Upaya Zen Center's Dharma Podcast

Episode Description: In this final talk of sesshin, Sensei Kaz discusses the creative possibilities attendant upon being “time-beings” in a world where, says Dogen, all things are essentially “linked with one another as moments” and therefore all moments “are your time-being.” Sensei Kaz goes on to speak of “joy density” – which, unlike lifespan, can be extended without limit. Roshi Norman tells two stories about friends of his, each concerning an apparently tragic waste of opportunity over decades; a waste which was, however, capped by fulfillment at the eleventh hour. He asks, is the “lost time” to be lamented, or does a moment of full happiness pervade and transfigure all time? For Series description and Teacher BIOs, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Dogen's “Time Being” Sesshin Series: All 5 Parts

Episode Description: In this talk we’re treated to no less than three unique riffs on Dogen’s conceptions of time. First Sensei Kaz speaks about how time doesn’t “merely fly away” but flows to fill each moment, as water flows to one rice paddy after another. Next Ruth Ozeki reads a conversation from her heavily Dogen-colored novel, “A Tale for the Time Being,” about the crucial understanding of just what a moment is. Finally Roshi Norman reads his own poems and asks, “if you are time, how could you be you? How could you possibly be fooled by the smallness of your own story, your own pain?” Bio: Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest. Her first two novels, My Year of Meats (1998) and All Over Creation (2003), have been translated into 11 languages and published in 14 countries. Her most recent work, A Tale for the Time-Being (2013), was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and will be published in over thirty countries. Ruth's documentary and dramatic independent films, including Halving the Bones, have been shown on PBS, at the Sundance Film Festival, and at colleges and universities across the country. A longtime Buddhist practitioner, Ruth ordained in 2010 and is affiliated with the Brooklyn Zen Center and the Everyday Zen Foundation. She lives in British Columbia and New York City For Series description and other Teacher BIOs, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Dogen's “Time Being” Sesshin Series: All 5 Parts

Episode Description: In this talk, Sensei Kaz remarks upon Dogen’s great breakthrough, as perhaps the first person in history to notice a new category of nonduality: namely the nonduality of being and time. He examines further what this vision entails, and muses on different cultural constructions of time. Sensei Kathie picks up on the theme of time and mind, or mental constructs, showing how what might seem like unmediated experience of time is actually laden with metaphor: how might our time metaphors be different if we were trees, or sea sponges? Then for several minutes she evokes a most delicate, tangible sense of what it is to live in the bottom of the belly as an antidote to fragmented mind.. For Series description and Teacher BIOs, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Dogen's “Time Being” Sesshin Series: All 5 Parts

Episode Description: Sensei Kaz opens by comparing notes between Dogen’s emptiness and physics/cosmology -- Dogen’s inspired prefiguring of recent physics, derived only from his intimate experience. Sensei Kaz examines e.g. the electromagnetic field – omnipresent in space-time, from vacuums to our own bodies – and the singular nature of the Big Bang, which was not an explosion in space and time but rather of space and time. Roshi Norman reads further from his unpublished “Magnolias All at Once,” along with poems by Mei-Mei Bersenbrugge, Buddhaghosa, and himself. He explores Buddhaghosa’s vision of Buddhist practice as a path of purification -- healing all slights given and received, inviting pain to reveal itself in the trustworthy healing waters of presence: breath, body, earth, space and time. For Series description and Teacher BIOs, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Dogen's “Time Being” Sesshin Series: All 5 Parts

Series Description Roshi Norman Fischer, Sensei Kathie Fischer and Sensei Kazuaki Tanahashi lead a sesshin to end the summer practice period, examining Dogen’s “Time-Being” (Uji). Episode Description: In this talk Sensei Kaz elucidates line-by-line the Yaoshan poem which opens Dogen’s “Time Being,” then reads from Ruth Ozeki’s novel “A Tale for the Time Being” as a kind of commentary. He speaks of two things zazen is good for -- a utilitarian zazen which finds personal insight in zazen’s deeper waters, and a liberating zazen which opens wider than personal problems and visions.  Roshi Norman reads from his unpublished book “Magnolias All at Once,” which counterposes passages from his own translation of “Being Time” with selected poetry from the late Leslie Scalapino, whose ideas of time were deeply informed by Dogen. He also paints a sensitive portrait of counting the breath, following the breath, and doing nothing as a progression into unfabricated simplicity and aliveness, with a coda about Keizan’s method of entrusting the whole cosmos to the cosmic mudra, to the feeling in one’s hands. Bios: 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. Roshi Zoketsu Norman Fischer is a poet and Zen Buddhist priest. For many years he has taught at the San Francisco Zen Center, the oldest and largest of the new Buddhist organizations in the West, where he served as Co-abbot from 1995-2000. He is presently a Senior Dharma Teacher there as well as the founder and spiritual director of the Everyday Zen Foundation, an organization dedicated to adapting Zen Buddhist teachings to Western culture. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Dogen's “Time Being” Sesshin Series: All 5 Parts

Episode Description: On her 72nd birthday, Roshi Joan asks what it means to “give life to life” (Dogen), in the light of several turning moments from her own life. She examines the theme of urgency that has characterized so much of her life, for good or ill. She speaks of embodying “virya” -- determination, continuation – through continually “opening the hand of thought” (Uchiyama). Bio : Joan Halifax Roshi is a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist, and author. She is Founder, Abbot, and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center, a Buddhist monastery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She received her Ph.D in medical anthropology in 1973. She has lectured on the subject of death and dying at many academic institutions, including Harvard Divinity School and Harvard Medical School, Georgetown Medical School, University of Virginia Medical School, Duke University Medical School, University of Connecticut Medical School, among many others. She received a National Science Foundation Fellowship in Visual Anthropology, and was an Honorary Research Fellow in Medical Ethnobotany at Harvard University. From 1972-1975, she worked with psychiatrist Stanislav Grof at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center on pioneering work with dying cancer patients, using LSD as an adjunct to psychotherapy. After the LSD project, she has continued to work with dying people and their families and to teach health care professionals as well as lay individuals on compassionate care of the dying. She is Director of the Project on Being with Dying and Founder and Director of the Upaya Prison Project that develops programs on meditation for prisoners. For the past twenty-five years, she has been active in environmental work. She studied for a decade with Zen Teacher Seung Sahn and was a teacher in the Kwan Um Zen School. She received the Lamp Transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh, and was given Inka by Roshi Bernie Glassman. A Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order, her work and practice for more than three decades has focused on applied Buddhism. Her books include: The Human Encounter with Death (with Stanislav Grof); Shamanic Voices; Shaman: The Wounded Healer; The Fruitful Darkness; Simplicity in the Complex: A Buddhist Life in America; Being with Dying; and Wisdom Beyond Wisdom (with Kazuaki Tanashashi).

Episode Description: In this talk Sensei Kaz explores Dogen’s “Time-Being” and Ruth Ozeki’s “A Tale for the Time Being,” and how -- because all people are nothing but time -- we can shape time. He then reads a dozen or so delicate, poignant late-life haiku from a new collection by Mitsu Suzuki, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi’s 100-year-old widow. He tells tales of her life, and of his own encounters with her spanning fifty years. 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: The morning after Zazenkai, Roshi Norman reads and further explores the full text of Dogen’s “Space.” The question and answer conversation that follows spans Zen conformity, sitting in retreat while people are being blown up in Palestine, and forgiveness. For Series description and Teacher BIOs, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Zazenkai Weekend – Dogen’s “Space” Series: All 3 Parts

Episode Description: The morning after Zazenkai, Roshi Norman reads and further explores the full text of Dogen’s “Space.” The question and answer conversation that follows spans Zen conformity, sitting in retreat while people are being blown up in Palestine, and forgiveness. For Series description and Teacher BIOs, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Zazenkai Weekend – Dogen’s “Space” Series: All 3 Parts

Series Description Roshi Norman Fischer leads a Zazenkai weekend retreat. Episode Description: Here Roshi Norman continues his discussion of Dogen’s “Space,” along with its predecessor in Rujing’s lovely poem beginning “the whole body is a windbell hanging in space…,” and the story of the four answers of Bodhidharma’s four disciples. He examines many facets of expression, how all being is simultaneously expression – but the involuntary expression of a windbell rather than a saxophone or piano: therefore when we trust life and ourselves in their natural grain, we express Prajna Paramita willy-nilly, ding-dong. Bio: Roshi Zoketsu Norman Fischer is a poet and Zen Buddhist priest. For many years he has taught at the San Francisco Zen Center, the oldest and largest of the new Buddhist organizations in the West, where he served as Co-abbot from 1995-2000. He is presently a Senior Dharma Teacher there as well as the founder and spiritual director of the Everyday Zen Foundation, an organization dedicated to adapting Zen Buddhist teachings to Western culture. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Zazenkai Weekend – Dogen’s “Space” Series: All 3 Parts

Episode Description: Opening this talk, Sensei Kaz invites us to consider how imagining the realization of world peace, although a seemingly impossible actuality, is quite pragmatic. Roshi Norman follows by reflecting on the Zen dialogues of dharma brothers Xuefeng and Yantou, and what they can teach us about the spiritual significance of warm friendship and finding one’s own path. Bio: Roshi Zoketsu Norman Fischer is a poet and Zen Buddhist priest. For many years he has taught at the San Francisco Zen Center, the oldest and largest of the new Buddhist organizations in the West, where he served as Co-abbot from 1995-2000. He is presently a Senior Dharma Teacher there as well as the founder and spiritual director of the Everyday Zen Foundation, an organization dedicated to adapting Zen Buddhist teachings to Western culture. 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: In the last class of the Summer Practice Period titled “Subtle Sound” in honor of Maurine Stuart Roshi, Sensei Kathie demonstrates the value in Zen practices of “good manners,” compassion, and respect as a container of love rather than the establishment of privilege within sangha. She goes on to address mental constructs and their falling away through zazen. For Series description and Teacher BIOs, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Summer Practice Period Class Series: All 4 Parts

Episode Description: In this class Norman discusses the first few lines of Dogen’s “Space,” especially the line, “the whole body of skin, flesh, bones and marrow hangs in empty space.” He leads a meditation on experiencing these skin, flesh, bones, and marrow, and appreciates how when one simply sits as a body in space, the body actually is precisely space. He further examines the larger sense of “our body” as the most intimate experience of space and time: are they inert containers of objects and events, or more like seamless, emergent dimensions thereof? Finally he praises the vast, inextricable twin qualities of space and silence that compose the support and substance of experience. For Series description and Teacher BIOs, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Summer Practice Period Class Series: All 4 Parts

Episode Description: In the second class of the Summer Practice Period, Kathie discusses the relation between nature, human beings, and Zen practice by focusing on Dogen’s Mountains and Waters Sutra. She also refers to Shunryu Suzuki’s text Not Always So. The class concludes with a discussion session. For Series description and Teacher BIOs, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Summer Practice Period Class Series: All 4 Parts

Series Description: Roshi Zoketsu Norman Fischer and Sensei Sokaku Kathie Fischer give a series of classes on Dogen and Ango (Practice Period) with insightful stories from their Soto Zen lineage as well as their own lives. Episode Description: In the first class of the Summer Practice Period, titled “Dogen’s Splashing in Non-duality,” Roshi Norman offers a commentary on a poem by Rujing, addressing the narrowness that we as human beings naturally impose on boundlessness. Also discussed is the story of how Manjushri once spent the Summer Practice Period in a demon’s palace, a wealthy person’s home, and a brothel. Roshi Norman suggests that even as we carve out our structure of practice, the delusions that come with our humanity will not disappear quickly. In the last part of the class, Roshi Norman remembers Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, one of the founders of the Jewish Renewal Movement, who passed away the evening before this talk. Bios: Roshi Zoketsu Norman Fischer is a poet and Zen Buddhist priest. For many years he has taught at the San Francisco Zen Center, the oldest and largest of the new Buddhist organizations in the West, where he served as Co-abbot from 1995-2000. He is presently a Senior Dharma Teacher there as well as the founder and spiritual director of the Everyday Zen Foundation, an organization dedicated to adapting Zen Buddhist teachings to Western culture. Sokaku Kathie Fischer is a Zen Buddhist priest since 1980. She has practiced and worked at Tassajara and Green Gulch Farm Zen Centers from 1976-1996, where she and Norman raised their twin sons. Since then she has taken her practice to school, teaching in the Mill Valley public schools. At present and for the past 14 years, Kathie enjoys teaching science to seventh graders, and is also an avid scuba diver. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Summer Practice Period Class Series: All 4 Parts