About
Jose Shinzan Palma is an ordained Zen priest in the lineage of Roshi Joan Jiko Halifax. Born in Veracruz, Mexico, he trained at the Toronto Zen Buddhist Temple from 1996 to 2005 under Korean Zen teacher Ven. Samu Sunim, who ordained him as a priest in 2004. He founded the Open Gate Zen Collective in San Diego, California. Palma teaches at Upaya Zen Center in New Mexico, Zen groups in Mexico City and Bogotá, Colombia, and co-teaches teen retreats through IBME. His stated focus includes mentoring young adults and developing Zen practice within Hispanic communities in the United States and Mexico.
Teaching focus
Palma's teaching at Upaya sits inside the center's Soto Zen container. The basic form is zazen, just sitting, with the posture and breath held lightly and the mind allowed to settle without force. Around that core, Upaya's programs build out a wider arc that includes the Bodhisattva precepts, oryoki meal practice, walking meditation (kinhin), dharma talks, and the GRACE framework Roshi Joan developed for clinicians working at the bedside. Palma teaches inside that framework, which means the work isn't just on the cushion. Students are asked to bring practice into the spaces where it actually gets tested: at the bedside, in conversation, in moments of grief or political reactivity, in the long, slow work of climate and justice. Upaya's approach is recognizable for its refusal to keep zazen and the world in separate boxes. The cushion and the clinic, the cushion and the kitchen, the cushion and the protest line are all treated as the same field of practice, not different ones. Palma's contribution stays in that key. Teaching sessions emphasize uprightness, attention, and the Bodhisattva vow as something lived in specific situations rather than recited as an idea. There's room for silence. There's also room for hard conversations about what practice asks of a person in a world under pressure.
Background
Jose Shinzan Palma, Sensei appears in Upaya Zen Center's teacher and faculty roster as part of the wider contemplative community Roshi Joan Halifax has gathered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, over the past four decades. The biographical material on file is drawn directly from Upaya's own teacher page and reflects what Palma has chosen to share there. Sensei Jose Shinzan Palma was born in Veracruz, Mexico. He is an ordained Zen priest and the Dharma successor of Roshi Joan Jiko Halifax. He met Korean Zen teacher, Ven. Samu Sunim in Mexico City in 1996, and then trained in the Buddhist Maitreya Seminary while living in the Toronto Zen Buddhist Temple where he stayed until 2005. He was ordained as a Zen Buddhist priest by Ven. Samu Sunim in 2004. He is the founder of the Open Gate Zen Collective in San Diego, CA; Co-teaches teen retreats in the US for IBME, and is a guest teacher at Upaya Zen Center in New Mexico, Zen Groups in México City, and Bogotá, Colombia. His vision is to continue to mentor and teach young men and women and to create a Zen Hispanic community in the USA and Mexico. For more information, go to: www.joseshinzanpalma.org. That body of work places Palma inside a center known for blending Soto Zen practice with contemplative care for the dying, climate work, neuroscience dialogues, and a long-running program for clinicians and chaplains called GRACE. Upaya's roster mixes resident priests with visiting scholars, doctors, scientists, poets, and indigenous knowledge holders, and the programs reflect that blend. Palma's appearances at Upaya situate this work inside that wider conversation between zazen and the world it sits inside. For practitioners who arrive at Upaya through a sesshin or a Being with Dying training, the common thread is a posture of upright, alert presence under whatever conditions show up. The forms are recognizably Soto Zen: zazen, kinhin, oryoki, the Bodhisattva precepts, dharma talks, and dokusan with senior teachers. The framing is wider than any single discipline, which is part of what has made Upaya a meeting ground for working clinicians, scientists, artists, and long-time Buddhist practitioners. Palma contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Palma's career outside Upaya can follow the linked website and external publications listed on the Upaya page itself, which is where any deeper biographical detail belongs.
Lineage
Palma's teaching home for the work documented here is Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, founded by Roshi Joan Halifax in the 1980s and rooted in the Soto Zen lineage. Upaya's broader faculty includes resident priests, visiting senior teachers, scientists, clinicians, poets, and indigenous knowledge holders. Palma teaches in the Soto Zen lineage as a priest within that container. Information about specific dharma transmission lines, ordination, or external lineage roots belongs on Palma's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Palma at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Palma's own area of focus. Days follow Upaya's rhythm of sittings, walking meditation, meals, talks, and time for questions. Silence is taken seriously, but so are the conversations that come out of it. The framing is wide enough for people from outside Buddhist practice to take part fully. Long-time Zen students will recognize the forms; newcomers will be supported through them. Expect to leave with a clearer sense of how practice meets the specific subject Palma is teaching.
