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

Buffalo Tail: A Story of Continuous Practice

5/25/2026

In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Sensei Dainin — emergency physician turned dharma teacher — explores what western medicine trains us to suppress and what Zen practice invites us to reclaim. Tracing her own path from clinical dissociation to a reawakening of compassion and connection at Upaya’s Being with Dying training, she turns to the well known koan of a water buffalo whose tail catches in… Source

Duration:00:38:09

A Raging River: Grief and the Human Condition

5/18/2026

In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk during Upaya’s Being with Dying intensive, Frank Ostaseski speaks to participants from the loss of three close friends within a matter of weeks. Rather than offering technique or teaching, he invites open inquiry into grief itself: what it feels like in the body, how it moves, and why we so often push it away. “I think to grieve is to be human,” he says. Source

Duration:00:38:31

The Measure of Our Humanity: IMAGINATION

5/17/2026

In this session of The Measure of Our Humanity, teacher and author Tara Brach explores imagination as what she calls “an absolute miracle of the human mind” — a capacity that has shaped every evolutionary leap our species has made, from language to civil rights. Drawing on myth, story, and contemplative practice, Brach argues that in dark times, imagination is not a retreat from reality but… Source

Duration:01:28:37

Liberating Intimacy – Softening Barriers to Love

5/11/2026

In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Koshin Flint Sparks — psychologist, Zen teacher, and longtime student of the intersection of mind science and contemplative practice — offers a wide-ranging inquiry into what he calls “the double helix of maturity”: the intertwined work of growing up and waking up. Drawing on attachment theory, interpersonal neurobiology, and teachings from across the Zen… Source

Duration:00:51:55

Dharma Lab – Practicing the Truth of Our Lives

5/4/2026

In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Sensei Kodo reflects on the just-completed Spring Practice Period sesshin as a window into a larger idea of a Dharma Lab. What has been called “Contemplative Residency,” he proposes, is better represented as “Residential Zen Training” — a rousing adaptation that places each practitioner at the center of awakening. “Both a scientific lab and Residential Zen… Source

Duration:00:45:31

SPP2026: Sesshin Day 6: Entering the Marketplace

4/30/2026

In this final talk of the Spring Practice Period Sesshin, Sensei Ryotan and Sensei Shinzan bring the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures to their close with the tenth stage — Entering the Marketplace — the return to ordinary life, barefoot and unadorned, carrying what was glimpsed back into the world. Ryotan traces the inner movement this stage points to: the small self receding as the larger self comes… Source

Duration:00:49:16

SPP2026: Sesshin Day 5: Returning to the Source

4/30/2026

In this fifth-day talk, offered during the Spring Practice Period Sesshin, Senko and Sensei Monshin explore the ninth ox-herding picture, Returning to the Source — the stage where effort ceases and life simply flows. Drawing on Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, the Xin Xin Ming, and the Song of the Grass Hut, Monshin traces the difference between striving and ease, and how returning to the source is not… Source

Duration:00:54:10

SPP2026: Sesshin Day 3: Holding the Keys

4/30/2026

In this third-day talk, offered during the Spring Practice Period Sesshin, Sensei Ryotan takes up the habit of self-judgment — that familiar contraction after a mistake, the script of not being good enough, and the perfectionism that keeps us small. Framing her teaching through the Lotus Sutra’s Never-Disparaging Bodhisattva, who bows to every being’s capacity for awakening even as rocks and… Source

Duration:00:45:05

SPP2026: Sesshin Day 2: Free From The Start

4/30/2026

During the second day of the Spring Practice Period Sesshin, Senko takes up the koan of relaxed effort — how effort and ease, far from being opposed, are expressed in the same movement. Drawing on Seung Sahn’s story of a bear who, long after escaping his circus cage, keeps turning somersaults in the mountains hoping to be fed, Senko asks us to look honestly at the conditioning we carry into… Source

Duration:00:45:05

SPP2026: Sesshin Day 1: Joyful Effort

4/30/2026

In this first formal talk of the Spring Practice Period Sesshin, Sensei Monshin takes up virya — the Sanskrit term for joyful effort — as the essential energy of practice. What does it mean to sit day after day with the whole catastrophe of the mind: the boredom, the fear, the stories we tell about ourselves? Drawing on the ox-herding pictures’ imagery of taming, she explores the difference… Source

Duration:00:35:03

Forgetting the Ox, Forgetting the Self

4/27/2026

In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, offered during the fourth day of Upaya’s Spring Practice Period sesshin, Sensei Shinzan guides us through the seventh and eighth stages of the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures — two of the most profound moments in the Zen map of awakening. The seventh stage, Forgetting the Ox, marks the end of the seeker: grasping falls away, the division between practice and life… Source

Duration:00:43:30

SPP2026: Zazenkai: Ordinary Mind

4/26/2026

In this Zazenkai Day talk during Upaya’s Spring Practice Period, Sensei Shinzan surveys the first six pictures of the ox herding series, from the first pull toward practice to the hard won ease of riding the ox home. He then turns to a recent question a student brought to him: how do I know if I’m practicing correctly, and when is rest just laziness? Shinzan answers through an encounter between… Source

Duration:00:47:18

SPP2026: Zazenkai: Searching For The Ox

4/26/2026

In this Zazenkai day dharma talk during the Spring Practice Period, Sensei Ryotan takes up the first two ox-herding images — Searching for the Ox and Finding Traces of the Ox, presenting these images as metaphors for understanding how practice begins and what sustains it. She frames the ox-herding series around a central insight: practice is not about “getting free of the world,” but about “being… Source

Duration:00:46:32

SPP2026: The Ox-Herding Pictures

4/26/2026

In this second session of Upaya’s Spring Practice Period, Senseis Shinzan, Monshin, and Ryotan, and Hoshi Senko introduce the text that anchors this practice period — The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures: Our Journey of Awakening — its origins, images, and themes. The ox-herding metaphor traces back to the Buddha’s teachings on mindful practice, traveling through India and China before becoming… Source

Duration:00:46:03

SPP2026: The Ten Ox-herding Pictures – Our journey of Awakening: Opening Session

4/26/2026

In this opening session of Upaya’s Spring Practice Period, Senseis Ryotan, Monshin, and Shinzan, and Hoshi Senko welcome residents, guests, and the Cloud Sangha into a month of shared practice. Drawing on the 12th-century ox-herding series and John Daido Loori’s Riding the Ox Home as the program’s central text, the teachers frame the ten pictures not as a linear progression but as a spiral… Source

Duration:01:05:04

The Measure of Our Humanity: REHUMANIZATION

4/26/2026

In this session of The Measure of Our Humanity, peacebuilder and Professor Emeritus John Paul Lederach — welcomed by Roshi Joan and Sensei Dainin — opens with the question his life’s work has turned on: “How do we make our way back to a sense of our shared humanity when it has been so damaged, when it has been so harmed?” John observes that while dehumanization fills our dictionaries and research… Source

Duration:01:32:37

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