Upaya Zen Center's Dharma Podcast

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Fall Practice Period 2026: The Teachings of Zen Master Zhao Zhou: Opening Session Oct 25, 2026

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In this opening session of the Fall Practice Period, Sensei Shinzan, Sensei Kathie Fisher, and Sensei Monshin invite participants to step out of ordinary life and into a shared rhythm of practice. For three weeks, participants in person and online are encouraged to “be a monastic,” setting aside familiar routines and the mind’s constant busyness. Sensei Kathie calls it “the strangest of vacations,”…

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Zen History: Informing our Practice and Lives Today Oct 19, 2026

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In this Wednesday night Dharma talk during Upaya’s Fall Practice Period, Sensei Sokaku Kathie Fischer explores how Zhaozhou’s teachings invite the busy, generalizing mind to rest in the field of the senses. She notes that many koans pose a general question and receive a specific answer, and that this pattern points to practice itself. Thought deals in abstractions, while what we see, hear…

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Ancestral Stories: A Dharma Gate of Intimacy with Our Lives Oct 12, 2026

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In this Wednesday night Dharma talk, Sensei Cynthia Ryotan Kear opens up the practice of koans as part of Upaya’s Fall Practice Period devoted to the Chinese master Zhao Zhou. She suggests that the longing that drew practitioners to Zen in ancient China is the same one we carry today: the wish to stop observing our lives from a distance and to live them more intimately. “Thinking about our life is…

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Zhao Zhou’s Mu: The Threshold of Everyday Practice Oct 05, 2026

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In this Wednesday night Dharma talk, Sensei Shinzan explores the famous koan “Mu” from Zhao Zhou (Joshu in Japanese), leading up to Upaya’s fall practice period devoted to the Chinese master’s teachings. Shinzan sets the scene in Tang-dynasty China, where Chan practitioners turned away from dense scholasticism toward a direct, down-to-earth practice and introduces Zhao Zhou as a humble teacher who…

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LOVE and DEATH 2026: Keeping Close (Part 5B) Oct 04, 2026

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This is the second half of the closing session for the Love and Death series: Roshi Joan Halifax reflects on what it means to practice beyond our transactional habits. She points to awakening in the details of everyday life and to presence as “being with, but not being hijacked by.” Drawing on her own recent brush with death, she names the realizations at the heart of love and death: there is no…

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LOVE and DEATH 2026: Keeping Close (Part 5A) Oct 04, 2026

Show notes

This is the first half of the closing session for the Love and Death series: Roshi Joan Halifax reflects on what it means to practice beyond our transactional habits. She points to awakening in the details of everyday life and to presence as “being with, but not being hijacked by.” Drawing on her own recent brush with death, she names the realizations at the heart of love and death: there is no…

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LOVE and DEATH 2026: The Law of Change and Becoming (Part 4) Oct 04, 2026

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In part four of the Love and Death series, Frank Ostaseski brings death into the room through photographs of people he accompanied at the Zen Hospice Project. Inviting participants to keep half their attention in the body, he asks them to notice what draws them in and what makes them pull away. Frank offers his insight on this practice: “I think what we’re seeing is our own hopes and fears.”…

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LOVE and DEATH 2026: Guided by Grief (Part 3B) Oct 04, 2026

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In this second half of part three of the Love and Death series, Frank Ostaseski continues with Guest teacher Sensei Koshin Flint Sparks, a poet and former psychologist, who reads from his work on his husband’s recent death, and participants write an imagined dialogue with someone they have lost. At its heart, this session invites us to bring attention to grief and make space for it…

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LOVE and DEATH 2026: Guided by Grief (Part 3A) Oct 04, 2026

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This is the first half of part three of the Love and Death series, Frank Ostaseski discusses grief as “the river running through our lives.” Recognizing that grief takes its own journey, sometimes meandering and sometimes pulling us under, he cautions against confusing the map with the territory, turning us toward grief itself rather than our frameworks for it. Frank describes grief as a path from…

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LOVE and DEATH 2026: Fearless Love (Part 2B) Oct 04, 2026

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This is the second half of part two of the Love and Death series, Frank Ostaseski and Roshi Joan Halifax explore the fearless nature of love, which meets loss without turning away. Frank presents the four Brahmaviharas (loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity) as the “four flavors of love”. He distinguishes them from their near enemies, which imitate them: attachment, pity…

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