Upaya Zen Center's Dharma Podcast

Buddhist Talk

The Upaya Dharma Podcast features Wednesday evening Dharma Talks and recordings from Upaya’s diverse array of programs. Our podcasts exemplify Upaya’s focus on socially engaged Buddhism, including prison work, end-of-life care, serving the homeless,...

Location:

Santa Fe, NM

Genres:

Buddhist Talk

Podcasts

Description:

The Upaya Dharma Podcast features Wednesday evening Dharma Talks and recordings from Upaya’s diverse array of programs. Our podcasts exemplify Upaya’s focus on socially engaged Buddhism, including prison work, end-of-life care, serving the homeless, training in socially engaged practices, peace & nonviolence, compassionate care training, and delivering healthcare in the Himalayas.

Twitter:

@upayazen

Language:

English

Website:

https://www.upaya.org/

Email:

upaya@upaya.org

Episodes

This Is It: The Ox-Herding Pictures and Our Spiritual Journey

4/20/2026

In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, offered during Upaya’s Spring Practice Period, Sensei Ryotan explores a central theme of the ten ox-herding pictures: why is simply being present so difficult? Drawing on John Daido Loori’s Riding the Ox Home and the child psychologist D.W. Winnicott’s concept of “going on being,” Ryotan traces how conditioning — laid down in childhood and reinforced throughout… Source

Duration:00:46:09

A Glimpse of Awakened Mind. Now What?

4/13/2026

In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, offered during Upaya’s Spring Practice Period, Sensei Monshin and Hoshi Senko guide us through the heart of the oxherding pictures — the ancient Zen metaphor of spiritual maturation. Monshin frames the third and fourth paintings, seeing and catching the ox, as our commitment to the path. Why face the bull? What truly moves us toward such a challenging practice? Source

Duration:00:46:41

Bearing Witness in Gaza

4/6/2026

In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Genryu Clayton Dalton — emergency physician, journalist, and newly ordained novice priest — reflects on what it means to bear witness across the vast distances of suffering that connect us all. Having lost his voice the weekend prior, Genryu’s rough whisper seemed hauntingly appropriate as he described the inexpressible suffering from his recent medical mission… Source

Duration:00:35:04

The Measure of Our Humanity: Transformation

3/31/2026

In this session of The Measure of Our Humanity, Roshi Joan Halifax opens by reflecting on six years of monthly gatherings exploring socially engaged Buddhism — and on the urgency of the question animating this year’s series: how do we lay down a sane and compassionate path forward in these times? The session turns to Valerie Brown who grounds her teaching in a vision of collective awakening… Source

Duration:01:29:28

Up a Tree: Precarity, Not-Knowing, and Awakening Times

3/30/2026

In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Roshi Joan Halifax opens by naming her deep concern for the ongoing wars, displacement, and political upheaval seen throughout the world. Rather than offering direct reassurance, she turns to two stories held in deliberate tension: Kyōgen’s koan “Man Up a Tree,” in which a man hanging by his teeth from a branch is asked a question he cannot answer without… Source

Duration:00:44:17

As The Wheel Turns

3/23/2026

In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Butsumon Tuck Stibich — a resident priest at Upaya — opens with a teaching from Thich Nhat Hanh. No stranger to war, Thich Nhat Hanh explains that our anxiety about the world’s suffering is an obstacle to service: that fear and worry do not help us cultivate peace, or become a refuge for others. Reflecting on this and the vows made in Jukai… Source

Duration:00:30:34

Finding Our Way

3/16/2026

In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Sensei Fushin addresses what so many of us are carrying right now — the weight of a world in upheaval, the accumulation of personal grief, and the stories we tell ourselves at three in the morning when everything feels urgent and nothing feels within reach. Drawing on the Lotus Sutra’s parable of the burning house, Fushin reframes the question entirely… Source

Duration:00:40:22

The Poetry of Cold Mountain: All You Have Is Seeds

3/15/2026

In the final session of The Poetry of Cold Mountain, participants share their overnight translations of Hanshan’s poems — working from character-to-word guides across five poems. The range and depth of what emerges moves Peter Levitt and Kaz Tanahashi to reflect openly on the nature of creative work. Peter observes that the participants had nothing but seeds — elements borrowed from a poet writing… Source

Duration:01:01:54

The Poetry of Cold Mountain: You Ask the Way to Cold Mountain?

3/15/2026

In Part 6 of The Poetry of Cold Mountain, the evening session gathers around two offerings. Kaz Tanahashi gives a live calligraphy demonstration, rendering Hanshan’s poem “You Ask the Way to Cold Mountain” first in formal script, then in semi-cursive — pausing to explain how each style reveals something different about the characters, the poem, and the calligrapher’s mind. Sensei Dainin reads each… Source

Duration:01:24:54

The Poetry of Cold Mountain: The Stone Bridge

3/15/2026

In Part 5 of The Poetry of Cold Mountain, the session opens with a participant unexpectedly sharing two pieces of calligraphy prepared before the retreat — Hanshan poems rendered by hand as an act of study and care. Kaz Tanahashi and Peter Levitt then open the floor to another round of participant poetry. Kaz offers his own poem, inspired by Hanshan’s eccentricity: As in the previous session… Source

Duration:00:39:53

The Poetry of Cold Mountain: Open Sharing

3/15/2026

In Part 4 of The Poetry of Cold Mountain, the session opens into a shared creative space. Kaz Tanahashi and Peter Levitt shape the afternoon around two fundamental poetry practices — writing from the present moment and listening. Peter offers a generative prompt: use lines from Hanshan as scaffolding, borrowing one to begin a poem, one to anchor the middle, one to close. What follows is an open… Source

Duration:01:01:45

The Poetry of Cold Mountain: Quality of Mind

3/15/2026

In Part 3 of The Poetry of Cold Mountain, Peter Levitt offers a deep dive into the craft and consciousness of Hanshan’s poetry. Drawing on three defining qualities of Hanshan’s work — plain speech, imagery that moves between the literal and the symbolic, and last lines of sudden, inevitable surprise — Peter shows how each poem both instructs and enacts the journey it describes. Source

Duration:01:25:21

The Poetry of Cold Mountain: The Road Does Not Go Through

3/15/2026

Roshi Joan Halifax opens this first full session (Part 2) of The Poetry of Cold Mountain by acknowledging the violence unfolding in Iran, holding the gravity of the world alongside the refuge of practice and community. She then turns the session to Kaz Tanahashi. Kaz introduces the structure of classical Chinese characters and verse — one character, one syllable, one word — before exploring the… Source

Duration:01:10:10

The Poetry of Cold Mountain: A Journey with Legendary Hermit Hanshan: An Introduction to Hanshan

3/15/2026

The Poetry of Cold Mountain weekend program opens with an evening of orientation and anticipation, as world-renowned calligrapher Kazuaki Tanahashi and poet and Zen teacher Peter Levitt — co-translators of The Complete Cold Mountain: Poems of the Legendary Hermit Hanshan — introduce the hermit poet whose words have endured for over a thousand years. Kaz situates Hanshan in his time: the sacred… Source

Duration:01:06:36

A Time to Mark the Reality of Vow: The Presence of Care

3/9/2026

In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Sensei Monshin opens by acknowledging the 33 practitioners preparing to receive jukai — and the vow to carry non-harming actions into the world. She reads from Thich Nhất Hạnh’s Go As a River, encouraging us to understand community as refuge from despair. Roshi Joan Halifax speaks into our heavy hearts — the outbreak of new war, the deep karmic wounds that will… Source

Duration:00:46:18

Sitting with Original Love: Closing Session

3/3/2026

This final session of Sitting with Original Love opens once again with Nicolle Reigetsu leading the community in singing the Metta Sutta — words of loving kindness from the Pali canon — before Henry Shukman and Roshi Joan Halifax offer their final teaching of the retreat. Henry leads a guided reflection, then reads from his book: a passage about a grieving mother who finds herself unexpectedly… Source

Duration:01:21:38

Sitting with Original Love: Wisdom, Love, and the Organism of Now

3/3/2026

This Saturday evening session of Sitting with Original Love opens with a beautiful performance from Nicolle Reigetsu, drawing the community into tender connection. Roshi Joan Halifax and Henry Shukman engage in warm dialogue exploring what it means to embody Original Love — not as theory but as the lived meeting of wisdom and compassion. Henry offers his own, luminous poem, Slow… Source

Duration:01:04:42

Sitting with Original Love: First Love and Bodhicitta

3/3/2026

In this Saturday afternoon session of Sitting with Original Love, Roshi Joan Halifax and Henry Shukman guide participants into an exploration of bodhicitta — the awakened heart — through the intimate terrain of first love. Roshi draws on Thich Nhat Hanh’s account of falling in love with a young nun at Plum Village, and how that particular love became a doorway for him into boundless compassion. Source

Duration:00:52:42

Sitting with Original Love: The Love That Will Not Die

3/3/2026

In this Saturday afternoon session of Sitting with Original Love, Henry Shukman frames the direction of spiritual practice — not as a solitary ascent away from suffering but as a descent into the heart of it. Reading from Pema Chödrön, he offers a vision of awakening that moves downward: Through guided meditation and calm instruction, he invites participants to stop treating practice as a… Source

Duration:00:56:37

Sitting with Original Love: Beneath the Categories

3/3/2026

In this mid morning session of Sitting with Original Love, Roshi Joan Halifax leads a passionate and sweeping teaching on the many faces of love — from the Greek expressions of eros, philia, storge, pragma, ludus, philautia, and agape — to the early Buddhist concepts of Samvega and Pasada, the existential unease that drives us toward practice and the quiet radiance that meets us there. Source

Duration:00:51:16