Upaya Zen Center's Dharma Podcast

Episode Description: Roshi Joan and John Dunne reflect on each other’s respective traditions. Specifically, awakening inhabiting every activity, and awakening as Enaction. ==== Please consider registering for the below free past programs (donation requested) so you may receive their rich Resource Pages which include all the zoom sessions, readings, poetry, fascicles, videos, and book recommendations: Dogen For Our Time SESSHIN: Genjokoan – Actualizing the Fundamental Point To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here. For Series description, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: The Nature of the Mind, The Nature of the World

Episode Description: In this talk, Roshi Joan guides us with a step-by-step process of the ‘body mudra’, how to minimize one’s defenses in order to expand your subjectivity to include that of others, by fostering the heart of the grandmother. John Dunne then offers his thoughts. ==== Please consider registering for the below free past programs (donation requested) so you may receive their rich Resource Pages which include all the zoom sessions, readings, poetry, fascicles, videos, and book recommendations: Dogen For Our Time SESSHIN: Genjokoan – Actualizing the Fundamental Point To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here. For Series description, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: The Nature of the Mind, The Nature of the World

Episode Description: This episode is a continuation of Roshi Joan’s talk from Part 6 (episode #1804), where she gives an overview of some of the Zen traditions most important practices: not knowing is most intimate, sacred activity, and Bodhidharma’s legacy. ==== Please consider registering for the below free past programs (donation requested) so you may receive their rich Resource Pages which include all the zoom sessions, readings, poetry, fascicles, videos, and book recommendations: Dogen For Our Time SESSHIN: Genjokoan – Actualizing the Fundamental Point To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here. For Series description, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: The Nature of the Mind, The Nature of the World

Episode Description: In these next two talks, Roshi Joan gives an overview of some of the Zen traditions most important practices: not knowing is most intimate, sacred activity, and Bodhidharma’s legacy. ==== Please consider registering for the below free past programs (donation requested) so you may receive their rich Resource Pages which include all the zoom sessions, readings, poetry, fascicles, videos, and book recommendations: Dogen For Our Time SESSHIN: Genjokoan – Actualizing the Fundamental Point To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here. For Series description, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: The Nature of the Mind, The Nature of the World

Episode Description: In this eye-opening presentation of verses 10 and 11, by John Dunne, an experiential exercise gets to the root of the nature of confusion and Buddha-nature. ==== Please consider registering for the below free past programs (donation requested) so you may receive their rich Resource Pages which include all the zoom sessions, readings, poetry, fascicles, videos, and book recommendations: Dogen For Our Time SESSHIN: Genjokoan – Actualizing the Fundamental Point To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here. For Series description, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: The Nature of the Mind, The Nature of the World

Episode Description: In this session, John reviews the stages of practice: view, meditation, and conduct, with a reading of verses 7 & 8. ==== Please consider registering for the below free past programs (donation requested) so you may receive their rich Resource Pages which include all the zoom sessions, readings, poetry, fascicles, videos, and book recommendations: Dogen For Our Time SESSHIN: Genjokoan – Actualizing the Fundamental Point To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here. For Series description, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: The Nature of the Mind, The Nature of the World

In this week’s Dharma Talk, Konda Mason walks us through her journey reconciling the paradoxical doctrine of the Two Buddhist Truths. Her very real, relative reality as a black woman, and simultaneously, her early connection as a child to stardust, the absolute. To donate to Konda, please put a note “for Konda”

Episode Description: This episode is a continuation of John’s first session from Day 2, where he begins to unpack and review line by line (1-7), the foundational 13th-century text, The Mind of Mahamudra: Advice from the Kagyu Masters written by the 3rd Karmapa Ranjung Dorje. What is this text doing, what are its aims, tantric vs non-tantric practices, Mahamudra vs Dzogchen, the different forms of ignorance and suffering? ==== Please consider registering for the below free past programs (donation requested) so you may receive their rich Resource Pages which include all the zoom sessions, readings, poetry, fascicles, videos, and book recommendations: Dogen For Our Time SESSHIN: Genjokoan – Actualizing the Fundamental Point To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here. For Series description, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: The Nature of the Mind, The Nature of the World

Episode Description: In John’s first session from Day 2, he begins to unpack and review line by line (1-7), the foundational 13th-century text, The Mind of Mahamudra: Advice from the Kagyu Masters written by the 3rd Karmapa Ranjung Dorje. What is this text doing, what are its aims, tantric vs non-tantric practices, Mahamudra vs Dzogchen, the different forms of ignorance and suffering? ==== Please consider registering for the below free past programs (donation requested) so you may receive their rich Resource Pages which include all the zoom sessions, readings, poetry, fascicles, videos, and book recommendations: Dogen For Our Time SESSHIN: Genjokoan – Actualizing the Fundamental Point To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here. For Series description, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: The Nature of the Mind, The Nature of the World

Series Description: For nondual Buddhist traditions, one who knows the primordial nature of the mind also knows the nature of all things, and that experiential insight is the manifestation of one’s own innate Buddhahood. But what does all this mean? What is this notion of the mind’s “primordial” or “original” nature, and how could this be not different from the nature of the world? And how does one practice—or not practice—so as to achieve this realization, which is meant to be so radically transformative? Drawing on the works of Zen Master Dōgen and the luminaries of the Tibetan Mahāmudrā lineages, we will explore these questions through contemplative inquiry, radical teachings, and deep practice. This is a weekend of exploration of nondual perspectives, led by Roshi Joan Halifax and Prof. John Dunne, great friends and co-teachers, who are dedicated to actualizing these views and practices in our every day world. John will be using the prayer of Mahāmudrā by the third Karmapa, which you can read here: Prayer for the Definitive Meaning, the Mahāmudrā Episode Description: In this intro session Roshi Joan Halifax and John Dunne review the weekend ahead, What is the confluence between the Mahamudra, and Zen traditions? Please consider registering for the below free past programs (donation requested) so you may receive their rich Resource Pages which include all the zoom sessions, readings, poetry, fascicles, videos, and book recommendations: Dogen For Our Time SESSHIN: Genjokoan – Actualizing the Fundamental Point To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Podcast Series: The Nature of the Mind, The Nature of the World

On the day before Thanksgiving, Kigaku Noah Rossetter begins this talk with a recollection of atonement as well as gratitude. He then invokes Dogen’s Continuous Practice as the deepest expression of gratitude, and explores the teachings of the Five Buddha Families as a balanced expression of continuous practice in the Upaya Mandala and through the teachings of Roshi Bernie Glassman. Kigaku also explores the history of the Five Buddha Families teachings and how they have come through the Vajrayana tradition as well as the Zen tradition, particularly in the Gate of Sweet Nectar Liturgy.

In this week’s moving Dharma Talk, the attorney at law Mark Donatelli talks about what got him into the criminal justice field, his practice to keep him going, the current state of the criminal justice system, where it’s going, and what we can do about it.

In this episode, John Dunne talks to us about how certainty from a non-dual perspective can potentially be an obstacle.  Cognitively, the brain functions to predict as a means to alleviate confusion. Inadvertently, it can set up a new trap of suffering for we take this new ‘truth’ as the end all be all. The dualistic conceptual structure of ‘having’ a belief is fundamentally problematic. The way forward would be to develop flexibility in our beliefs and concepts and to differentiate between confidence and certainty.

In this last episode of Upaya’s Election Series. Roshi Joan Halifax initiates an inquiry into uncertainty during difficult times. The election is over, the President-Elect is Joe Biden, yet so many things seem unclear as we move forward. How do we proceed amidst a pandemic, climate catastrophe, and a seemingly uneasy transition of power? Note: You can register (free/by donation) for Upaya’s Election Series by clicking here. If you register, you will be able to see the Q&As in applicable episodes. For Series description and to access the entire series, please click on the link below: Upaya Election Podcast Series – 5 Parts

In this hybrid Zazenkai/Ease and Joy in the Morning’s Dharma talk, Hoshi Matthew Kozan Palevsky returns us back to our practice by reading from Dogen’s Fukanzazengi. A day after 7 residents took Jukai and one received Tokudo, he reminded us of the inevitability of faltering in our vows and the importance of coming back to our vows, our breath, and our path. Lastly, he parallels our vowing mind in our practice as no different from our vowing mind when it comes to our commons, country, and citizenship.