Upaya Zen Center's Dharma Podcast

Episode Description: In this session Tsoknyi Rinpoche discusses liberation within the framework of practice that he has described over the course of the retreat. He suggests that liberation will occur automatically once we touch the inner space having practiced without cultivation or contrivance. Liberation will occur very slowly, the duration of the natural mind or rigpa grows by itself. Through practicing "in and out" over and over, hundreds of thousands, millions of times, liberation will occur. Rinpoche goes on to discuss three types of liberation: "liberation upon arising," "self liberation" and "liberation without benefit and without harm." He also notes that "wisdom and kleshas are the same door." That they share the same ground of space and that we must face all different kinds of experience and phenomena but not cling to it. For Series Description and teacher BIO, please see Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Dzogchen and Zen Series: All 8 Parts

Episode Description: In the first part of this session Tsoknyi discusses the history of and ongoing development of nunneries in Nepal and Tibet. He goes on to discuss his inspiration for this effort as well as the vital importance of establishing these practice centers. More information about Rinpoche's work with the nunneries is available at Tsoknyi Lineage Nuns and at Tsoknyi Nepal Nuns. The session continues with the audience asking questions of Rinpoche and Roshi Joan. Questions include: "What are some of the differences between Rinpoche's practice and the Zen practice." "How would kensho and the language Rinpoche uses relate?" "Is part of the Zen teaching that we are really already there and just need to recognize it?" For Series Description and teacher BIO, please see Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Dzogchen and Zen Series: All 8 Parts

Episode Description: In this, the second part of Saturday afternoon's session, Rinpoche continues to explain the technique used to find natural mind. Picking up where he left off in Part 4A, he describes what is meant by "let it be:" "Glue-B-Gone," not clinging, not grasping, not holding, not fixing, nor rejecting. To let it be means uncontrived, not modified, unfabricated. Rinpoche goes on to characterize rigpa as a state of openness, cognizance and unification. But that this state will be brief, short moments and that once you develop some trust in that state, liberation will happen. That the body, and not the neocortex needs to understand. This session concludes with Rinpoche answering a few questions from the audience. For Series Description and teacher BIO, please see Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Dzogchen and Zen Series: All 8 Parts

Episode Description: In this session Tsoknyi Rinpoche discusses the Tibetan concepts of lo and rigpa. He says that lo is frequently translated into English as "concept," but that it is not an active concept. One does not conceptualize something. Lo can be shamatha without support. Lo is to be free from samsara. A state of calmness and clarity without the conceptual mind. Rinpoche goes on to describe how one can find this innerspace, basic space or the unconstructed space called ying. One must drop the dualistic mind in order to see. Experience must be realized in a special mind which is free of the tiny thread, called "reify I," that exists in the conceptual mind. Rinpoche then begins to explain the four part technique by which we find natural mind: dropping or "let it go," seeing, let it be and liberation. For Series Description and teacher BIO, please see Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Dzogchen and Zen Series: All 8 Parts

Episode Description: In this session after the morning break, Tsoknyi Rinpoche continues his discussion of shamatha practice. He states that in order to do shamatha meditation one needs calm, clear, though free and in nowness. By continuing to practice, you will eventually experience this point. He describes a state of effortful mindfulness where in one must be very careful to have not too much, nor too little effort. In addition there are two fundamental ways of doing this practice: with the senses "open" or with the senses "closed." Rinpoche suggests that it is probably best to learn with senses open at first focusing on an object and later without. It is possible to learn shamatha using anything as an object of one's attention, but recommended to use the breath as the breath is neutral. Continuing to develop, one will let go of focusing on the breath and focus on the nowness. Rinpoche then offers a discussion regarding the difference between knowing and thought. And concludes the session by addressing a number of questions from the audience. For Series Description and teacher BIO, please see Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Dzogchen and Zen Series: All 8 Parts

Episode Description: In this session from Saturday morning Rinpoche takes the group on a insightful exploration of a number of topics. The session begins with a mediation expanding upon the previous evenings teaching on dropping down into the body. In his own colorful and beautiful manner, Rinpoche guides the group towards calmness and then clarity, ultimately striving for cognizance. That state of awareness he describes aa "Whatever happens, happens. Whatever not happens, not happens. So What. Who cares." He indicates this practice is the essence of "shamatha without support." During the remainder of the session, Rinpoche answers questions from the audience. He talks about differences between the Western Culture and that of the East, specifically the culture of Nepal and Tibet. He then goes on to discuss "essence love" in depth, which he characterizes as the seed of loving kindness, compassion and bodhichitta. The session concludes with an explanation of "needy I," "reify I," and "mere I." For Series Description and teacher BIO, please see Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Dzogchen and Zen Series: All 8 Parts

Series Description: This intensive retreat touches into how one can directly access the nature of mind/heart and the experience of an unmediated relationship with the world. The essence streams of Vajrayana and Zen will nourish practitioners, as Rinpoche and Roshi share practices and insights from their traditions. Our time together will be practice oriented, with pointing out instructions, in both Rinpoche's tradition and in Zen. Roshi will also introduce non-dual koans as a medium of practice and might explore the Five Ranks of the relative and absolute. Rinpoche will build a field from bodhicitta to nature of mind, and Roshi will ground her teachings in a vision of space and spaciousness that is based on vividness and tenderness. Intensive practice will alternate with talks, discussion, and question and answer periods. Episode Description: In this opening session, Roshi Joan frames the retreat by stating that we will practice and explore "what it is to be ordinary. Absolutely ordinary. That being ordinary is where it's at." Tsoknyi Rinpoche then talks about how this evening we will work with finding calm, clarity and concentration. That to find calmness you have to drop the thinking mind. But what is meant by mind? Rinpoche describes three types of mind: the gross mind, the subtle mind and the very subtle mind. In order to find calmness one must go through four steps; that of thinking mind, knowing mind, awareness and clarity. Rinpoche asserts that thinking is only one part of mind. The real mind is the lucid nature of clarity. That we must drop the thinking mind and notice whatever is present in the moment without rejecting, suppressing or running away. To know the moment without thinking about it. He continues on to describe the process by which one drops the thinking mind into the body. In the body there are fundamentally three types of feeling; gross or physical body feeling, subtle feeling and emotional feeling. Rinpoche then guides the group through the practice of dropping into the body and cultivating calmness.. BIO : Tsoknyi Rinpoche has been teaching students worldwide about the innermost nature of mind in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Rinpoche is one of those rare teachers whose lighthearted, yet illuminating style appeals to both beginners and advanced practitioners alike. He is truly a bridge between ancient wisdom and the modern mind. His fresh insights into the western psyche have enabled him to teach and write in a way that touches our most profound awareness, using metaphors, stories and images that point directly to our everyday experience. He is widely recognized as a brilliant meditation teacher, is the author of two books, Carefree Dignity and Fearless Simplicity, and has a keen interest in the ongoing dialogue between western research, especially in neuroscience, and Buddhist practitioners and scholars. Joan Halifax Roshi is a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist, and author. She is Founder, Abbot, and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center, a Buddhist monastery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has worked in the area of death and dying for over thirty years and is Director of the Project on Being with Dying. For the past twenty-five years, she has been active in environmental work. A Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order, her work and practice for more than three decades has focused on engaged Buddhism. Of recent, Roshi Joan Halifax is a distinguished invited scholar to the Library of Congress and the only woman and buddhist to be on the Advisory Council for the Tony Blair Foundation. She is Founder and Director of the Upaya Prison Project that develops programs on meditation for prisoners. She is founder of the Ojai Foundation, was an Honorary Research Fellow at Harvard University, and has taught in many universities, monasteries, and medical centers around the world. She studied for a decade with Zen Teacher Seung Sahn and was a teacher in the Kwan Um Zen School.

Episode Description: In this final session, Bernie continues to answer questions posed by the retreat participants. One person asked: "how can one go about distributing homemade soap to the homeless without offending them?" Another person asked Bernie to talk about his transition from being an engineer to a Zen student and then on to his engaged activity through the Grayston Mandala. Another question was "how does love fit into Indra's Net?" To which Bernie responds, "have you seen The Big Lebowskii?" Referring to an important part of the movie, Bernie talks about "what is the rug that ties the world together?" Other questions include "what is healing?" "was it your idea to create the Peacemaker Rakusu and do you have any stories about the one you are wearing?" "What about those moments when there isn't love?" "Can you share your practice or definition of remember?" For Series Description and teacher BIO, please see Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Bearing Witness to the Oneness of Life Series: All 5 Parts

Episode Description: This session continues where the previous left off, with Roshi Bernie taking a number of questions from the participants. The first question concerns Indra's net, which leads Bernie into a discussion on the possibility of escaping the space-time continuum. The next question concerns "going deeper and deeper." Which for Bernie means going "broader and broader in that energy field." Other questions include "how do Buddhas hate the world?" and "what does it mean to defame the Dharma?" Bernie goes on to discuss the Street Retreats that he has lead since 1991. Providing some wonderful insights into the experience of being on the street as well as some practicalities which shape the logistics of holding the retreats in a safe manner. For Series Description and teacher BIO, please see Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Bearing Witness to the Oneness of Life Series: All 5 Parts

Episode Description: In this Saturday afternoon session, Roshi Bernie discusses forgiveness using the Rwandan genocide as a backdrop. During a 100 day period starting in April of 1994, between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Tutsis were slaughtered by the Hutus. In light of extremely horrific, unimaginable atrocities, Bernie offers a number of amazing and beautiful stores of forgiveness. Bernie also spends some time talking about the 2014 Bearing Witness Retreat in Rwanda. The session concludes with a brief question and answer period. One question comes from a person that has a very difficult time feeling any connection to those people that are capable of such heinous actions. How does one experience interconnectedness in light of such a feeling? In answering the question Bernie describes his conception of Indra's Net, a metaphor for the interconnectedness of life. Bernie believes that there is just a huge field of energy, a collective (un-)consciousness, everything as it is before we label or name it. That through work to cultivate interconnectedness we are seeing more and more of this field. For Series Description and teacher BIO, please see Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Bearing Witness to the Oneness of Life Series: All 5 Parts

Episode Description: In this session, Roshi Bernie answers questions from the audience. Questions include: "Are there Bearing Witness Retreats in Hiroshima or Nagasaki?" "What is the status of the Lakota Retreat?" "How should one work with a person that has a tremendous amount of guilt over their past actions?" "What is the hardest thing you personally had to face at Auschwitz?" "How to deal with a dysfunctional leadership board?" "Have you ever been afraid, and what then?" For Series Description and teacher BIO, please see Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Bearing Witness to the Oneness of Life Series: All 5 Parts

Series Description: In this workshop Bernie will trace his evolution from the dharma hall to blighted urban streets. He will share the practices and principles he has developed to teach service as spiritual practice and to create sustainable, major service projects, such as the Greyston Foundation in Yonkers, NY. He will share the insights, revelations, personalities and personal experiences that have influenced his life and development. He will present some of his innovations, such as Bearing Witness Retreats, living on urban streets and gathering for a week at Auschwitz-Birkenau. He will talk about the future of socially engaged spiritual practice. Episode Description: In this Saturday morning session, Roshi Bernie opens by answering a couple of questions posed by the audience. "What is the most important element in bringing about change?" "What should you do if you don't know what to do?" Rejoice! Bernie then moves on to the main topic of the session, the Auschwitz retreats that he founded, lead and participated in for the past twenty years. He describes the history of Auschwitz and how the original retreat came to be. His vision for the retreat has been to include people from many different"clubs," and to build a container around the three tenants of the Zen Peacemakers: not knowing, bearing witness and loving action. He wanted the first day to be overwhelming. To be a plunge to get people into that state of not knowing. The teacher of the retreat is the place, Auschwitz, and that they must bear witness to the place. Bernie spends the remainder of the session describing a number of deeply moving, touching and thought provoking stories of loving action that arose out of not knowing and bearing witness. Teacher BIO: The founder of the Zen Peacemakers, Roshi Bernie Glassman, evolved from a traditional Zen Buddhist monastery-model practice to become a leading proponent of social engagement as spiritual practice. He is internationally recognized as a pioneer of Buddhism in the West and as a founder of Socially Engaged Buddhism and spiritually based Social Enterprise. He has proven to be one of the most creative forces in Western Buddhism, creating new paths, practices, liturgy and organizations to serve the people who fall between the cracks of society. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Bearing Witness to the Oneness of Life Series: All 5 Parts

Episode Description: In this wide-ranging and personal talk, Cheri discusses the crucial balance we need to cultivate between compassion and equanimity in our work in the world. Compassion is difficult to define because it incorporates so much. Compassion contains elements of patience, receptivity, awareness, forgiveness, and radical honesty, all of which Cheri discusses in her talk. Cheri defines equanimity as the "ability to be equally near all things." Compassion involves our tender responsiveness to suffering, our open heart, which can burn if not checked by the cool spaciousness of equanimity. Through developing equanimity, we learn to relax in the midst of suffering. We learn to "withdraw our insistence that the present moment be something other than it is." In the end, through balancing compassion and equanimity, we become exquisitely sensitive to suffering without getting lost or overwhelmed by it. We learn to respond to life from a place of calm openness. Cheri Maples is a dharma teacher, keynote speaker, and organizational consultant and trainer. In 2008 she was ordained a dharma teacher by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, her long-time spiritual teacher. For 25 years Cheri worked in the criminal justice system, as an Assistant Attorney General in the Wisconsin Department of Justice, head of Probation and Parole for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, and as a police officer with the City of Madison Police Department, earning the rank of Captain of Personnel and Training. Cheri has been an active community organizer, working in neighborhood centers, deferred prosecution programs, and as the first Director of the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence. As Past President of the Dane County Timebank, Cheri was instrumental in creating its justice projects - the Youth Court, which is based on a prevention and restorative justice model; and the Prison Project, a prison education and reintegration initiative supported by multiple community groups. She has incorporated all of these experiences into her mindfulness practice. Cheri's interest in criminal justice professionals comes from learning that peace in one's oown heart is a prerequisite to providing true justice and compassion to others. Her initial focus was on translating the language and practice of mindfulness into an understandable framework for criminal justice professionals. Cheri's work has evolved to include other helping professionals - health-care workers, teachers, and employees of social service agencies - who must also manage the emotional effects of their work, while maintaining an open heart and healthy boundaries. Cheri holds a J.D. and a M.S.S.W. from University of Wisconsin-Madison and is currently a licensed attorney and licensed clinical social worker in the state of Wisconsin.

Episode Description: Fleet begins this talk by suggesting that each of us, and all of life, is endowed with basic, innate goodness, or Buddha Nature. However, we mostly lack confidence in this nature. Fleet spends the major portion of the talk discussi...

Episode Description: In this dharma talk, Sensei Kaz offers a detailed and fascinating exploration of the history of the Heart Sutra. However, before his history lesson he spends a few moments discussing how the sutra expresses the concepts of singularism and pluralism. Are they in opposition? Are the dual or non-dual? He then suggests that life can be seen as a dance with singularism on one foot and pluralism on the other. At first we dance mindfully, carefully trying not to misstep; however, if we continue our practice, we start to dance gracefully, both feet in concert, singularism and pluralism as one. Kaz then discusses the origins of the Heart Sutra indicating that there is a fair amount of debate regarding its source. There are two primary translators which are associated with the earliest versions of the sutra, Kumarajiva from the fifth century CE and Xuanzang from the seventh century CE. Sensei continues on to describe some of the archeological findings related to the Heart Sutra. He then expresses his belief that the original version came from Xuanzang in Chinese and was later translated into Sanskrit. This theory is supported by the findings of Dr. Jan Nattier and presented in her paper "A Chinese Apocryphal Text?" Kazuaki Tanahashi born and trained in Japan and active in the United States since 1977, has had solo exhibitions of his calligraphic paintings internationally. He has taught East Asian calligraphy at eight international conferences of calligraphy and lettering arts. Also a peace and environmental worker for decades, he is a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science.