About
Richard Schwartz is a family therapist and academic who developed Internal Family Systems (IFS), a therapeutic approach grounded in systems thinking. IFS emerged from his work with therapy clients who described multiple parts within themselves. Schwartz identified systemic patterns in how these parts organize across individuals and found that when parts feel safe, clients spontaneously access qualities he terms the Self—characterized by confidence, openness, and compassion. From this state, clients access their own healing capacity. Schwartz has published multiple books and over fifty articles on IFS and has served as a featured speaker for national professional organizations.
Teaching focus
Schwartz appears at Upaya as part of the wider faculty Roshi Joan Halifax has gathered to teach alongside the Soto Zen core. Upaya's programs regularly bring in scholars, clinicians, scientists, poets, and knowledge holders from beyond the Zen sangha to teach in dialogue with the practice. Schwartz's sessions live inside that container. The work tends to ask how a particular field of expertise meets contemplative practice and what each can learn from the other. Sessions are usually held alongside zazen and the Soto Zen forms that structure the days at Upaya, so students can expect a rhythm of formal sittings, talks or seminars from Schwartz, group conversation, and silence. The framing is open enough for non-Buddhist participants to take part fully. The depth comes from Schwartz's own field rather than from technical Zen instruction. For students with a steady practice, the value is in seeing how practice meets a specific discipline, and how that discipline reads when held inside the container Upaya provides. For people newer to Zen, Schwartz's sessions are a low-friction way into that container.
Background
Richard C. Schwartz, PhD 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 Schwartz has chosen to share there. Richard Schwartz began his career as a systemic family therapist and an academic. Grounded in systems thinking, Dr. Schwartz developed Internal Family Systems (IFS) in response to clients’ descriptions of various parts within themselves. He focused on the relationships among these parts and noticed that there were systemic patterns to the way they were organized across clients. He also found that when the clients’ parts felt safe and were allowed to relax, the clients would experience spontaneously the qualities of confidence, openness, and compassion that Dr. Schwartz came to call the Self. He found that when in that state of Self, clients would know how to heal their parts. A featured speaker for national professional organizations, Dr. Schwartz has published many books and over fifty articles about IFS. That body of work places Schwartz 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. Schwartz'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. Schwartz contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Schwartz'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
Schwartz'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. Schwartz contributes as part of Upaya's wider faculty rather than as a Zen priest. Information about specific dharma transmission lines, ordination, or external lineage roots belongs on Schwartz's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Schwartz at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Schwartz'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 Schwartz is teaching.
