Archives: Authors

Mary Ray Cate

Mary Ray Cate is a physician, artist, and graduate of the Buddhist chaplaincy program at Upaya Zen Center. In addition to having a grown son, she has been a foster mom to many children.

Butterfly (Tony Pham) (he/they) started meditating in 2010 during a difficult time when he was questioning all the stories people told him about how and who to be. He is a heritage Buddhist, facilitator, and healer that occupies the intersection of queer and BIPOC identities. He also identifies as a 2nd generation Vietnamese American whose parents immigrated to the United States as refugees from war. Butterfly stewards practices rooted in compassion, indigeneity, and sacred lineages. They are an advanced student of Lama Rod Owens (Vajrayana/Tibetan Buddhism). They are also an alumnus of the East Bay Meditation Center’s PiTA8 trauma informed mindfulness program. In addition to being a certified Compassion Cultivation Training © teacher at Tibet House US, he has taught meditation at Maha Rose and Madhura Studios in New York City. Butterfly has also completed death doula and non-violent communication training. They offered a Dharma talk and guided meditation about compassion during The Dalai Lama Global Vision Summit 2023. Butterfly resides in Brooklyn (occupied Canarsie/Munsee Lenape land). For more information, please visit butterflytruth.com

Ken Kessel

Ken Kessel (Zen Master Jok Um) received transmission in the Kwan Um School of Zen. He’s a licensed clinical social worker, specializing in infant mental health.

David J. Keuler

Wendy Garling

Wendy Garling is an independent scholar with a BA from Wellesley College and MA specializing in Sanskrit language and literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She is author of the award-winning <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Woman-Raised-Buddha-Extraordinary-Mahaprajapati/dp/1611806690/ref=d_pd_sbs_sccl_4_1/131-6364331-1937914?pd_rd_w=sYQT1&content-id=amzn1.sym.d8274306-8eaa-4da3-9175-aca6400f9aa9&pf_rd_p=d8274306-8eaa-4da3-9175-aca6400f9aa9&pf_rd_r=Z3BTXPE4776634P3CJCY&pd_rd_wg=FD5yx&pd_rd_r=f42ad314-8770-4a16-bfb3-b73f27755407&pd_rd_i=1611806690&psc=1">The Woman Who Raised the Buddha: The Extraordinary Life of Mahaprajapati,</a> with Foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama (Shambhala Publications, 2021) and <a href="https://shop.taramandala.org/products/stars-at-dawn">Stars at Dawn: Forgotten Stories of Women in the Buddha’s Life </a> (Shambhala Publications, 2016).

Meido Moore

Meido Moore is abbot of Korinji, a Rinzai Zen monastery in Reedsburg, Wisconsin.

Roxanne Dault

Roxanne Dault is a guiding teacher at True North Insight (Voie Boréale) in Canada.

Jisho Sara Siebert

Jisho Sara Siebert is a Soto Zen Buddhist priest and teacher at Zen Fields in Ames, Iowa. Led to Buddhism by the suffering she saw in her work to prevent domestic and sexual violence, she found her way to Los Angeles, where she first met her teacher, then to Papua New Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, monasteries in Japan, and Haiti. She now works for Beyond Borders, an organization committed to preventing violence against girls and women and ending child slavery.

Bhikkhu Analayo

Bhikkhu Analayo is a German monk and scholar, ordained in 1995 in Sri Lanka. His books include Satipatthana: The Direct Path to Realization and Mindfully Facing Climate Change .

Pawan Bareja

Pawan Bareja, PhD, is a mindfulness teacher and graduate of the Spirit Rock Teacher Training program. As a trauma resolution practitioner, she works with a diverse population of clients.

Arisika Razak

Arisika Razak RAZAK is Professor Emerita at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where she also served as the director of the Women’s Spirituality MA and PhD program and as Director of Diversity. She has been an inner-city midwife for over two decades, has performed nationally and internationally as a spiritual dancer, and has led embodied healing workshops for over thirty-five years. She teaches at East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland.

Lynette Monteiro

Lynette Monteiro is a clinical psychologist and coauthor of Mindfulness Starts Here: An Eight-Week Guide to Skillful Living. She blogs at <a href="http://www.108zenbooks.com">108zenbooks.com</a>.

Robert Waldinger

Robert Waldinger is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and Zen teacher who directs the Harvard Study of Adult Development. He is the <a href="https://www.newtonzen.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Henry David Thoreau Sangha</a>’s resident teacher.

Annie Obermeyer

Annie Obermeyer loves hazelnuts with chocolate, stock from roasted bones, and Brahms Op.118, A Major.

Rashid Hughes

Rashid Hughes (he/him) is a native of Richmond. He is a proud graduate of the Howard University Department of Music and the Howard University School of Divinity. Rashid is a certified Mindfulness and Yoga Teacher and a Restorative Justice Facilitator in Washington DC. In 2019, Rashid co-founded the <a href="https://www.heartrefugemindfulnesscommunity.org/" rel="noopener">Heart Refuge Mindfulness Community</a>, a Mindfulness Community in Washington, DC that is dedicated to inspiring Black, Indigenous, and People of Color to live with love and courage. In 2020, he was selected to be an Affiliate Teacher for the Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC. and he was also invited to be a teacher of the Presence Collective. In 2021, Rashid created the <a href="https://www.mindful.org/r-e-s-t-a-guided-practice-for-the-tired-and-weary/" rel="noopener">Four Pillars of R.E.S.T.</a>, a non-dual contemplative practice that offers four simple but direct pointers for practitioners to connect with the natural clarity of mind with ease. Rashid’s devotion to truth and compassion leads him to teach faith-based and non-religious audiences, including secular Mindfulness Communities, Buddhist Sanghas, and the Black Church. The teachings of James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and the music of Miles Davis and John Coltrane are deep sources of inspiration and hope for Rashid. Rashid is devoted to helping all people achieve fulfillment through radical honesty and self-compassion. You can find more information about Rashid at <a href="http://www.rashidhughes.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer">www.rashidhughes.com</a>

Lisa Ernst

Lisa Ernst is a meditation teacher, artist and founder of One Dharma Nashville. In her teaching, Lisa emphasizes both transformational insight and everyday awakening as an invitation to embrace all of the path’s possibilities. Lisa has been meditating for 30 years in the Zen and Vipassana traditions. She received dharma teaching authorization through Trudy Goodman in the Thai Forest lineage of Ajahn Chah, Jack Kornfield, etc.

Ralph H. Craig III

Ralph H. Craig III is a PhD candidate in Religious Studies at Stanford University. He is a scholar of South Asian Buddhism and American Buddhism, and he has published in the Buddhist-Christian Studies journal, the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, and on the American Academy of Religion’s Reading Religion website.

Shahara Godfrey

Shahara Godfrey is a core teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center and holds a PhD in Transformative Learning from California Institute of Integral Studies.

Resmaa Menakem

Resmaa Menakem, MSW, LICSW, SEP, has served as director of counseling services for the Tubman Family Alliance; as behavioral health director for African American Family Services in Minneapolis; as a domestic violence counselor for Wilder Foundation; as a certified Military and Family Life Consultant for the U.S. Armed Forces; as a trauma consultant for the Minneapolis Public Schools; and as a Cultural Somatics consultant for the Minneapolis Police Department. As a Community Care Counselor, he managed the wellness and counseling services for civilians on fifty-three US military bases in Afghanistan. He currently teaches workshops on Cultural Somatics for audiences of African Americans, European Americans, and police officers, and is a therapist in private practice.

David Hinton

David Hinton has published numerous books of poetry and essays and many translations of ancient Chinese poetry and philosophy. This widely acclaimed work has earned Hinton a Guggenheim Fellowship, Landon Translation Award, PEN American Translation Award, and a lifetime achievement award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.