Archives: Authors

Rebecca Bradshaw

Rebecca Bradshaw is a guiding teacher emeritus at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. She lives with her husband and two cats.

Hokuto Daniel Diffin

Hokuto Daniel Diffin Osho is an ordained dharma teacher, president of the board at the Zen Studies Society, a poet, and a physician.

Heather Sanche

Heather Sanche is the author of The Life of the Buddha. In 2007, she took temporary ordination within the Pa-Auk tradition and lived in a forest monastery in Myanmar.

Thomas Calobrisi received his PhD in religious studies from the Graduate Theological Union in 2021. He is currently a member of the adjunct faculty at the Institute of Buddhist Studies and an admissions counselor at University of the West. His research focuses on how Buddhist ideas, practices, and artifacts have been recontextualized in the religious and cutlural landscape of 21st century North America.

Robert Stevens

Bob Stevens serves as Chair of the Governing Council of the Shambhala Meditation Center of New York and Secretary of the Buddhist Council of New York. Bob has been a student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche since the early 1980s. A management consultant, he lives in New York City with his wife Anna and son Arthur.

Peter Moretzsohn

Peter Moretzsohn is a poet, musician, gardener and Zen practitioner living with his wife in central Vermont. Born in Pennsylvania, he fell in love with both the Dharma and the Green Mountains as a college student, and his life has been oriented toward them ever since. His poetry and prose have been published in the Philadelphia-based Quaker magazine Friends Journal. His work has always revolved around themes of stillness and silence, and a sense of something uncontrived to be found therein. Since 2019 he has been engaged in formal Zen training as a lay student at Zen Mountain Monastery in Mt. Tremper, NY.

Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva, a world-renowned environmental thinker, activist, feminist, philosopher of science, writer and science policy advocat, is the founder of Navdanya Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (India) and President of Navdanya International. Trained as a Physicist at the University of Punjab, she completed her Ph.D. on the ‘Hidden Variables and Non-locality in Quantum Theory’ from the University of Western Ontario, Canada. She later shifted to inter-disciplinary research in science, technology and environmental policy, which she carried out at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, India. In 1982 she founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE), an independent research institute that addresses the most significant problems of ecology of our times, and two years later, Navdanya (‘nine seeds’) the movement in defense of biodiversity and small farmers. In 2011 she founded Navdanya International in Italy and is Chairman of the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture, co-founded with the then President of the Region of Tuscany. Recipient of many awards, including in 1993 the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’, and named among the top five “Most Important People in Asia” by AsiaWeek in 2001. She is a prolific writer and author of numerous books and serves on the board of the International Forum on Globalization, and member of the executive committee of the World Future Council.

Moments of Space

Matt Benning

Tami Simon

Tami Simon is the founder and CEO of Sounds True, a multi-media company that disseminates spiritual wisdom.

Aurelia Santos

Aurelia Santos is an award-winning photographer, nonprofit communications specialist, and dance organizer in Oakland. Passionate about the immigrant experience, social justice, and sex positivity, Aurelia uses storytelling and dancing for her brand of social activism.

Aakash Chowkase

Aakash Chowkase, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Greater Good Science Center, where he is conducting research on bridging differences. Specifically, he is developing a tool to measure social cohesion and then using it to evaluate GGSC’s bridging differences practices.

Maryam Abdullah

Maryam Abdullah, Ph.D., is the Parenting Program Director of the Greater Good Science Center. She is a developmental psychologist with expertise in parent-child relationships and children’s development of prosocial behaviors.

Bradley Donaldson

Formerly a monk, Bradley Donaldson teaches meditation. He’s focused on helping queer and BIPOC folks heal and cultivate connection.

Lama Hun Lye

Lama Hun Lye grew up in Malaysia and has a Ph.D in Religious Studies from University of Virginia. He is a lama in the Drikung Kagyu since being appointed a Dorjé Lopön (lit. “vajra-master”) by H.H. Drikung Kyabgön Chetsang Rinpoché in 2013. He is founder of Urban Dharma NC and Drikung Dharmakirti International Sangha.

Roberval Oliveira

Roberval Oliveira is a mindfulness meditation teacher and the author of Silence: Journals from a Meditation Retreat.

Jan Westerhoff

Jan Westerhoff is Professor of Buddhist Philosophy at the University of Oxford. His research concentrates on Buddhist philosophy (primarily on Madhyamaka) and on contemporary analytic philosophy (mainly on metaphysics). His publications include Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka and The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy.

David Germano

David Germano, PhD, is Executive Director of the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia, where he has taught and researched Tibetan and Buddhist Studies since 1992. A co-leader of the Student Flourishing Initiative, a partnership of UVA, the University of Wisconsin, and Penn State University, he is also lead organizer of an international research community of scholars and translators specializing in the Great Perfection tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.

Adrienne Chang

Adrienne Chang is a student in the tradition of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. She has co-led Buddhist study and meditation retreats in Europe, North America, and online. She is also a participant in the Milinda Program, a ten-year, multi-sangha, shedra-style teacher training program for Western dharma instructors under the vision and guidance of Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche.

Wayne Shorter

Wayne Shorter (1933-2023) was a jazz brass player and composer, and practiced Nichiren Buddhism as a member of the Buddhist association Soka Gakkai International.