Upaya Zen Center's Dharma Podcast

On the fourth night of Winter Practice Period sesshin, Sensei Wendy Johnson explores Case 89 of The Book of Serenity, “Dongshan’s “Place of No Grass.””

“When we all have enough, we can fully let go. When we fully let go, we know what it is to have enough.” In this joyful and moving talk, Sensei Matthew Kozan Palevsky breaks open Case 79 from The Book of Serenity. He gives context and background to all of the characters in the koan as well as offers an interlude on tall things and why we as humans like to go up. He considers what it means to step off the 100 foot pole again and again and concludes with reading an AI-produced algorithm about a snowball fight between him and Sensei Kodo.

With a combination of playfulness and humility, Sensei Noah Kodo Roen presents Case 21 of Book of Serenity, “Yunyan Sweeps the Ground,” and explores the dichotomy of mindfulness and busyness, as well as the connections of Yunyan and Daowu to stories in other koans, and Yunyan’s place as an ancestor in the soto lineage. Kodo explores the sweeper, the broom, the brother, and the moon, and the possibility that this case holds for all of us in our times.

“What are you doing?” a mom asked her young son who she found sitting cross legged, smiling, with eyes closed on the couch. “I’m enjoying my body,” he replied. From power outage induced darkness, Sensei Amie Diller offered us in the candlelit zendo and those at home an uplifting talk on joy. With its emphasis on suffering, it may seem as though Buddhism is not concerned with joy. Amie reminds us of the 4th Noble Truth, that there is a path out of suffering, and considers how this could look a lot like allowing and basking in the joy inherent within each of us and life. She offers practices around noticing moments of joy, noticing ANTs (Automatic Negative Thoughts), and lingering in the sense experience of joy for at least twenty seconds. She also shares the benefits of rejoicing practice, which cultivates sympathetic joy, wishing for joy in another.

“Many of our friends are no longer alive or we don’t see them anymore. [Writing poetry] is a way we hold them.” Natalie Goldberg reflects on the end of the year and on friendship by looking at the work of 8th Century poet Wang Wei who lived during the Tang Dynasty in China. Natalie reads several of his poems that capture the “evenness” of Wang Wei’s mind and the deep importance of friendship in Chinese culture at this time. Referencing one of Wang Wei’s poems, she asks, “All that heartbreak, what do you do with it at the end of the year?” Natalie concludes with a Wang Wei-inspired writing assignment, the admonition to “become dumb,” and the encouragement to reach out to our friends.

“Does your breathing change when you imagine it’s the landscape breathing?” Dekila Chungyalpa invites us to explore different ways of looking at time (as nature and different species view time, time as seasonal) that exist outside of our human tendency to see time as a zero sum game that we win or lose. She reminds us of the perception of winter as a time to rest, to increase our reserves of things like joy to help our human resilience. She says, “it’s almost like we need that layer of fat that squirrels have!” Sitting with “deep time,” with a perception of time bigger than our individual human life, can help us orient towards the climate crisis and the pain it causes in a more sustainable way, reminding us that we are a “tiny knot” in the bigger tapestry of life and that our aspiration is to aid the whole tapestry’s thriving.

In this poetic talk, Fushin James Bristol reflects on the role of silence in zen practice and in our lives. Sharing personal stories, music knowledge, Buddhist history, and other moving anecdotes from a wide array of sources, Fushin elucidates all that silence has to tell us if we can stop, listen, and be aware.

In Part 4 of this multipart series, John Dunne discusses some more of Nagarjuna’s policies around leadership and considers how they can create personal and world transformation. Roshi Joan Halifax and John take questions from the Zoom participants at the end. To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here.

In Part 3 of this multipart series, Joan Dunne delves into ancient Indian Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna’s work The Ratnavali or The Jewel Garland which offers counsel to kings or all who are king-like. Roshi Joan Halifax and John take questions from the Zoom participants at the end. To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here.

Sensei Kaz Tanahashi and Roshi Joan Halifax open the first full day of Rohatsu Green Dharma sesshin with their dharma talk on Indra’s Net and what it means to hold this mindset. Due to technical difficulties, the first part of this talk in which Sensei Kaz Tanahashi speaks is unavailable. In the second part of the talk, Roshi talks about awakening as excluding nothing, just as the Avatamsaka Sutra, which is the central text studied in this Rohatsu, which Kaz translates as the “Flower Splendor Sutra,” seems to exclude nothing in its 1643 pages. We can get lost in this sutra, just as we can lose ourselves in the “pressure cooker” that is sesshin. Roshi reminds us that “the practice is to get lost so that we can find out who we really are.” Roshi references the image of the lotus flower several times throughout the talk, noting that it would not exist without the mud. She asks us: “How do we let mud nourish us and not disable us?” Roshi offers Francis Cooke’s description of Indra’s Net to describe the perfect interconnectedness of everything, a view that holds everything as relying on everything else, making all things valuable, making “everything count.” This mindset of interdependence is the mindset that can transform and liberate our small suffering and turn us toward the suffering of the world with compassion, a practice that neuroscience and social psychology confirm “lights up our lives.” Roshi quotes Okumura Roshi saying that “our vows are endless” and that “we will never graduate” from what Roshi describes as a finishing school designed to “finish a mindset that is destructive and nourish one that is loving.” She gives examples of ways that we “actualize this sensibility awkwardly” during Rohatsu, “cogenerating the net of Indra.” To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here.

In this wonderful talk, Dorotea Mendoza “walks the talk” of showing rather than telling by sharing some of her personal experiences, e.g. how she misses the Philippines, the country of her origin, and how to actualize writing and service from a vulnerable place. She encourages us to meet ourselves where we are, and reminds us that “agency does not mean control, it means taking responsibility for where we are, and to start, word by word, making alive this imagined world we want to see.”

In Part 2 of this multi-part series, Roshi Joan Halifax considers the qualities of a leader as modeled and taught by the Buddha. Roshi speaks of the Buddha as a social reformer, being one who disapproved of the caste system, ordained people of all classes and genders, recognized economic oppression, advocated for humanism in government, and most importantly, understood that true reform could only occur by going to the roots of human suffering in the human mind. Roshi cites some of the Buddha’s explicit teachings from the Pali Canon on how a good leader ought to act. She dives deeply into the Mahahamsa Jataka, which lists the “tenfold royal virtue” (dasa-rajadhamma) of a leader. Roshi also tells the story of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka (r. c. 268–c. 232 BCE) who transformed from a cruel leader into a benevolent dharma-practicing leader, who implemented edicts concerning ahimsa, religious tolerance, animal welfare, vegetarianism, rest houses for travelers, free medical treatment, free education, infrastructure, and more. Roshi fast forwards in time to Eihei Dogen who offers The Four Embracing Actions of the Bodhissatva, or The Four Ways of Gathering. They include: being generous, kind speech, actions that benefit others, and the capacity to see ourselves in all others and to see all others as ourselves. Roshi and John Dunne conclude this part of the series by answering some questions from the participants on Zoom. To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here.

Series Description: Upaya’s Abbot and social activist Roshi Joan Halifax and the wonderful Buddhist scholar Dr. John Dunne guide participants through a unique and rich exploration of Buddhist visions of leadership. They draw on classical and contemporary Buddhist perspectives, including the early teachings in the Pali Canon on leadership and social responsibility, an exploration of the Dasa-Raja-Dhamma (the Ten virtues of a Leader), the legacy of King Ashoka, the work of second century scholar Nāgārjuna, unique and powerful Mahayana perspectives on leadership, Dogen’s views on leadership, and radical approaches from socially engaged Buddhism. The program took a deep plunge into ways that key Buddhist perspectives and practices around the core themes of wisdom and compassion give us insight into pressing contemporary questions, such as environmental responsibility, nonviolence, and ways to nurture communities of awakening in a time of great social and environmental upheaval. Roshi and John brought their unique backgrounds in Buddhist scholarship and social change to participants through deep teachings, lively online discussions, and unusual practices that leaders and social activists can use as they meet a world of great uncertainty. Episode Description: In Part 1 of this multi-part series, Roshi Joan Halifax and John Dunne begin by exploring the historical Buddha’s model of leadership. John considers how the Buddha was more of an “anti-leader,” rejecting power and domination, requiring encouragement to teach, and failing to reach the first person he tried to teach. How the Buddha led aligns with his teachings that all people must be lamps upon themselves. Roshi explains that the Buddha probably did not intend for a line of patriarchs and rather advocated for a community that had internalized the teachings and so did not require a leader. John notes that the Vinaya, the set of rules to guide monastic communities, were only implemented as the Buddha’s community grew and each rule was accompanied by a story about why it was necessary. Roshi explains how clear structures and policies have helped Buddhist communities to survive. She also cites examples of how these structures and policies have shifted through time and been adapted by different Buddhist leaders . To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here.

Sensei Monshin Nannette Overley explores the provoking Lojong slogan “Always maintain a joyful mind.” She examines perspectives on joy that go beyond our cultural view of “happy happy joy joy.” She considers how joy can manifest as and be born from challenging the desire to make everything a big deal, taking a wider view, noticing when we’re heading down a Negative Downward Spiral (NDS), basking in the beauty of being alive and human, and wholeheartedly doing whatever we’re doing. This joy feels light, bouncy, buoyant, empowering; it feels like an opening, a remembering that “this, too, is true.” Monshin speaks to the feeling of wrongness or betrayal that can arise when we talk about cultivating joy amidst suffering. She elaborates on the zen perspective of joy that is wholeheartedly attending to the present moment by reminding us that it does not serve for us to suffer, too, and that we can cultivate joy by asking: How can I extend my hand while staying grounded?

“Without the lineage, we are like people without fire and we’re going to be out of luck.” Professor John Dunne speaks about the importance of the Buddhist lineage and how it can often be discounted in our society steeped in American individualism. Dunne offers examples of our biological, cultural, and ethical inheritances that often occur concurrently, as well as our samsaric inheritance. Dunne proposes that an embodied experience with the lineage teachers, including their samsara, may better inform how we meet our present samsara and transform it into the buddhafield, seeing past and present, samsara and buddha nature as non-separate.