Upaya Zen Center's Dharma Podcast

In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk during Upaya’s Being with Dying intensive, Frank Ostaseski speaks to participants from the loss of three close friends within a matter of weeks. Rather than offering technique or teaching, he invites open inquiry into grief itself: what it feels like in the body, how it moves, and why we so often push it away. “I think to grieve is to be human,” he says.

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In this session of The Measure of Our Humanity, teacher and author Tara Brach explores imagination as what she calls “an absolute miracle of the human mind” — a capacity that has shaped every evolutionary leap our species has made, from language to civil rights. Drawing on myth, story, and contemplative practice, Brach argues that in dark times, imagination is not a retreat from reality but…

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In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Koshin Flint Sparks — psychologist, Zen teacher, and longtime student of the intersection of mind science and contemplative practice — offers a wide-ranging inquiry into what he calls “the double helix of maturity”: the intertwined work of growing up and waking up. Drawing on attachment theory, interpersonal neurobiology, and teachings from across the Zen…

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In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Sensei Kodo reflects on the just-completed Spring Practice Period sesshin as a window into a larger idea of a Dharma Lab. What has been called “Contemplative Residency,” he proposes, is better represented as “Residential Zen Training” — a rousing adaptation that places each practitioner at the center of awakening. “Both a scientific lab and Residential Zen…

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In this final talk of the Spring Practice Period Sesshin, Sensei Ryotan and Sensei Shinzan bring the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures to their close with the tenth stage — Entering the Marketplace — the return to ordinary life, barefoot and unadorned, carrying what was glimpsed back into the world. Ryotan traces the inner movement this stage points to: the small self receding as the larger self comes…

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In this fifth-day talk, offered during the Spring Practice Period Sesshin, Senko and Sensei Monshin explore the ninth ox-herding picture, Returning to the Source — the stage where effort ceases and life simply flows. Drawing on Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, the Xin Xin Ming, and the Song of the Grass Hut, Monshin traces the difference between striving and ease, and how returning to the source is not…

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In this third-day talk, offered during the Spring Practice Period Sesshin, Sensei Ryotan takes up the habit of self-judgment — that familiar contraction after a mistake, the script of not being good enough, and the perfectionism that keeps us small. Framing her teaching through the Lotus Sutra’s Never-Disparaging Bodhisattva, who bows to every being’s capacity for awakening even as rocks and…

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During the second day of the Spring Practice Period Sesshin, Senko takes up the koan of relaxed effort — how effort and ease, far from being opposed, are expressed in the same movement. Drawing on Seung Sahn’s story of a bear who, long after escaping his circus cage, keeps turning somersaults in the mountains hoping to be fed, Senko asks us to look honestly at the conditioning we carry into…

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In this first formal talk of the Spring Practice Period Sesshin, Sensei Monshin takes up virya — the Sanskrit term for joyful effort — as the essential energy of practice. What does it mean to sit day after day with the whole catastrophe of the mind: the boredom, the fear, the stories we tell about ourselves? Drawing on the ox-herding pictures’ imagery of taming, she explores the difference…

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In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, offered during the fourth day of Upaya’s Spring Practice Period sesshin, Sensei Shinzan guides us through the seventh and eighth stages of the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures — two of the most profound moments in the Zen map of awakening. The seventh stage, Forgetting the Ox, marks the end of the seeker: grasping falls away, the division between practice and life…

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In this Zazenkai Day talk during Upaya’s Spring Practice Period, Sensei Shinzan surveys the first six pictures of the ox herding series, from the first pull toward practice to the hard won ease of riding the ox home. He then turns to a recent question a student brought to him: how do I know if I’m practicing correctly, and when is rest just laziness? Shinzan answers through an encounter between…

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In this Zazenkai day dharma talk during the Spring Practice Period, Sensei Ryotan takes up the first two ox-herding images — Searching for the Ox and Finding Traces of the Ox, presenting these images as metaphors for understanding how practice begins and what sustains it. She frames the ox-herding series around a central insight: practice is not about “getting free of the world,” but about “being…

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In this second session of Upaya’s Spring Practice Period, Senseis Shinzan, Monshin, and Ryotan, and Hoshi Senko introduce the text that anchors this practice period — The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures: Our Journey of Awakening — its origins, images, and themes. The ox-herding metaphor traces back to the Buddha’s teachings on mindful practice, traveling through India and China before becoming…

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In this opening session of Upaya’s Spring Practice Period, Senseis Ryotan, Monshin, and Shinzan, and Hoshi Senko welcome residents, guests, and the Cloud Sangha into a month of shared practice. Drawing on the 12th-century ox-herding series and John Daido Loori’s Riding the Ox Home as the program’s central text, the teachers frame the ten pictures not as a linear progression but as a spiral…

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In this session of The Measure of Our Humanity, peacebuilder and Professor Emeritus John Paul Lederach — welcomed by Roshi Joan and Sensei Dainin — opens with the question his life’s work has turned on: “How do we make our way back to a sense of our shared humanity when it has been so damaged, when it has been so harmed?” John observes that while dehumanization fills our dictionaries and research…

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In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, offered during Upaya’s Spring Practice Period, Sensei Ryotan explores a central theme of the ten ox-herding pictures: why is simply being present so difficult? Drawing on John Daido Loori’s Riding the Ox Home and the child psychologist D.W. Winnicott’s concept of “going on being,” Ryotan traces how conditioning — laid down in childhood and reinforced throughout…

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In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, offered during Upaya’s Spring Practice Period, Sensei Monshin and Hoshi Senko guide us through the heart of the oxherding pictures — the ancient Zen metaphor of spiritual maturation. Monshin frames the third and fourth paintings, seeing and catching the ox, as our commitment to the path. Why face the bull? What truly moves us toward such a challenging practice?

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In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Genryu Clayton Dalton — emergency physician, journalist, and newly ordained novice priest — reflects on what it means to bear witness across the vast distances of suffering that connect us all. Having lost his voice the weekend prior, Genryu’s rough whisper seemed hauntingly appropriate as he described the inexpressible suffering from his recent medical mission…

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In this session of The Measure of Our Humanity, Roshi Joan Halifax opens by reflecting on six years of monthly gatherings exploring socially engaged Buddhism — and on the urgency of the question animating this year’s series: how do we lay down a sane and compassionate path forward in these times? The session turns to Valerie Brown who grounds her teaching in a vision of collective awakening…

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In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Roshi Joan Halifax opens by naming her deep concern for the ongoing wars, displacement, and political upheaval seen throughout the world. Rather than offering direct reassurance, she turns to two stories held in deliberate tension: Kyōgen’s koan “Man Up a Tree,” in which a man hanging by his teeth from a branch is asked a question he cannot answer without…

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In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Butsumon Tuck Stibich — a resident priest at Upaya — opens with a teaching from Thich Nhat Hanh. No stranger to war, Thich Nhat Hanh explains that our anxiety about the world’s suffering is an obstacle to service: that fear and worry do not help us cultivate peace, or become a refuge for others. Reflecting on this and the vows made in Jukai…

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In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Sensei Fushin addresses what so many of us are carrying right now — the weight of a world in upheaval, the accumulation of personal grief, and the stories we tell ourselves at three in the morning when everything feels urgent and nothing feels within reach. Drawing on the Lotus Sutra’s parable of the burning house, Fushin reframes the question entirely…

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In the final session of The Poetry of Cold Mountain, participants share their overnight translations of Hanshan’s poems — working from character-to-word guides across five poems. The range and depth of what emerges moves Peter Levitt and Kaz Tanahashi to reflect openly on the nature of creative work. Peter observes that the participants had nothing but seeds — elements borrowed from a poet writing…

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In Part 6 of The Poetry of Cold Mountain, the evening session gathers around two offerings. Kaz Tanahashi gives a live calligraphy demonstration, rendering Hanshan’s poem “You Ask the Way to Cold Mountain” first in formal script, then in semi-cursive — pausing to explain how each style reveals something different about the characters, the poem, and the calligrapher’s mind. Sensei Dainin reads each…

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In Part 5 of The Poetry of Cold Mountain, the session opens with a participant unexpectedly sharing two pieces of calligraphy prepared before the retreat — Hanshan poems rendered by hand as an act of study and care. Kaz Tanahashi and Peter Levitt then open the floor to another round of participant poetry. Kaz offers his own poem, inspired by Hanshan’s eccentricity: As in the previous session…

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In Part 4 of The Poetry of Cold Mountain, the session opens into a shared creative space. Kaz Tanahashi and Peter Levitt shape the afternoon around two fundamental poetry practices — writing from the present moment and listening. Peter offers a generative prompt: use lines from Hanshan as scaffolding, borrowing one to begin a poem, one to anchor the middle, one to close. What follows is an open…

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In Part 3 of The Poetry of Cold Mountain, Peter Levitt offers a deep dive into the craft and consciousness of Hanshan’s poetry. Drawing on three defining qualities of Hanshan’s work — plain speech, imagery that moves between the literal and the symbolic, and last lines of sudden, inevitable surprise — Peter shows how each poem both instructs and enacts the journey it describes.

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Roshi Joan Halifax opens this first full session (Part 2) of The Poetry of Cold Mountain by acknowledging the violence unfolding in Iran, holding the gravity of the world alongside the refuge of practice and community. She then turns the session to Kaz Tanahashi. Kaz introduces the structure of classical Chinese characters and verse — one character, one syllable, one word — before exploring the…

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The Poetry of Cold Mountain weekend program opens with an evening of orientation and anticipation, as world-renowned calligrapher Kazuaki Tanahashi and poet and Zen teacher Peter Levitt — co-translators of The Complete Cold Mountain: Poems of the Legendary Hermit Hanshan — introduce the hermit poet whose words have endured for over a thousand years. Kaz situates Hanshan in his time: the sacred…

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In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Sensei Monshin opens by acknowledging the 33 practitioners preparing to receive jukai — and the vow to carry non-harming actions into the world. She reads from Thich Nhất Hạnh’s Go As a River, encouraging us to understand community as refuge from despair. Roshi Joan Halifax speaks into our heavy hearts — the outbreak of new war, the deep karmic wounds that will…

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This final session of Sitting with Original Love opens once again with Nicolle Reigetsu leading the community in singing the Metta Sutta — words of loving kindness from the Pali canon — before Henry Shukman and Roshi Joan Halifax offer their final teaching of the retreat. Henry leads a guided reflection, then reads from his book: a passage about a grieving mother who finds herself unexpectedly…

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This Saturday evening session of Sitting with Original Love opens with a beautiful performance from Nicolle Reigetsu, drawing the community into tender connection. Roshi Joan Halifax and Henry Shukman engage in warm dialogue exploring what it means to embody Original Love — not as theory but as the lived meeting of wisdom and compassion. Henry offers his own, luminous poem, Slow…

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In this Saturday afternoon session of Sitting with Original Love, Roshi Joan Halifax and Henry Shukman guide participants into an exploration of bodhicitta — the awakened heart — through the intimate terrain of first love. Roshi draws on Thich Nhat Hanh’s account of falling in love with a young nun at Plum Village, and how that particular love became a doorway for him into boundless compassion.

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In this Saturday afternoon session of Sitting with Original Love, Henry Shukman frames the direction of spiritual practice — not as a solitary ascent away from suffering but as a descent into the heart of it. Reading from Pema Chödrön, he offers a vision of awakening that moves downward: Through guided meditation and calm instruction, he invites participants to stop treating practice as a…

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In this mid morning session of Sitting with Original Love, Roshi Joan Halifax leads a passionate and sweeping teaching on the many faces of love — from the Greek expressions of eros, philia, storge, pragma, ludus, philautia, and agape — to the early Buddhist concepts of Samvega and Pasada, the existential unease that drives us toward practice and the quiet radiance that meets us there.

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In this morning session of Original Love, Henry Shukman introduces a central metaphor from early Chinese Buddhism: a cart drawn on two wheels — one wheel of mindfulness practice, where we “get better” incrementally, and one wheel of our Original Nature, which “is not really subject to improvability.” Through guided meditation, poetry, and a reading about the Tibetan master Karma Thinley…

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In this opening session of Sitting with Original Love, Roshi Joan Halifax and Henry Shukman share the personal crucibles that led them to explore a more intimate and spacious relationship with their own lives. Shukman describes how a concussion and heartbreak stripped away his cognitive reliance, turning him unexpectedly toward the heart: “I found I was just living in my heart more.

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This session of The Measure of Our Humanity brings together Roshi Joan Halifax, Rebecca Solnit, and Christiana Figueres to reflect on courage, interconnection, and moral responsibility amid social and ecological rupture. Rebecca Solnit offers a passionate and lucid articulation of our moment as a struggle between an ideology of isolation and a shift back into the cosmology of interconnection.

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In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Sensei Kodo hosts a conversation with Sensei Kaz Tanahashi and poet-translator Peter Levitt in anticipation of their upcoming weekend retreat on the poetry of Cold Mountain poet Hanshan. Rather than a formal dharma talk, the evening unfolds as sharing and inquiry, touching on the nearly 40-year friendship between Kaz and Peter — a companionship born…

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In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk coinciding with Lunar New Year, Senseis Kodo and Dainin Lau guide viewers through a recording of Upaya’s Gate of Sweet Nectar — a monthly new moon ceremony of radical hospitality toward all hungry and wandering spirits. These hungry ghosts become a mirror for the parts of ourselves blinded by greed, aversion, and delusion — the states that make us unable to…

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In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, poet, author, and meditation teacher Henry Shukman explores the topic of his latest book, Original Love, by walking through four progressively deeper meanings of awakening. Through a light, simple, and warm narrative, Henry sets forth four ways we can awaken: returning to presence, waking from oppressive self-narratives, entering into flow or samadhi, and…

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In this dharma talk following Upaya’s Winter Practice Period, Sensei Fushin explores silence not as absence but as presence itself—”our own true nature looking back at us.” Through his work as a family law attorney and former Chaplain intern, he reveals three moments when silence showed its active power: In his conference room after a disappointing court ruling, twenty-five seconds of excruciating…

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On the fifth and final day of the Winter Practice Period Sesshin, Roshi Joan Halifax, and Senseis Kodo and Dainin gather the threads of practice into a teaching on Magnanimous Mind, intimacy, and not knowing. Kodo explores not knowing as a gateway to vastness, questioning how thought and naming can obscure direct experience. Roshi Joan continues this inquiry, inviting practitioners to stay with…

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On the fourth day of the Winter Practice Period Sesshin, Sensei Kodo and Sensei Dainin continue the exploration of Dōgen’s Three Minds. Kodo opens by situating the dharma talk itself within silence, inviting practitioners to listen as they would to wind, creaking floorboards, or the laughter and screams arising from the nearby park, quoting Mahatma Gandhi “Do not speak unless you can improve upon…

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On the third full day of the Winter Practice Period Sesshin, Sensei Kodo and resident priest Butsumon reflect on how practice comes alive through ordinary activity. Butsumon opens with stories from samu (work practice), contrasting effort driven by efficiency with work done in care and attention. Drawing on Dōgen’s Three Minds, he explores how Joyful, Caring, and Magnanimous Mind transform any…

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Day two of the Winter Practice Period Sesshin opens with Sensei Dainin recalling placing the names of Renee Good and Alex Pretti—both killed in recent shootings involving federal agents in Minneapolis—on the altar. Visibly moved by these tragedies Dainin reflects on Nyoho (thusness), the practice of embracing “the good, the bad, the ugly, everything.” She invites us to consider wether even those…

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On the first full day of the Winter Practice Period Sesshin, Roshi Joan Halifax reflects on alignment and presence, exploring how practice begins by meeting things as they are. She emphasizes that Zen training is not performance but a return to our natural state—learning to act with care, attention, and nonviolence in relationship with others and the world. Addressing ongoing social violence in…

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In this Zazenaki Talk during the Winter Practice Period, two recently ordained priests— Butsumon and Genryu—explore Dōgen’s Tenzo Kyokun through personal experiences of transformation and learning. Genryu shares how a “ghost from a past life” unexpectedly visited him just days before ordination, initially shaking him but ultimately becoming a teacher. Weaving quotes from sutras and Dogen…

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In this Winter Practice Period Zazenkai Day Talk, resident priest Jimon and Sensei Wendy Johnson explore apamada—careful, heedful practice—through the lens of everyday activity. Drawing on Dogen’s Tenzo Kyokun, Jimon shares stories on how grinding sesame, tending squash, and preparing food are opportunities for the expression of ‘gyoji’, or wholehearted engagement. She reflects on how ritual…

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In this introduction to Dōgen’s Tenzo Kyōkun (Instructions for the Cook) during the opening days of Upaya’s Winter Practice Period, the faculty explores how awakening is realized through work, care, and ordinary activity. Roshi Joan Halifax reflects on Dōgen’s three minds—joyful mind, parental mind (grandmother’s heart), and big mind—emphasizing care for others in the cultivation of wholesome…

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