Summary: Episode Description: In this talk during an "Ease and Joy of Mornings" half-day of meditation, Upaya's Shinzan Palma invites people through the gate of Zen practice and shows them around. He carefully explains a half-dozen zendo forms -- their subtle atmospheres of support for a gathered body-mind -- and most especially zazen. Zazen, he says, is not reflecting, not solving problems, nor making the mind blank (such a state doesn't exist in living beings!). It's rather a shift in our relationship to thoughts and breath and body and world -- it's a relationship of such simplicity that our habitual mind has trouble comprehending it, and complicates it in a thousand ingenious ways. Bio: Shinzan Palm, Dharma Holder, was born in Veracruz, Mexico. He has been practicing Zen since 1996. He met his former teacher, Korean 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 Head Priest and Temple Coordinator, giving guidance to the residents on Zen training. He became Dharma holder in March, 2010. He has a sincere and strong heart committed to the Dharma.
