Upaya Zen Center's Dharma Podcast

In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Sensei Fushin turns to the first two folds of the Eightfold Path—right view and right intention—the wisdom from which the rest of the path grows. Right view, he suggests, is not a belief we acquire but seeing what is actually here, before we add our story about it. “The eye opens. The heart leans,” he says — one sees, one moves, and they are not two.

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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.

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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)…

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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.

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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…

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