About
Koshin Flint Sparks is a Zen priest and guiding teacher in the Soto Zen lineage. He holds a PhD in psychology and worked as a psychologist and psychotherapist specializing in behavioral medicine before beginning formal Zen training at San Francisco Zen Center in 1994 under Zenkei Blanche Hartman. He was ordained as a priest in 2001 and received Lay Entrustment in 2007. He founded the Austin Zen Center and co-founded Appamada, a lay Zen practice center in Austin. In 2022, he received Dharma Transmission from Bushin Peg Syverson. He currently guides sanghas in Austin, Madison, Minneapolis/St Paul, the UK, and Switzerland, and is based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Teaching focus
Sparks'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. Sparks 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. Sparks'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
Koshin Flint Sparks 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 Sparks has chosen to share there. Koshin Flint Sparks, PhD, is a former psychologist and psychotherapist specializing in the field of Behavioral Medicine. With graduate degrees in both Biology and Psychology, he has directed hospital-based programs primarily in oncology care, as well as working as a consultant to cancer treatment centers and hospitals throughout the United States. He began his formal Zen training at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1994 with his teacher Zenkei Blanche Hartman. He was ordained as a priest in 2001 and received Lay Entrustment in 2007 from Zenkei Roshi while actively guiding the Austin Zen Center, which he founded and nurtured in its early days. He was also central in the development of Appamada, a lay Zen practice center in Austin, Texas. He remains a guiding teacher for Appamada as well as for the Open Door Zen Community in Madison, Wisconsin, and Awakening Together in Minneapolis/St Paul, Minnesota. He helped establish and is the guiding teacher for three sanghas in the UK (Nothing Special, Nothing Missing, and Nothing Extra) who practice as Just This Zen Community, and for the Mountain Bell Sangha in Switzerland. In 2022, he received Dharma Transmission through Bushin Peg Syverson, his teaching partner at Appamada, with the support of Shosan Victoria Austin from the San Francisco Zen Center. He currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. That body of work places Sparks 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. Sparks'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. Sparks contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Sparks'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
Sparks'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. Sparks 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 Sparks's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Sparks at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Sparks'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 Sparks is teaching.
