Judy Roitman

Judy Roitman

Judy Roitman (Zen Master Bon Hae) began practicing Zen in 1976 with Zen Master Seung Sahn at the Cambridge Zen Center. Two years later, she helped found the Kansas Zen Center with, among others, her husband Stan Lombardo. She was granted authorization as a teacher (inka) in the Kwan Um School of Zen in 1998 and received dharma transmission in 2013. She has also had a long and distinguished career as a professor of mathematics (although now retired from academic life) and as a poet.

Recent Articles

Only Don’t Know

Whatever answers you think you have, says Judy Roitman, you don’t—and in that not knowing, we find the heart of Buddhist practice.

All Beings Liberating, Together, At Once

Judy Roitman unpacks the Mahayana vision. "The essence of this vision," she says, "is a universe in which time and space are flexible, and in which beings are neither separate nor dissolved in each other."

There Is No Author

When Judy Roitman learned her favorite dharma text was actually a patchwork of phrases and poems lifted from other sources, she started looking into the authorship of Buddhist texts. What she found surprised her.

Zen Math Will Never Add Up

Nagarjuna’s four propositions tell us that something may be what it is or it may not; it may be neither or it may be both. This is Zen math.