sutra, exploring the challenging teaching that each moment is perfect just as it is. Whether we are washing dishes, meditating, or in a challenging conversation with a friend or partner, the present provides us with the opportunity to realize the dharma and remember who we really are. Roshi Enkyo asks us if we can meet even the most difficult moments of our lives as mountains, grounded and upright, and as water, flowing and without walls. To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here. For Program/Series description and to access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: Rohatsu: Mountains and Rivers 2021

Sensei Wendy Johnson kicks off Upaya’s Planting Life 2022 with this talk on disintegration, growth, and persistence. “When human codes and established organizing principles are no longer valid, then only disintegration may allow for a more adaptive and resilient sense of inner-being to emerge from calamity.” With these words, Sensei Wendy Johnson, author of Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate, implores us to recognize that just as a seed must break open and breathe the open air to grow, we must, as individuals and as societies, allow our sufferings to speak in order to transform. To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here.

Writer, historian, and activist, Rebecca Solnit, invites us to consider that action informed by a wise hope, rather than passive despair or optimism, is what we need to effectively engage the climate crisis. Roshi Joan Halifax joins Rebecca, discussing how Buddhist ethics, namely in the form of the precepts, bears on climate activism. Rebecca Solnit’s books include Recollections of My Nonexistence; Hope in the Dark; Men Explain Things to Me; and A Paradise Built in Hell:The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster.

In this talk from Rohatsu 2021, Roshi Joan Halifax suggests that in order to save our planet from further catastrophe we must learn to find our homes amidst struggle. When we meditate, especially during an intensive period such as in sesshin, we learn about showing up and staying the course even when we don’t want to. Whether we are climbing an actual mountain or an internal one, the only way is to keep going, openly, patiently, steadfastly. The mountains of our lives are not to be fought against but to be embraced, compassionately and skillfully, step by step. To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here. For Program/Series description and to access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: Rohatsu: Mountains and Rivers 2021