Upaya Zen Center's Dharma Podcast

Hoshi Kigaku Noah Rossetter Roen takes us on a journey of studying the role of silence in the sutra of Vimalakirti, in various texts by Dogen, and in stories of the Tatagatha. He claims that silence is the only way to uphold non-duality, and thus is the answer and the truth. He invites us to practice gratitude for all moments we are able to return to the breath and to view it as an opportunity to break free from conceptuality and back into listening, presence, and not knowing. For Program/Series description and to access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: Fall Practice Period 2021: The Bodhisattva Way of Vimalakirti

Hoshi Matthew Kozan Palevsky invites us to see our vows and liturgical chants as a key and compass to the map of our life. pointing us to the territory of our immediate experience. He asks us not to add anything to the numberless creations, allowing things to be as they are. He reminds us that we can release control of the situation and in doing so, we can be in acceptance of all parts of our lives and ourselves. It is through the practice of single-pointed awareness, returning to our vows, and releasing control that we then can become witness to the miracles of everyday life. Click here for this Sesshin’s Part 4 (episode # 1890) – by Kathie Fischer. For Program/Series description and to access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: Fall Practice Period 2021: The Bodhisattva Way of Vimalakirti

Monshin Nannette Overley invites us to view sickness and medicine beyond duality. She asks us to consider that the whole world can be viewed as medicine if we are able to cultivate equanimity of perspective. In this dharma talk, we are called to drop our assumptions about sickness and lean into bearing witness and not knowing to discover the teachings of sickness in our lives. For Program/Series description and to access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: Fall Practice Period 2021: The Bodhisattva Way of Vimalakirti

Reigetsu Susan Moon introduces us to the concept of Upaya, the creative or artistic expression of compassion. She shares the myriad of ways that upaya can be found in the Vimalakirti’s sutra and also in our own lives. She reminds us that sesshin is an opportunity to not turn away from our own broken heartedness and invites us to use upaya during our practice in an attempt to wake up. For Program/Series description and to access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: Fall Practice Period 2021: The Bodhisattva Way of Vimalakirti

Sensei Shinzan Palma welcomes us to the first day of sesshin. He reminds us that we are building our own container and to show up to practice for ourselves, coming back to the moment over and over again. Shinzan reframes a pivotal question in chapter 6 of the sutra of Vimalakirti by inviting us to ask ourselves “Am I coming for the dharma or am I coming to feel good?” He reminds us that the true dharma and the way is like having a stone in ones shoe, or like having the rug pulled out from under your feet constantly; it is not a path to attain a certain consistent experience of peace. Our life is our practice. For Program/Series description and to access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: Fall Practice Period 2021: The Bodhisattva Way of Vimalakirti

Roshi Joan Halifax unpacks the three doors of liberation, Vimalakirti’s gift to us: emptiness, signless, and aimlessness. She reminds us that “liberation isn’t just about freeing your body or mind from suffering, liberation is actually about being free from all preferences, [it’s about] being radically open to what is.” She calls us to practice beyond duality, and engage with the teaching of “Not one, Not two.” It is from this place of non preferential mind and emptiness that we can answer Vimalakirti’s “imperative for the bodhisattva to engage the everyday world for true awakening to be manifested.” For Program/Series description and to access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: Fall Practice Period 2021: The Bodhisattva Way of Vimalakirti

Roshis Joan Halifax & Enkyo O’Hara orient us to the beginning of Rohatsu, a ceremony marking the enlightenment of the Buddha. Pat Enkyo O’Hara invites us into remembering the medicine of sitting in fellowship with others. She also introduces us to Dogen’s Mountains and Rivers Sutra, the text that we will be studying for this year’s sesshin. Roshi Joan reminds us of the energy needed to participate fully in sesshin. She asks us to “permeate [our] life in this period with openness, ease, and a sense of responsibility.” Click here for the YouTube video for this talk.

In the last part of this 4 part series daylong with Roshi Norman Fischer, he begins to talk about engagement or spiritual activism. For Roshi Norman spirituality itself is active and it intertwines itself with every aspect of our lives. ‘When we sit in zazen, we’re not escaping from the world,… we’re not leaving a world behind…but we’re appreciating it more deeply… Zazen is love, and acceptance of this world as it is, a cultivation of a mind that is caring and strong enough to feel the world…’ For Program/Series description and to access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: When You Greet Me I Bow

In part 3 of this daylong with Roshi Norman Fischer, he takes on questions from the audience. For Program/Series description and to access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: When You Greet Me I Bow

In the second part of the morning session, Roshi Norman asks us to speak with a partner about our sense-experience of time. For this shorter session, there is a discussion with the audience. For Program/Series description and to access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: When You Greet Me I Bow

When you Greet Me I Bow, Roshi Norman Fischer’s latest book came about differently from his past writing endeavors. For Norman, and his editor, the past four decades of writing can be condensed into four main themes: A) Relationships; B) Buddhist Emptiness teachings; C) Culture & its Shapings, and D) Engagement. Continuing from his Wednesday night Dharma talk, Roshi Norman spends the day with us in two blocks, 3 hours each. In the first half of the first session, Roshi Norman brings in two Zen stories to highlight the ‘intimacy’ of relationships. He ends by segueing his writings on relationship to Zen’s Emptiness teachings. ‘When we are completely implicated in everything, there is warmth and compassion in life. This is the greatness of zazen…we can interpret this as silence…Can we hold this breath?…we share this breath with everyone who lives and will live.’ For Program/Series description and to access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: When You Greet Me I Bow

Ruth Ozeki introduces us to her new novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness” based on the question and her own investigation “Do insentient beings speak the Dharma?” She reads to us from the beginning of her novel and invites us into her writing process as a writer and a zen practitioner.

Renowned professor of law and mindfulness teacher, Rhonda Magee, speaks to our task today to heal all separations. ‘The separation from our body to this planet, the separation from each other, elitism, borders, fascism, etc.’  We need to heal ourselves so that we can hold ourselves accountable. ‘The courts are not going to save us.’ By bringing intentionality to the way we live, how we are in the world, how we spend our money, and how we relate to the environment can allow us to exercise and engage our grand moral imagination. For Program/Series description and to access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: Social and Environmental Justice (2021)

In this powerful talk, Sensei and Climate Scientist Kritee Kanko begins by underscoring the importance of addressing trauma for activism. To hear each other we need to be in our comfort zones. ‘Our communities need to have the skills to face and compost trauma… for communities of color, the climate crisis is another layer of threat…lack of action impacts people of color and oppressed peoples the most.’  Climate anxiety without action is a gateway to eco-fascism, she warns. We need friendships and relationships that hold us accountable, and allow us to grieve. Even the privileged need to grieve so as not to react from a place of fight, flight, or freeze mind. The mind of dominance and the engine of oppression, but rather respond from a place of connection. For Program/Series description and to access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: Social and Environmental Justice (2021)

In the second talk of the morning session, Dekila Chungyalpa, Director of the Loka Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, differentiates between eco-anxiety, and solastalgia. She speaks about her work in the Loka Initiative, empowering faith leaders from around the world to take environmental action. She ends her talk by encouraging us to ‘…reclaim our relationship of interdependence with our world.’ For Program/Series description and to access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: Social and Environmental Justice (2021)