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PODCAST

Upaya Zen Center"s Dharma Podcast

Joan Halifax | Zen Buddhist Teacher Upaya Abbot

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.

religion & spirituality buddhism

All Episodes

37:42

Zhao Zhou’s Mu: The Threshold of Everyday Practice

Upaya Zen Center"s Dharma Podcast ·

2026/10/05

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…Source

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47:07

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

Upaya Zen Center"s Dharma Podcast ·

2026/10/04

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…Source

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43:28

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

Upaya Zen Center"s Dharma Podcast ·

2026/10/04

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… Source

en-US

59:56

LOVE and DEATH 2026: The Law of Change and Becoming...

Upaya Zen Center"s Dharma Podcast ·

2026/10/04

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.”… Source

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48:16

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

Upaya Zen Center"s Dharma Podcast ·

2026/10/04

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… Source

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1:07:42

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

Upaya Zen Center"s Dharma Podcast ·

2026/10/04

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… Source

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58:54

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

Upaya Zen Center"s Dharma Podcast ·

2026/10/04

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… Source

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1:15:42

LOVE and DEATH 2026: Fearless Love (Part 2A)

Upaya Zen Center"s Dharma Podcast ·

2026/10/04

This is the first 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… Source

en-US

1:10:04

LOVE and DEATH 2026: Opening the Great Gifts :...

Upaya Zen Center"s Dharma Podcast ·

2026/10/04

In this opening session of Love and Death, Roshi Joan Halifax and Frank Ostaseski return to the line that anchors this annual series: “Love and death are the great gifts that are given to us. Mostly, they are passed on unopened.” Roshi Joan grounds her introduction in zengi, or undivided activity, inviting participants to acknowledge the loves, losses, and illnesses they carry and revealing our… Source

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1:41:05

The Measure of Our Humanity: BELONGING

Upaya Zen Center"s Dharma Podcast ·

2026/09/28

In this session of the ongoing series, The Measure of Our Humanity, Frank Ostaseski along side Roshi Joan explores what it means to truly belong—not as something earned or arrived at, but as a truth we forget and remember. Frank begins with Sivananda’s teaching that the body is our first home and the ground of belonging, then turns to Tara Brach and John O’Donohue on how we grow estranged from our…Source

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47:41

Being real

Upaya Zen Center"s Dharma Podcast ·

2026/09/21

In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Frank Ostaseski traces what he learned sitting at the bedside of thousands of dying people: “to sit next to people and not mess with them. Not try and help them have some experience, or meet someone else’s agenda, including their own. Just sit with them.” That same quality of presence, he suggests, is what it means to ‘be real’ — an alignment with reality… Source

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40:10

Grace in Prison

Upaya Zen Center"s Dharma Podcast ·

2026/09/14

In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Sensei Dainin describes bringing Roshi Joan’s G.R.A.C.E. compassion training into New Mexico’s prison system. Working previously with the correctional cadets, and now with men who are incarcerated, Dainin names how the system pushes both groups into opposition, each side dehumanizing the other by default. Looking for guidance on how to serve well in that…Source

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1:38:45

The Measure of Our Humanity: POSSIBILITY

Upaya Zen Center"s Dharma Podcast ·

2026/09/14

This session of The Measure of Our Humanity series opens with Roshi Joan Halifax‘s welcome and a grounding meditation led by Dainin, before writer and activist Rebecca Solnit takes the floor. Rebecca nurtures in us the view of possibility, offering it as a path through the false comforts of both optimism and despair. Moving between a 10th-century Zen koan, the deep time of ancient trees…Source

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52:38

Varela 2026: Closing Q&A (Part 11)

Upaya Zen Center"s Dharma Podcast ·

2026/09/01

In Part 11, the closing of the Varela Contemplative Science Retreat, Roshi Joan Halifax, John Dunne, Molly Crockett, and Adam Frank address questions from the participants. To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here.Source

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55:29

Varela 2026: Panel Discussion – AI, Experience,...

Upaya Zen Center"s Dharma Podcast ·

2026/09/01

In Part 10 of the Varela Contemplative Science Retreat, Roshi Joan Halifax, John Dunne, Molly Crockett, and Adam Frank gather as a panel to open questions on AI before circling back through the retreat’s full arc. The AI discussion ranges widely: LLM “personas” and sycophancy, the ethics of a technology built without consent (likened to asbestos — useful, but harmful in ways not yet fully known)… Source

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1:03:50

Varela 2026: A Conversation with Michael Pollan (Part 9)

Upaya Zen Center"s Dharma Podcast ·

2026/09/01

In Part 9 of the Varela Contemplative Science Retreat, Roshi Joan Halifax introduces a pre-recorded conversation with author Michael Pollan on the value and limits of mystical experience. Drawing on William James’s pragmatic test — treat mystical insight as a hypothesis, not proof — Pollan traces what these states teach us: chiefly, that self and consciousness can be disaggregated. Source

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32:57

Varela 2026: Ethical Considerations in an Age of AI...

Upaya Zen Center"s Dharma Podcast ·

2026/09/01

In Part 8 of the Varela Contemplative Science Retreat, Adam, Molly, John, and Roshi Joan open the floor to important questions of our time. Following Molly’s session on AI and Buddhist ethics, she is asked whether AI models that claim consciousness deserve moral consideration. Molly cautions against the language itself: “There’s no reason that it’s necessary to use words that we use to describe… Source

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44:16

The Metta Sutta: What’s Love Got to Do with It?

Upaya Zen Center"s Dharma Podcast ·

2026/08/31

In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Sensei Koshin Flint Sparks explores the Metta Sutta as a practice that asks far more of us than simple sentiment. Quoting two lines of Louise Glück’s poem, Koshin highlights the sharp and sometimes frightening edge of love: “Why love what you will lose? — There’s nothing else to love.” We naturally appreciate the full and sincere love from others… Source

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1:10:15

Varela 2026: In the Grove of Mortality (Part 7)

Upaya Zen Center"s Dharma Podcast ·

2026/08/31

In Part 7 of the Varela Contemplative Science Retreat, Molly Crockett turns to a question with real stakes in the race of AI development: Can Buddhist ethics be taught to a machine? Drawing on Francisco Varela’s concept of ethical know-how, she distinguishes “knowledge that” — facts and principles a system can represent — from “knowledge how,” the embodied wisdom that “requires embodied experience… Source

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1:39:50

Varela 2026: Kensho, Joriki, and Ordinary Mind in Zen...

Upaya Zen Center"s Dharma Podcast ·

2026/08/31

In Part 6 of the Varela Contemplative Science Retreat, Roshi Joan Halifax leads a guided sitting before turning to what she calls the four often-conflated categories of contemplative experience: mystical states, insight, awakening, and realization. Drawing on her own decades of exposure to entheogens and psychedelic research, she distinguishes intensity from accuracy — mystical experience is a… Source

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340 results

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