Archives: Authors

Herbie Hancock

Herbie Hancock is a jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer. He practices Nichiren Buddhism as a member of the Buddhist association Soka Gakkai International. His memoir, Possibilities, was released in 2015.

Anne Seidlitz

Anne Seidlitz has been a writer in documentary film for almost two decades. Her work has appeared on PBS's American Masters, Great Performances, and American Experience series, among others, as well as screened theatrically. Her most recent writing credit is Becoming Frederick Douglass (now streaming on PBS), produced by Firelight Media and Maryland Public Television. Anne has also worked extensively with independent filmmakers, and her particular area of focus has been on Black American social, political, and cultural history. Anne began practicing Buddhism in the early 1980s while still in college, and has been a lead writer on the Chogyam Trungpa Digital Library project since 2020. She is currently writing a book about the jazz pianist Hampton Hawes.

John Mifsud

John Mifsud was born on the Island of Malta and identifies as Arab-American. He has practiced Insight Meditation since 2001 and graduated from the Community Dharma Leaders Training Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center where he served on the Board of Directors for seven years. John has extensive retreat experience and has practiced throughout Asia. He is the founding member of the Deep Refuge Sangha for Alphabet Brothers of Color in Oakland. He has taught internationally with a special interest in delivering mindfulness tools to marginalized communities.

Jonathan C. Gold

Jonathan C. Gold is Professor of Religion and Director of the Center for Culture, Society and Religion at Princeton University. His research focuses on Indian and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, and he is the author of Paving the Great Way: Vasubandhu’s Unifying Buddhist Philosophy (2015) and The Dharma’s Gatekeepers: Sakya Paṇḍita on Buddhist Scholarship in Tibet (2007), and co-editor of Readings of Śāntideva’s Guide to Bodhisattva Practice (2019). His research focuses on Buddhist approaches to language, learning, self-cultivation and ethics (which are connected), and seeks to show how Buddhism is relevant to modern conversations. In his current work, he is trying to craft Buddhist tools for contemporary society and politics.

C. Pierce Salguero

Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and cross-cultural exchange. He has a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia. He is the author of Buddhish: A Guide to the 20 Most Important Ideas for the Curious and Skeptical and A Global History of Buddhism & Medicine, both published in 2022.

Seth Zuihō Segall

Seth Zuihō Segall, Ph.D. is a Zen Buddhist priest and clinical psychologist who teaches at Pamsula Zen of Westchester and the New York Insight Meditation Center, is a contributing editor for Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, and the science writer for the Mindfulness Research Monthly. Dr. Segall’s publications include The House We Live In: Virtue, Wisdom, and Pluralism (2023), Buddhism and Human Flourishing (2020), Living Zen: A Practical Guide of a Balanced Existence (2020), Encountering Buddhism: Western Psychology and Buddhist Teachings (2003) and recent chapters in The Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Meditation (2022), and the Handbook of Positive Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality (2022). His blog, <a href="https://www.existentialbuddhist.com/2023/01/youre-going-to-carry-that-weight/">The Existential Buddhist</a>, contains commentary on Buddhist philosophy, ethics, history, art, meditation, and social engagement

Richard Kahn

Richard Kahn, PhD, MS, RD, is a Dharma Teacher in the Kwan Um School of Zen and teaches meditation in two synagogues in NYC. He writes about meditation and dairy foods. He has a nutrition practice specializing in infants and young children.

Sister Peace

Sister Peace is a nun in the Plum Village tradition. Recently, her service and practice have been focused on the children jailed in the Shelby County Juvenile Detention Center in Memphis.

Kathy Yep

Kathy Yep is a practitioner in the Plum Village tradition and a qi gong teacher/student in the Wild Goose tradition of Yan Mei Jun lineage. She is also longtime resident of Monterey Park and a tenured full professor of Asian American Studies at Pitzer College of the Claremont Colleges. For more information: <a href="http://www.kathyyep.com">www.kathyyep.com</a>

Ravi Chandra

Ravi Chandra is a blogger for Psychology Today. His documentary The Bandaged Place: From AIDS to Covid and Racial Justice won Best Film at the 2021 Cannes Independent Film Festival.

Som Pourfarzaneh

Som Pourfarzaneh is an assistant professor of Islamic and Digital Media Studies at Starr King School for the Ministry.

Keisha Bush

Keisha Bush is the author of No Heaven for Good Boys. She’s currently pursuing a master’s degree in theology at Harvard Divinity School.

Reiko Ohnuma

Reiko Ohnuma is the author of Giving Away the Body in Indian Buddhist Literature and Unfortunate Destiny: Animals in the Indian Buddhist Imagination.

Dr. g

Dr. g (Claudelle R. Glasgow), Psy.D., SEP, NEDA Proficient (doc/we) is a multi-hyphenate serving as healing artist, writer, and educator. Dr. g’s work has been supported by fellowships and craft shops through Hugo House, VONA, The Watering Hole, Hurston/Wright, Anaphora, and RWW. Their chapbook the Devils that raised Us was longlisted at Frontier Poetry in 2022. Dr. g's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Killens Review, Black Lawrence Press, Moko: Caribbean Arts & Letters, Rigorous Magazine, & Obsidian Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. With nearly 20 years as a healing artist, their work is emergent & grounded in a radical existential-somatic approach, which works with the power of the here & now, somatics, creativity & liberation. Doc supports the global majority in addressing grief, liminal space, and intergenerational and ancestral traumas. Stay informed of Dr. g’s offerings, sign up for their newsletter at <a href="https://www.claudelleglasgow.com">https://www.claudelleglasgow.com</a> and follow on IG: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/garudagrin/">@garudagrin</a>.

Brian Lesage

Brian Lesage has practiced Buddhist meditation since 1988 and has taught meditation since 2000. He has studied in the Zen, Theravada and Tibetan schools of Buddhism. He was ordained in the Rinzai Zen tradition in 1996. His training in Vipassana Meditation includes doing extended meditation retreats in Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, and India as well as numerous retreats in the U.S. He leads retreats and teaches meditation courses nationwide. You can also visit his website for more information at: <a title="https://liberatingawareness.com/" href="https://liberatingawareness.com/" rel="noopener">liberatingawareness.com</a>

Judy Yushin Nakatomi

Judy Yushin Nakatomi (she/we) is a mother, writer, and community cultivator. She practices in her root, ancestral tradition, Jodo Shinshu, and is a member of the Plum Village Order of Interbeing.

Wes Nisker

Wes “Scoop” Nisker is an award-winning broadcast journalist and commentator, Buddhist meditation teacher, a bestselling author, and a standup Dharma comic who has been described in the New York Times as “masterful at using humor to lighten the enlightenment journey.” He was the founder and co-editor of the Buddhist journal “Inquiring Mind,” and for the past 40 years has been leading retreats and workshops in Buddhist Insight Meditation and philosophy at venues internationally. Two of his <a href="https://wesnisker.com/books/">classic books</a> are being reissued in new editions: <a href="https://www.innertraditions.com/books/being-nature/">Being Nature: A Down-to-Earth Guide to the Four Foundations of Mindfulness</a> (Inner Traditions, November 2022) and The Big Bang, the Buddha, and the Baby Boom: The Spiritual Experiments of My Generation (Monkfish Book Publishing Co., June 2023).

Cinthia Font

Cinthia Font is a translator and interpreter, fluent in seven languages: Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French, English, Catalan, and Tibetan. She teaches Tibetan language in various university programs and does oral and written translation for dharma communities around the world, primarily for the Spanish-speaking students of Her Eminence Mindrolling Jetsün Khandro Rinpoche. To learn more about Cinthia and her work visit <a href="http://drayang.com/">drayang.com</a>

Santiago Santai Jiménez

Santiago Santai Jiménez is a Colombian Zen monk and co-founder of the Centro Integral Colombia. Santiago is also a multi-instrumentalist musician, music producer, and industrial engineer. Santiago's approach to dharma integrates the gradual and sudden approaches to awakening, combining the systematic development of the mind found in some Buddhist traditions, with the immediate realization that is characteristic of some forms of Zen. He has worked in different countries with individuals and groups ranging from indigenous tribes to multinational executives, sometimes in the same setting.

Nagapriya

Nagapriya is an ordained Dharmachari in the Triratna Buddhist Community. Originally from the UK, in 2013 he moved to Mexico, where he helped found the Centro Budista de Cuernavaca. He is cofounder and director of Editorial Dharmamegha, a small publishing venture dedicated to sharing Buddhist teachings in the Spanish-speaking world. He also works as part of a team training men from Latin America for ordination into the Triratna Buddhist Order.