Upaya Zen Center's Dharma Podcast

Bhante Sanathavihari enthusiastically and joyfully shares the Ummaggasutta as a way of considering that the Buddhist metaphor of a bird, with one wing of compassion and one wing of wisdom, might be more like a UFO, compassion and wisdom being one: two sides of a coin of wisdom— “penetrative” and “great.” He especially focuses on illuminating “great wisdom,” or mahaprajna, reminding us that compassion includes us as individuals, that no one’s happiness is more important than anyone else’s, that “all beings tremble when they’re being attacked.” He explores each of the four Brahmaviharas (metta, karuna, mudita, and upekkha) and teaches us that this great wisdom, or compassion, takes many forms and that no form is any less than another. Bhante concludes his talk with questions from the audience and a dedication. Bhante is currently a resident at Upaya, hence his remark “It’s a little different to be on the other side.”

How do we move towards the light of absolute truth while accepting and honoring our very human nature?” In this vulnerable, raw talk, Frank Ostaseski shares his heart with us following his brother’s death ten days prior. He talks about how his experience of such a personal loss differs from his experience of witnessing the deaths of people he sat beside while working in hospice. He offers that advice rarely helps when it comes to grief and that what most serves is the presence of someone who can just sit beside him and listen, who can accompany him in his sorrow. He reminds us that our practice is not about transcending or overcoming grief, but about moving into, through the grief, which in turn gives rise to compassion and kindness. Frank asks the “Being with Dying” retreatants who are viewing the dharma talk in the zendo how grief shows up for them and how their practice helps in the experience of grief. Many heartfelt, honest reflections are shared.

“The practice was literally saving my life.” In Part 2 of her way seeking mind talk, Sensei Amie Diller recounts heart-filled stories about her time as a resident at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in the 1980s, working with trauma during a time when it was so little understood, meeting shamans and traveling around India with brahmans, receiving ordination from Maureen Stewart Roshi and not being allowed to shave her head, listening to the voice in the sky that told her to become a midwife, becoming “The Guest House,” cultivating a Tibetan practice and directing a Tibetan Center in Sacramento, and answering the call to lead the residential program at Upaya.

In this timely dharma talk in our final days of Spring Sesshin, Sensei Kathie Fischer shares teachings from three wise women who offer a powerful dharmic lesson when faced with marginalization and disrespect. Each encounters monks who are likely blinded by a sense of superior rank and gender, leaving them unable to meet these women as equals—let alone see them for the teachers and adepts they were. Each woman responds with the confidence that their teaching speaks for itself, through the force of their own being, affirming: “I am here.”  Finally, each teaches on the spot with whatever the moment offers, without judgment or separation, meeting their students right where they are. In that same spirit, Sensei Kathie encourages us to do the same—especially in these final days of intensive Spring practice—to stay right here, to minimize “fussing and fidgeting,” to take greater care with the inanimate objects and simple gestures of our lives, and to continually reaffirm to ourselves: “I am here.”  “These ways of practicing through work and other daily activities will support our vow to be present and committed in our lives, not to sleepwalk through our day, to connect with the world around us, person by person, object by object, task by task, with tenderness and consideration.” ~ Sensei Kathie Fischer

Zenshin Florence Caplow’s dharma talk discusses Lingzhao’s helping, a koan from The Sayings of Layman P’ang which has served as our source text for the Spring Practice Period. In this beloved story, Lingzhao demonstrates a form of helping that is at once unconventional, tender, and hilarious. Expounding on this story, Zenshin discusses both the joys and the pitfalls we may find in helping. She provides numerous stories to show how these pitfalls are commonly rooted in dualistic helping. How often, Zenshin asks, do we attempt to help out of a sense of separateness, conceiving of ourselves in the role of “helper” and the other in the role of “helped?” Yet when we act out of our own discomforts or to conceive of ourselves as “helpers,” we run the risk of developing resentment or burnout. Lingzhao shows us that another way is possible. We can act beyond “fixing” or “helping” and meet each other on the ground, finding deep connection, tenderness, and even humor.

In this improvisational jazz duet-style dharma talk, Senseis Amie Diller and Kathie Fischer explore the resonance between one of their shared teachers Maurine Stuart, Roshi, and the 7th Century celebrated lay practitioner Layman Pang, who is the focus of Upaya’s spring practice period. Sensei Amie begins with a rich biography of Maurine Stuart, Roshi and both Senseis Amie and Kathie share the deep impression Maurine Stuart had on them, as one of the first female Zen masters to teach in the United States, and the only they had ever met to give big hugs and wear makeup. Like Layman Pang, Maurine Stuart Roshi believed that “daily life practice is the way.” Whether it is breaking a teapot, witnessing an innocent person be beheaded, being given a baby to raise and then being asked to give that child back, or losing multiple children in the case of the poet Issa, there exists the opportunity to completely meet our lives through letting go, feeling everything, and finding our true seat.

In this honest and courageous talk, Sensei Monshin Nannette Overley investigates the relationship between recalling our intention and where we delegate our attention, especially in lay practice. How do we divide up our lives into trivial and sacred, difficult and easy moments? She explores Lingzhao’s comment about studying the sutras: “Neither difficult nor easy. It’s like the teachings of the ancestors shining on the hundred grass tips.” Despite holding the dharma so dear and teaching it wholeheartedly to others, Monshin openly shares her recent difficulty with living by such truths as “nothing is ever out of place” given the suffering in her and her husband’s life. She talks about how she wants to “curl up” or “contract” around her suffering. She also shares a moment of remembering to open to her suffering and reflects on the brightness she felt. To conclude, she explores the Threefold Training of sila, samadhi, and prajna, which summarize the fourth noble truth and each encompass aspects of the eightfold path, the path to “freedom beyond hard and easy.”

“Haiku is about paying attention.” Natalie Goldberg offers a deep dive into the work of Tim Roberts who found haiku after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s at 49. His haiku in his new book Busted: Reflections of Police Life reveal that you can write haiku about anything. “One shot gun/Three of us walking/Doing the math.” Often, but not always, there is a leap in haiku, which “allows us to experience a little sensation of space.” Alan Ginsburg described this space as “no less than God.” Natalie revels in Tim’s leaps, offers several other haiku with leaps, and shares the experience of feeling the leap in photography through Upaya zen priest James Bristol’s book The House That Holds O’Keefe. Here is the YouTube link of the talk where you can view the photographs starting at ~1:05:00.

In this vulnerable and alive (and hopefully only part one of a multi-part series) Way-Seeking Mind talk, Sensei Amie Diller takes us to the LA parking lot where she had her earliest spiritual memory, to Hebrew school where her rabbi told her that girls can’t be rabbis, to the Oregon woods where she took refuge from childhood trauma, to Europe where she reinvented herself at youth hostels, learned to feel okay being alone with herself, and discovered Kazantzakis and Rilke, to Brandeis and Boston where she did not meet Maslow but did meet a boy, to Maine where she experienced potato farmer and zen master Walter Nowick Roshi’s piercing presence, to becoming an au pair in Carmel Valley and landing at Tassajara, where she received her first meditation instruction and then spent three years as a resident. Amie’s talk is evidence that the most intimate, the most personal is also the most universal. We can all rejoice in her song for it is ours, too.

A talk that came to her in the middle of several nights, Dr. Laurie Leitch offers us a “bedtime story” style dharma talk. She shares five stories about attention ranging from an intimate moment with a stranger on the NYC subway at rush hour to appreciation for clouds to “chat lines” at a grocery store in the UK during the pandemic. She shows how where we focus our attention can completely change our experience of a situation, its outcome, and ourselves.

“How is practicing the precepts like waking up?” In this practical and story-flush talk, on the night of the first of two jukai ceremonies in 2023, Sensei Mathew Kozan Palevsky reflects on continuous practice in our day-to-day life. He draws on Dogen, Roshi Joan, Dolpo Tulku Rinpoche, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Dr. Rachel Zoffness, the teachings of Walgreens’ pharmacy and LA traffic at their respective rush hours, and others. He concludes his talk by inviting us to join him in a journaling practice of asking ourselves how we engendered the vows each day, encouraging us to bring the light of awareness to the things that open up our apertures.

“Once bodhichitta is awakened in us, it is a treasure that continues to open.” In this beautiful exploration, Monshin Nannette Overley characterizes bodhichitta as “the first impulse or intention towards awakening,” as “a longing for the end of suffering,” and as “a longing for connection.” She offers examples from The Hidden Lamp and from her own life of times when she and other women were able to touch into their tender, open hearts through moments of personal vulnerability. Monshin saw how that very soft spot — the part in her that wants to get things right, that wants credit—connects her to others, if she lets it, and does not follow the urge to “cement it over.” She discusses relative and absolute bodhicitta: relative being how we train to meet suffering, absolute being our unconditionally loving response to suffering that is just like reaching back to adjust the pillow at night — just what we do without thinking. She concludes with Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s affirmingly straightforward words— “Sometimes you’re the one in the room”— as a reply to the question of why we might find ourselves serving the world.

“It takes so much courage to meet our suffering, to meet our life, raw and unadorned.” In this captivating talk, Zenshin Florence Caplow draws on stories and teachings from encounters with wild animals, from ancient women practitioners of the Way, Dogen, Rainer Maria Rilke, and others about courage and compassion amidst fear. She reminds us that our practice of living as patch-robed monks takes courage and that it is actually a “radical response” to an often “pretty scary world.” And just as the Buddha offered metta practice to his disciples who went into the forest and were scared, we can offer ourselves compassion when we are scared. Because “the world needs people who will not run away.”

“We teach what we need to learn the most.” In this humble, participatory, and open-hearted talk, Valerie Brown explores four of Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings on building beloved community: volition, the art of suffering, the practice of conscious breathing, and flower watering. She tells personal stories of times when these teachings woke her up to her life and cites quotes from writer Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Sufi spiritual teacher Shams Tabrizi who elaborate on these teachings. She opens her talk with the Plum Village song “I Have Arrived, I Am Home” and asks residents in the Upaya community to share the word “welcome” in their mother tongues. She concludes her talk with a gatha she wrote on choosing love under all conditions.

In this heartfelt talk, Sensei Amie Diller reminds us of the story of Buddha and particularly of Buddha’s relationship with Mara. Even after his enlightenment, Siddhartha was still visited by Mara. Sensei Amie affirms the importance of Buddha’s relationship with Mara, claiming that there is no separation, that caring for Mara, bearing witness to the stories Mara brings to us (busyness, distractions, “you’re not good enough,” loneliness, restlessness) and letting the energy of thoughts and feelings pass through us, is caring for ourselves and seeing more clearly into our buddha nature.