Upaya Zen Center's Dharma Podcast

Episode Description: Kaz Sensei marvels how every instant of life is a compound of both failure (defeat, sadness ... the great "Zen failure") and miracle: a single breath relies on millions of well-oiled parts. We can't miss or ignore either aspect. He discusses the nonduality in his favorite poem, Dogen's "Snow," which so arrested him as a young man. He treats us to several more selections that epitomize Dogen's light-footed nonduality, including his startling evocations of the nonduality of impermanence and permanence: although flowers fall, "things abide in their conditions and there is the aspect of the world as permanent." Kaz comments that the deepest part of everyone's consciousness is all common, and there's no change. There is eternal life ... eternal death; "the myriad years of this moment." Roshi Joan turns over myriad facets of the state of being "destitute" (as in case 10 from the Mumonkan) -- on one hand, as the mind of poverty and complaint; and on the other hand as the bareness of being, naked awakeness; the quality of mind that is who we most fundamentally are underneath the attractors and busyness. In sesshin we can move through one destitution to the other. We must "look for the wine of deep fulfillment in the cellar -- don't go to the top floor." Bodhidharma's nine years of wall-gazing embody faith in this second kind of destitution; our screen-gazing often expresses (and even restructures our brains in the shape of) the first kind. Roshi also offers a lovely, deliberately embarrassing, homage to her buddy Kaz. For Teacher BIOs, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Rohatsu Sesshin Series: All 6 Parts

Episode Description: Is wisdom beyond wisdom in opposition to the common wisdom that discerns big from small, right from wrong, valuable from not? It could seem so, says Kaz Sensei -- keeping boundaries certainly sounds like the opposite of going beyond boundaries. And yet our ventures into boundlessness rely keenly on our generosity, ethical integrity, and sanctification of every detail. Rohatsu's endless bowing hopes to express this sanctity. When Kaz was a young man, a single wholehearted bow from a Rinzai roshi turned him entirely around: such a bow "can change the course of a nation." What journey must we take to find the treasure in our hearth? What does it take to realize Yunmen's "light" that everyone has? Enkyo Roshi consults Mark Strand, Eihei Dogen and Meister Eckhart for evocations of this radiance that is nearer than near, that is only recognized in not leaving anything out, not looking beyond "the kitchen pantry, the main gate." Our brilliant light leaves nothing out and it's nothing in particular -- it is zero. Yunmen says, "a good thing can't match nothing." For Teacher BIOs, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Rohatsu Sesshin Series: All 6 Parts

Episode Description: Kaz Sensei traces the emergence of the core Mahayana teaching of Shunyata, the boundlessly contingent "zeroness" of all things (not only of the individual, as in early Buddhism). He speaks of two kinds of meditation: a superficial but useful kind that solves problems, and a deeper meditation in the dimension where right and wrong, momentary and timeless, life and death are not divided. This zeroness that knows no boundaries is a big part of our consciousness, and is Prajna Paramita. What is awakening? Is it stoned and glorious, as in the Avatamsaka Sutra? For an account of the awakened mind, Roshi Joan gives us a close (intimate...?) reading of the Enmei Jukku Kannon Gyo (a liturgy invoking the Bodhisattva of compassion). She gives special attention to the word "intimate," quoting richly from the Zen literature and invoking the several intimacies of ethics/compassion, zero/samadhi, and wisdom/not knowing. The intimacy of zazen is that its purpose never lies outside itself: like music, like dance, "the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment" (Alan Watts). For Teacher BIOs, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Rohatsu Sesshin Series: All 6 Parts

Episode Description: On the second full day of sesshin (also a public Dharma talk), Kaz Sensei probes the elusive Buddhological question: how should we interpret Buddha's claim that all being awakened simultaneously with him? Was it just a mystic perception? Was everyone illuminated but just didn't notice? Does "simultaneous" mean that it can show up anytime, even this week as we celebrate Shakyamuni's enlightenment? Kaz offers several fascinating tidbits of etymology regarding "Prajna Paramita," tidbits that shed light directly on this question of awakening-together.? Enkyo Roshi expounds several Buddhist tales about the nature and location of this Prajna Paramita. In the Lotus Sutra, the leader of a treasure hunt conjures a brief, refreshing city to encourage her weary pilgrims; Enkyo says our thirst for self-improvement, awakening experiences, "wisdom beyond wisdom," is ultimately just such an encouraging mirage. It's a skillful means so that we might recognize our true world, true life, and true mission -- in our daily life that is interconnected with everything that has ever been. The wisdom we seek is not a thing -- a single experience -- not only the beautiful; not only the fragrant -- but is boundless, and empty of any descriptor. For Teacher BIOs, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Rohatsu Sesshin Series: All 6 Parts

Series Description: Rohatsu sesshin is an annual week of deep practice, observed by Zen practitioners worldwide to celebrate the Buddha's awakening. This year's rohatsu was co-led by three old friends -- Kaz Tanahashi Sensei, Enkyo O'Hara Roshi and Joan Halifax Roshi -- on the theme of "wisdom beyond wisdom." Kaz spoke briefly each day, followed by either Enkyo Roshi or Halifax Roshi in turns. Episode Description: In this first talk of rohatsu, Kaz Sensei introduces the theme of "wisdom beyond wisdom" embodied in the Prajna Paramita mantra ("Gate Gate Paragate..."). He presents several of the choices faced by a translator of the mantra ("gone beyond?" -- "arrived?" -- "completely falling apart?"), as so many gateways into the question of what exactly this "wisdom beyond wisdom" is. What did Buddha mean when he said, upon awakening, that he and all sentient and insentient beings had attained the way together? Roshi Joan continues the theme by examining how the liberating limitation (or simplicity?) of rohatsu can engender such wisdom. What qualities of mind does sesshin reveal, or respond well to? Not perfectionism -- awakening includes everything, harmonizes with everything that is: "10,000 dropped stitches, still a whole cloth." Precision and gentleness, rather, are both indispensable BIO : Roshi Joan Halifax 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. She received the Lamp Transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh, and was given Inka by Roshi Bernie Glassman. A Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order, her work and practice for more than three decades has focused on engaged Buddhism. Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara is a Zen Priest and certified Zen Teacher in the Soto tradition and is currently the Abbot of Village Zendo in New York City. She studied with John Daido Loori Roshi of Zen Mountain Monastery and Taizan Maezumi Roshi of the Zen Center of Los Angeles/Zen Mountain Center. In 1997 she received Shiho (dharma transmission) from Roshi Bernie Tetsugen Glassman and in June, 2004, she received inka from him in an empowerment ceremony held at the House of One People in Montague, Ma. Roshi currently serves as Co-Spiritual Director of the Zen Peacemaker Family, a spiritual, study and social action association. Enkyo Roshi’s focus is on true self-expression, peacemaking and HIV/AIDS activism. She holds a Ph. D. in Media Ecology and taught Multi-media at New York University for over 20 years. “Coming back to the live moment is the greatest healing, the greatest compassion” – Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara. Sensei 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. To access the entire series,

Episode Description: With the help of vivid exercises, Upaya's Joshin Byrnes shows how three "Dharma seals" pervade all our experience. In one exercise, the assembly eats apple slices, contemplating how this momentary apple came to be: namely dependent on circles that widen throughout past space and time (farmer, farmer's family, seed, soil, mountains and rivers that make the soil...), as well as into the horizonless future: will this eaten apple contribute to a moment of poetry in us, of protest...? Thus we see that the apple has no "birth or death": no juncture where its dependencies begin, or where they end in an essence called apple. This is the first Dharma seal of emptiness, of boundless contingency. Continue the exercise long enough -- starting from any point -- and you must inevitably include the whole universe; nothing is independent of anything. To examine the second Dharma seal of transience, Joshin asks everyone to chat casually and meanwhile to appreciate their neighbor's momentariness -- how s/he appears today only on a long stream of time, change, impacts. Finally, Joshin says of the third seal, Nirvana, that it's nothing other than the total pervasiveness of the first two seals (impermanence and boundlessness), experienced with a limpid thoroughness where the "ox's tail" doesn't get "stuck in the window." Bio: Joshin Brian Byrnes is a Dharma Holder and student of Roshi Joan Halifax, having receive Hoshi from her in 2014. He is a Zen priest and currently serves as Upaya's President and point person for the Upaya's residency program. He is also the director of Upaya's Chaplaincy program and is a core faculty member with a focus on systems theory. Joshin has a long background working in social service nonprofits and community philanthropy. He worked in the AIDS epidemic throughout the 1990s and since 2003 has led a variety of community foundations focused on social change and community leadership. His academic background includes undergraduate and graduate work in philosophy at St. Meinrad College and Archabbey, theology at the Aquinas Institute at St. Louis University while he was a member of the Dominican Order, and then early music performance at New England Conservatory of Music, and doctoral work in medieval musicology at New York University. He is ever interested in finding ways of life that are both deeply contemplative and fully engaged with the world.

Episode Description: In this talk during an "Ease and Joy of Mornings" half-day of meditation, Upaya's Shinzan Palma invites people through the gate of Zen practice and shows them around. He carefully explains a half-dozen zendo forms -- their subtle atmospheres of support for a gathered body-mind -- and most especially zazen. Zazen, he says, is not reflecting, not solving problems, nor making the mind blank (such a state doesn't exist in living beings!). It's rather a shift in our relationship to thoughts and breath and body and world -- it's a relationship of such simplicity that our habitual mind has trouble comprehending it, and complicates it in a thousand ingenious ways. Bio: Shinzan Palm, Dharma Holder, was born in Veracruz, Mexico. He has been practicing Zen since 1996. He met his former teacher, Korean Master Samu Sunim, in Mexico City and trained under his guidance for 8 years. He did a residential training for 4 years at the Zen Buddhist Temple in Toronto, Canada and was ordained as a novice priest by Samu Sunim in 2004. After leaving Canada, he was invited by Roshi Joan Halifax to come to Upaya in 2006. Shinzan asked Roshi to be her student and he was re-ordained as a Priest in 2007 by Roshi Joan Halifax. Since then, he has been at Upaya practicing with the community. He is now Head Priest and Temple Coordinator, giving guidance to the residents on Zen training. He became Dharma holder in March, 2010. He has a sincere and strong heart committed to the Dharma.

Episode Description: Upaya's Ray Olson pokes and prods at the layers of how we exist: as selves and others and as not-selves and no-others. We should not miss the vaster "self" or way-of-existing where, lacking fundamental boundaries, we're always mutually creating each other, and appearing and disappearing without limit; but neither can we ignore the way-of-existing that gives us a name, a passport, and accountability to all our relations. Finally "self" and "not-self" are both concepts, with their uses and limitations, while "not knowing is most intimate" (Daizhang). BIO: Ray Olson an internist by training, was a longtime Professor of Medicine at the University of North Texas Health Science Center. He has been a Zen student for over 30 years and received Jukai in 1989. He was ordained as a Novice Priest by Roshi Joan Halifax in 2009 and was made a Dharma Holder at Upaya Zen Center in 2010. Ray serves as coordinator of Upaya's Prison Outreach Program, and in that capacity he corresponds with many inmates in prisons around the country, offering spiritual guidance to the incarcerated. He also makes weekly visits to inmates in the high security units of the local state penitentiary. Ray is long-married to Nancy; they have three grown children and four growing grandchildren.

Episode Description: Wendy Johnson invokes the occasion of Armistice Day -- alongside the breaking news that Thich Nhat Hanh, mighty peacemaking elder, has suffered a brain hemorrhage -- to entreat us to feel the vital context in which we practice truth-writing and mindfulness. Every breath and gesture matters, she says, matters mightily; as we go about our ordinary business surrounded by life and death, and the thinnest of veils between. Wendy tells several tales of her times with Thich Nhat Hanh, of his gentle power like "a cross between a tractor and a cloud" (Richard Baker). Wendy Johnson is a Buddhist meditation teacher and organic gardening mentor who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Wendy has been practicing Zen meditation for thirty-five years and has led meditation retreats nationwide since 1992 as an ordained lay dharma teacher in the traditions of Vietnamese teacher Thich Nhat Hanh and the San Francisco Zen Center. Wendy is one of the founders of the organic Farm and Garden Program at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in Marin County, where she lived with her family from 1975 to 2000. She has been teaching gardening and environmental education to the public since the early 1980s. In 2000 Wendy and her husband, Peter Rudnick, received the annual Sustainable Agriculture Award from the National Ecological Farming Association. Since 1995 Wendy has written a quarterly column, “On Gardening,” for Tricycle Magazine, a Buddhist Review. She was honored in The Best Science and Nature Writing 2000, published by Houghton Mifflin. Wendy is a mentor and advisor to the Edible Schoolyard program of the Chez Panisse Foundation, a project that she has been involved in since in its inception in 1995. This is her first book.

Episode Description: On this last full day of sesshin (and Shinzan's birthday), Upaya's Shinzan Palma praises joy in practice and the deep trust that silent illumination requires -- like riding in a plane. We seem to be doing quite ordinary things, having quite ordinary experiences; how can we trust statements like Shakyamuni's "I and all beings have attained the Way together," or Roshi Joan's "every rock and tree on the mountain is perfect, without any design"? Everything may be perfect as it is, says Shinzan, but the thing is to embody and express that living knowledge. Awakening itself may be nothing special in a sense. It's like your birthday -- everything's the same, but something's different. Bio: Shinzan Jose Manuel Palma, Dharma Holder.  Shinzan Jose Manuel Palma was born in Veracruz, Mexico. He has been practicing Zen since 1996. He met his former teacher, Korean Zen Master Samu Sunim in Mexico City and trained under his guidance for 8 years. He did a residential training for 4 years at the Zen Buddhist Temple in Toronto, Canada and was ordained as a novice priest by Samu Sunim in 2004. After leaving Canada, he was invited by Roshi Joan Halifax to come to Upaya in 2006. Shinzan asked Roshi to be her student and he was re-ordained as a Priest in 2007 by Roshi Joan Halifax. Since then, he has been at Upaya practicing with the community. He is now the Head Priest and Temple coordinator, giving guidance to the residents on Zen training. He became Dharma holder in March 2010. He has a sincere and strong heart committed to the Dharma. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Silent Illumination Sesshin Series: All 4 Parts

Episode Description: On the third full day of sesshin, Upaya's Joshin Byrnes does two things. First, he explores five "strands" of spiritual endeavor that each require our attention and nourishment (a weave to which Hongzhi is wonderfully alert): namely meditation methodology; study of the words of those who came before; psychology/mental well-being; conceptualization/cohesive map-making; and poetic or intuitive apprehension. Second, Joshin "liberates" Hongzhi "from my particular, perhaps peculiar slant" by opening up the floor for storytime: he invites the assembly to take turns reading and responding directly to a dozen passages of Hongzhi. A good time is had by all. Bio: Joshin Brian Byrnes is a Dharma Holder and student of Roshi Joan Halifax, having receive Hoshi from her in 2014. He is a Zen priest and currently serves as Upaya's President and point person for the Upaya's residency program. He is also the director of Upaya's Chaplaincy program and is a core faculty member with a focus on systems theory. Joshin has a long background working in social service nonprofits and community philanthropy. He worked in the AIDS epidemic throughout the 1990s and since 2003 has led a variety of community foundations focused on social change and community leadership. His academic background includes undergraduate and graduate work in philosophy at St. Meinrad College and Archabbey, theology at the Aquinas Institute at St. Louis University while he was a member of the Dominican Order, and then early music performance at New England Conservatory of Music, and doctoral work in medieval musicology at New York University. He is ever interested in finding ways of life that are both deeply contemplative and fully engaged with the world. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Silent Illumination Sesshin Series: All 4 Parts

Episode Description: On the second full day of sesshin, Upaya's Shinzan Palma probes the delicate relationships among effort, concentration, and mindfulness, and how the three might best cooperate to "open the umbrella" or "catch the wind" of silent illumination. He says each of the three has a distinct and definite task, and the ship will not sail if they're unbalanced -- concentration without mindfulness, for instance, can lead to trance rather than delicate illumination; while without concentration we're very vulnerable to daydreaming. Bio: Shinzan Jose Manuel Palma, Dharma Holder.  Shinzan Jose Manuel Palma was born in Veracruz, Mexico. He has been practicing Zen since 1996. He met his former teacher, Korean Zen Master Samu Sunim in Mexico City and trained under his guidance for 8 years. He did a residential training for 4 years at the Zen Buddhist Temple in Toronto, Canada and was ordained as a novice priest by Samu Sunim in 2004. After leaving Canada, he was invited by Roshi Joan Halifax to come to Upaya in 2006. Shinzan asked Roshi to be her student and he was re-ordained as a Priest in 2007 by Roshi Joan Halifax. Since then, he has been at Upaya practicing with the community. He is now the Head Priest and Temple coordinator, giving guidance to the residents on Zen training. He became Dharma holder in March 2010. He has a sincere and strong heart committed to the Dharma. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Silent Illumination Sesshin Series: All 4 Parts

Episode Description: Sean Murphy leads two lucid guided meditations on "stepping through the door," into focused stillness on the one hand (concentration) and into unbounded, egoless expanse on the other (insight). He offers tips for noticing this quiet expanse in any state of mind. It's perhaps analogous to shifting the gaze onto negative space, or noticing the pervasive silence that gives separate sounds their very shape: "since I'm aware of this upset/anxiety/anger, that means a much larger field is also here." Sean then asks probing questions about the several felt qualities of this background -- qualities pretty much opposite to the seeming qualities of what's in the foreground -- so that a clear picture of the thing will let us step through the door again that much more readily. Bio: Sean Murphy lives in Taos, New Mexico, with his wife Tania Casselle, a freelance journalist, travel author and fiction writer. His third novel, The Time of New Weather, was released in April 2008, and was named best novel in the 2009 National Federation of Press Women’s Awards, as well as in the NM Press Women’s awards. Sean is an MFA graduate in writing from The Naropa Institute, the Buddhist-inspired university founded by Poet Allen Ginsberg and Tibetan Lama Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. He’s had 20+ years of formal Zen training, first under the direction of Taizan Maezumi Roshi of the Zen Center of Los Angeles and then with John Daido Loori Roshi of Zen Mountain Monastery in upstate New York. He now studies with Gerry Shishin Wick Roshi of the Great Mountain Zen Center in Colorado. Sean teaches creative writing, meditation, and literature for the University of New Mexico in Taos, as well as SMU-in-Taos campus at Ft. Burgwin and the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.

Episode Description: Upaya's Shinzan Palma embarks on the question, "how do we make difficult decisions?" in his inimitably warm and engaging manner -- and in service to answering it, he makes a substantial study of the theory and practice of "wisdom" in Buddhism. Theory-wise, he covers wisdom's place in several classical Buddhist "lists" (the threefold this & seven factors of that); the non-linear feedback loop of ethics/meditation/wisdom; the core Buddhist principle that wisdom and compassion are two expressions of a single thing. Practice-wise, he shares his own journey of hard decisions. He says such moments are deeply creative: they're wisdom moments and wisdom always takes us where we haven't been before, births a new being. Bio: Shinzan Palma, Dharma Holder. Shinzan Jose Manuel Palma was born in Veracruz, Mexico. He has been practicing Zen since 1996. He met his former teacher, Korean Zen Master Samu Sunim in Mexico City and trained under his guidance for 8 years. He did a residential training for 4 years at the Zen Buddhist Temple in Toronto, Canada and was ordained as a novice priest by Samu Sunim in 2004. After leaving Canada, he was invited by Roshi Joan Halifax to come to Upaya in 2006. Shinzan asked Roshi to be her student and he was re-ordained as a Priest in 2007 by Roshi Joan Halifax. Since then, he has been at Upaya practicing with the community. He is now the Head Priest and Temple coordinator, giving guidance to the residents on Zen training. He became Dharma holder on March, 2010. He has a sincere and strong heart committed to the Dharma.

Episode Description: In this final sesshin talk, Sensei Robert discusses the final Great Vow: "the awakened way is unsurpassable; I vow to embody it." He says the awakened way knows absolute (not only relative) truth, exemplified in the story of "Nangaku's Tile." Emptiness or absolute truth tells us that nothing can be at all contained by its local name: what we agree is a bucket, someone else might think is a stool. Likewise we, ourselves, cannot be contained by our thoughts or emotions. Engaging with our stories in zazen is just "polishing tiles." Peaceful life is found not in resolving the drama but in taking a step back, being with the body. Please note Part 1 of this Series is Episode # 1040. For Teacher BIO, please visit Part 2. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Living and Practicing in Vow Sesshin Series: All 4 Parts