Upaya Zen Center's Dharma Podcast Up a Tree: Precarity, Not-Knowing, and Awakening Times
Mar 30, 2026
Wendy Lau, a physician specializing in end-of-life care and clinical training, reflects on sitting with patients amid uncertainty. She discusses training clinicians to hold not-knowing. Conversations explore precarity, the man-in-a-tree koan, finding presence in danger, and framing current crises as awakening times.
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Precarity Calls For Inner Resilience
- Precarity and global suffering demand inner resilience rather than easy solutions.
- Joan Halifax links current wars, displacement and climate-related collapse to a need for "strong back" ethical steadiness cultivated by practice.
Roshi's Visit To Rohingya Encampments
- Halifax recounts visiting Rohingya settlements near Kathmandu and witnessing starvation and extreme living conditions.
- She describes broiling heat, fetid shacks, videos of relatives incinerated, and people who were unemployable due to lack of UN recognition.
The Koan Maps Our Modern Indeterminacy
- The Kilgand koan Man Up a Tree frames modern uncertainty as inescapable indeterminacy rather than a solvable problem.
- The koan's moral: opening your mouth risks death, staying silent makes you useless, mirroring our contemporary paralysis.