Upaya Zen Center's Dharma Podcast

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…

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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…

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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…

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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.

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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…

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