Upaya Zen Center's Dharma Podcast

Fleet Maull: Feeling and Being: Transforming the World with Tender Heart

Episode Description: In this inspirational talk, Father John Dear encourages all of us to live a life of nonviolence. Only though a deep commitment to nonviolence within ourselves and in all of our interactions with others can we hope to transform the violence present in the world. The violence of war, poverty, global climate change, police brutality, sexism, racism and mass incarceration. Father John focuses his discussion on nuclear weapons in consideration of vigil for the bombing of Hiroshima which took place on the day following this talk. He concludes by addressing a number of questions from the audience. Bio: Father John Dear is an internationally known voice for peace and nonviolence. A Jesuit priest, pastor, peacemaker, organizer, lecturer, and retreat leader, he is the author/editor of 30 books, including his autobiography, “A Persistent Peace.” In 2008, John was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Episode Description: Frank demonstrates his unfailing instinct to touch a nerve (gently) -- to speak from and to the most vital movement in us, in our lives. He invites us with word and feeling to this life of vitality, rather than the stale realms of faux-transcendence, of spiritual bypassing. A deep freedom must touch core wounds, the places where we feel quite unlovable. We are by nature supremely vulnerable, impressionable; real transcendence appreciates how things are "always falling apart against a background of perfect harmony" (Shunryu Suzuki Roshi). After Frank's talk came impromptu birthday speeches by Joshin Byrnes and Roshi Joan Halifax -- included here for your enjoyment. Bio: In 1987, Frank Ostaseski helped form the Zen Hospice Project, the first Buddhist hospice in America. In 2004, he created Metta Institute to broaden this work and seed the culture with innovative approaches to end-of-life care that reaffirm the spiritual dimensions of dying. A primary project of Metta Institute is the End-of-Life Care Practitioner Program that Frank leads with faculty members Ram Dass, Rachel Naomi Remen MD, and many others. Frank is a dynamic, original, and visionary workshop leader. His public programs throughout the United States and Europe have introduced thousands to the practices of mindful and compassionate care of the dying.

Episode Description: Kaz explains his notions of "joy density" and "de-aging" and describes their practical application among dying people in his Circle Project. He has an equation: positive lifespan = time x joy density. Because, whereas our lifespan per se has a definite limit, can we find a limit, in any moment, to how much joy, kindness, gratitude can animate us -- can we find a limit to our "positive lifespan?" Even if we have three days to live? This joy density is not something unduly sunny. It actually thrives when we stop avoiding problems, grief, even shame at our moral shortcomings, our complicity in injustice. Bio: 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. He is world-renowned for his translations into English of Zen Master Dogen’s writings.

Episode Description: It's natural that self-centered concerns should preoccupy us when we first sit down to meditate -- after all, we live in the neighborhood of our body and mind all day. But as we settle, an abiding dimension of life comes into view: where the distinctions between big and small, self and other, momentary and timeless, even life and death, fade to obscurity and insignificance. Kaz and Dogen say even the clumsiest practitioner experiences this reality -- whether she notices it or not. And yet there is such a thing as maturing practice; and anyway enlightenment is not a static state, a possession, but a total process, actualizing this moment without remainder. Joshin, too, thinks the "circle of the way" is more than going in circles -- as Dogen himself hints, when he writes of an unnoticed power of practice that "confirms" oneself and others, and affects heaven and earth in the ten directions. Joshin explores what this maturing power might look like. He plumbs Jack Kornfield's list of mature qualities: non-idealism, kindness, patience, ordinariness, and being in relationship with all things -- seeing all things as worthy of relationship. And a great hindrance to most or all of these qualities, especially in our culture, is shame. For Kaz's Bio, please visit Part 2, and for Joshin's Bio plus series description, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Circle of the Way Sesshin Series: All 4 Parts

Episode Description: Kaz explores the Soto Zen understanding of "enlightenment," as well as its Rinzai counterpart. He narrates how Dogen's "circle of the way" was a crucial formula of this understanding in the 20th century rediscovery of Dogen (a good story!). He illuminates some other familiar Zen translation choices, like "practice", and endorses the subtle power of this phrase, "circle of the way," to shape our practice -- our consciousness -- and so eventually, culture. Joshin gives an evocative inner reading of the ritual arc of a sesshin day: a miniature of the heart's sojourn on the circle of the way. He probes the various strengths that each chant, synchronized gesture and ritual meal might awaken, equipping us "to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time," in Eliot's famous phrase: "a condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything." Joshin likens ritual elements to musical elements: to be understood feelingly, with an intuition somewhat beyond what we think we know. For Kaz's Bio, please visit Part 2, and for Joshin's Bio plus series description, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Circle of the Way Sesshin Series: All 4 Parts

Episode Description: In a well-rounded talk, Kaz contemplates the circle as a symbol of enlightenment. He traces its history from India to Japan -- the full moon; the not-quite-round enso, which expresses a painter's state of being honestly and completely instead of in a rigid perfection. He recalls his friendship with Suzuki Roshi, who drew a circle in the air when Baker Roshi asked him, on his deathbed: "where do we meet?" He admires how uniquely Zen's concrete language for philosophical points strikes consciousness. He asks whether perfection, a perfect life, is a good goal, or whether a complete circle must countenance everything, as it is, wholeheartedly. Bio: 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. He is world-renowned for his translations into English of Zen Master Dogen’s writings. For the series description, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Circle of the Way Sesshin Series: All 4 Parts

Episode Description: Joshin reads from Dogen the passage that gives this sesshin its theme ("circle of the way"), and brings it fleshily to life. In the circle of the way, Dogen says, there is no gap between practice and enlightenment; between the  path -- the willingness to be unconditionally, nakedly alive just now -- and discovery. Each brings the other to life -- cannot even exist except in its immediate presence -- whether we realize it or not. A vital question for all of us, then, and one which Joshin probes very feelingly, is how to sense this path-discovery when things feel discouraging all around us. Can we be not too quickly fooled by our apparently cramped quarters, but find the "embers in the ashes," our immanent capacity to open to life (any life!), to forget the self? Bio: Joshin Brian Byrnes is a Dharma Holder and student of Roshi Joan Halifax, having received 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. This dharma talk is also Part 1 of Circle of the Way Sesshin series - see description below. Series Description: During a week of intensive practice, Kaz Tanahashi (see Part 2 of this series for Kaz's BIO) and Joshin unfold Dogen's notion that the spiritual path is -- not a road past obstacles to a goal -- but a "circle of the way" with "not a moment's gap" between aspiration, practice, enlightenment and nirvana. They also shed light by the by on some potent points of language and translation, and the inner logic of sesshin's ritual structure. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Circle of the Way Sesshin Series: All 4 Parts

Episode Description: Allan was severely, life-threateningly injured in a plane crash in 2012. Here he tells the riveting story of his escape, recovery, and especially the deep reckoning that such a shock of pain and loss provoked in him -- what vitality and urgency it lent to Buddha's teachings on suffering, change, and unconditional meeting BIO: Allan Lokos is the founder and guiding teacher of The Community Meditation Center in New York City. He is the author of Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living and Pocket Peace: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living. His writing has appeared in The Huffington Post, Tricycle magazine, Beliefnet, and the anthology, Audacious Creativity. He has taught at Columbia University Teachers College, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, The Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, Marymount College, The Rubin Museum Brainwave Series, Buddhafest in Washington DC, NY Insight Meditation Center, The NY Open Center, Tibet House, and Insight Meditation Community of Washington. Allan has practiced meditation since the mid-nineties and studied with such renowned teachers as Sharon Salzberg, Thich Nhat Hanh, Joseph Goldstein, Andrew Olendzki, and Stephen Batchelor. Earlier in this life Allan enjoyed a successful career as a professional singer. He was in the original Broadway companies of Oliver!, Pickwick, and the Stratford Festival/Broadway production of The Pirates of Penzance. On Christmas day, 2012, Allan and his wife Susanna were in a horrific plane crash in Burma. Doctors in four countries said that Allan could not possibly survive his injuries. Yet he did and has gone on to thrive in his teaching and writing. His new book, Through the Flames, tells the story of the accident and how, against all odds, his life has become better than ever.

Episode Description: "Clouds and rocks exist together, but forget each other," says Genzan's scroll on the zendo wall. When our path is beset with rocks, how can we flow like water over and around? How can we fill exactly the container we're presented with in each moment -- flow humbly to the lowest level -- pool our resources and then surmount? Genzan explores hindrances (rocks) and some antidotes (water) in detail, and with frank personal reckoning. He employs systematic Buddhist lists to do so: five hindrances, eightfold path, Dogen's three minds. He explores the non-linear fashion in which the eight folds and the three minds mutually embed, encourage, and rely on one another, to help us flow past the rocks in our path. BIO: Genzan Quennell is a novice priest and the current Shuso at the Upaya Zen Center. A student of Roshi Joan Halifax, Genzan has been practicing zen since the early 1990s. He helps co-ordinate the activities of the Upaya Prison Project and assists with supporting the temple, residents and guest retreatants at Upaya.

Episode Description: Where can we find equanimity, when meditation bears no discernible fruit for days, weeks, months? Roshi herself endured three whole years of aridity right after starting Upaya -- going through the motions only to avoid letting people down. Or consider the Tibetan yogi who meditated on Maitreya in a cave for decades, to no apparent effect. (Listen to the talk for the punchline). Amidst such seeming futility, how can we trust that our boundless heart is nearer than near? Roshi explores... For Series Description and Teacher BIOs, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Real Love, Real Compassion Series: All 12 Parts

Sharon Salzberg: Equanimity: Compassion Lit By Wisdom (Real Love, Real Compassion Part 8a)

Sharon Salzberg & Joan Halifax: A Rhapsody to Compassion (Real Love, Real Compassion Part 7)

Sharon Salzberg & Joan Halifax: Edge States: Challenges for the Compassionate Caregiver (Real Love, Real Compassion Part 6b)

Sharon Salzberg: Are Love and Compassion Different? (Real Love, Real Compassion Part 6a)