Summary: Episode Description: Upaya's Shinzan Palma embarks on the question, "how do we make difficult decisions?" in his inimitably warm and engaging manner -- and in service to answering it, he makes a substantial study of the theory and practice of "wisdom" in Buddhism. Theory-wise, he covers wisdom's place in several classical Buddhist "lists" (the threefold this & seven factors of that); the non-linear feedback loop of ethics/meditation/wisdom; the core Buddhist principle that wisdom and compassion are two expressions of a single thing. Practice-wise, he shares his own journey of hard decisions. He says such moments are deeply creative: they're wisdom moments and wisdom always takes us where we haven't been before, births a new being. Bio: Shinzan Palma, Dharma Holder. Shinzan Jose Manuel Palma was born in Veracruz, Mexico. He has been practicing Zen since 1996. He met his former teacher, Korean Zen Master Samu Sunim in Mexico City and trained under his guidance for 8 years. He did a residential training for 4 years at the Zen Buddhist Temple in Toronto, Canada and was ordained as a novice priest by Samu Sunim in 2004. After leaving Canada, he was invited by Roshi Joan Halifax to come to Upaya in 2006. Shinzan asked Roshi to be her student and he was re-ordained as a Priest in 2007 by Roshi Joan Halifax. Since then, he has been at Upaya practicing with the community. He is now the Head Priest and Temple coordinator, giving guidance to the residents on Zen training. He became Dharma holder on March, 2010. He has a sincere and strong heart committed to the Dharma.
