Archives: Authors

Gregory Mengel

Gregory Mengel is a senior teacher with the UNtraining, which offers classes for white-identified people to unlearn white racial conditioning.

Susan Kaiser Greenland

Susan Kaiser Greenland is a mindfulness educator who distills wisdom traditions and scientific research into straightforward practices. Her new book is Real-World Enlightenment.

Jeffrey Hopkins was Professor Emeritus of Tibetan Buddhist Studies at the University of Virginia, where he taught Tibetan studies and Tibetan language for more than thirty years. He received a BA magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1963, trained for five years at the Lamaist Buddhist Monastery of America (now the Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center) in New Jersey, and received a PhD in Buddhist Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1973. From 1979 to 1989 he served as His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s chief interpreter into English on lecture tours in the U.S., Canada, Southeast Asia, Great Britain, and Switzerland. He published more than fifty books, including Meditation on Emptiness, a seminal work of English language scholarship on Tibetan Madhyamaka thought, as well as translations of works by Tsongkhapa, Dolpopa, and His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. At the University of Virginia he founded programs in Buddhist Studies and Tibetan Studies and served as Director of the Center for South Asian Studies for twelve years. Jeffrey passed away on July 3, 2024.

Martina Draszczyk

Martina Draszczyk is a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, an interpreter, and a Dharma teacher. She holds a PhD in Buddhist Studies and Tibetology from the University of Vienna, where she engaged in research for many years. Her work focuses on Tibetan Madhyamaka, Mahamudra, buddha-nature, and mindfulness. Draszczyk served as a Guest Professor at McGill University and the University of Vienna.

Kim Thai

Kim Thai (she/her) is an interdisciplinary mindfulness writer and teacher. As an Emmy-award storyteller and a proud Queer kid of Vietnamese refugees, she has uplifted marginalized voices across different mediums for almost twenty years. Her personal essays on identity, healing and social justice have been published in New York Magazine’s The Cut, Newsweek, Buzzfeed, and more. She is a certified yoga and meditation teacher.

Marc Lesser

Marc Lesser is an executive coach, speaker, and Zen teacher with more than 25 years of experience as a leader and supporting leaders to reach their full potential, as business executives and as full, thriving, human beings. Marc helped develop a mindfulness-based emotional intelligence training for leaders within Google. He then co-founded and was CEO of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute from 2012– 2017. Marc has been CEO of three companies and has an MBA degree from New York University. Marc is the author of five books including Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader: Lessons From Google and a Zen Monastery Kitchen, and Less: Accomplishing More By Doing Less. Prior to his business and coaching career, Marc was a resident of the San Francisco Zen Center for 10 years, including director of Tassajara, Zen Mountain Center, the first Zen monastery in the western world. He has a passion for utilizing business as a force for positive change and sees work as a place to cultivate character and bring meaning and satisfaction to everyday life. Find out more at <a href="https://marclesser.net">marclesser.net</a>

Rev. Syd Yang

Syd Yang is an ordained Buddhist minister, spiritual counselor, movement chaplain, writer, speaker, teacher, and group facilitator. The work and medicine they share with the world centers the voices and lived experiences of queer, trans, non-binary folks of color and finds its resonance at the intersection of memory, bodies, sexuality, spirituality, and mental health.

Paul Daisuke Goodman

Paul Daisuke Goodman manages his own production company called Eight East Productions. It’s named for the wing of the hospital where he made his first films, Evergreen and No No Girl.

Carlo Carranza

Carlo Carranza has studied and practiced Buddhism for over 24 years, beginning in 2001 with teachings from his main teacher, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, at the University of British Columbia. A monk for 10 years with vows from the 14th Dalai Lama, he is a Siddhartha’s Intent instructor. He has taught internationally, embraced a non-sectarian approach, translated works, and is involved with the Khyentse Foundation’s Milinda Program for Western Instructors.

Anjali Sawhney

Life coach Anjali Sawhney is on East Bay Meditation Center’s program committee and leadership sangha (board).

David Whitehorn

David Whitehorn has been a student of Trungpa Rinpoche and Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche for many years. His professional credentials include a PhD in Neurophysiology and a Masters degree in Nursing. He is a founding Director of the Atlantic Contemplative Centre, a charitable not-for-profit organization in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Ken McLeod

Ken McLeod is a senior Western translator, author, and teacher of Tibetan Buddhism. He received traditional training mainly in the Shangpa Kagyu lineage through a long association with his principal teacher, Kalu Rinpoche, whom he met in 1970.

Cortland Dahl

Cortland Dahl is a scientist, Buddhist scholar and translator, and meditation teacher. He has practiced at Buddhist centers across Asia and lived for eight years in Tibetan refugee settlements near Kathmandu, Nepal. He researches meditation and human flourishing at the Center for Healthy Minds, and he cofounded Tergar International—a network of meditation centers with activities on six continents—with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. Dahl lives with his wife and son in Madison, Wisconsin. He is the author of <a href="https://www.shambhala.com/meditators-guide-to-buddhism.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A Meditator’s Guide to Buddhism </a> and is leading a Tergar International <a href="https://vajrayana.tergar.org/course/a-meditators-guide-to-buddhism" target="_blank" rel="noopener">course</a> based on the book.

NELSON FOSTER

NELSON FOSTER began Zen practice under Diamond Sangha founder Robert Aitken in 1972, later becoming his Dharma heir and succeeding him at its Honolulu temple. Today he teaches in this lay lineage mainly at Ring of Bone Zendo in the Sierra Nevada foothills, while also serving East Rock Sangha in New England and making periodic visits to sanghas in Hawai’i. His Buddhist publications include Storehouse of Treasures and The Roaring Stream.

sujatha baliga

As director of the Restorative Justice Project, sujatha baliga helped communities across the nation implement restorative justice alternatives to juvenile detention and zero-tolerance school discipline policies. She was a 2019 MacArthur Fellow.

Renato Almanzor

Renato Almanzor, PhD, endeavors to be a transformation catalyst. He has over twenty-five years of experience developing leaders committed to equitable communities, multicultural organizations, and social justice.

Br. Phap Huu

Brother Phap Huu began training with Thich Nhat Hanh at the age of thirteen, when he first entered the monastery to become a monk. Today he’s cohost of the Plum Village podcast The Way Out Is In and the abbot of Plum Village’s Upper Hamlet.

D.E. Osto

D. E. Osto is senior lecturer in philosophy at Massey University. They are the author of Altered States: Buddhism and Psychedelic Spirituality in America (Columbia, 2016) and An Indian Tantric Tradition and Its Modern Global Revival: Contemporary Nondual Śaivism (2020), among other books.

Andrew Lam

Andrew Lam’s next collection of short stories, Stories from the Edge of the Sea, is due out in March 2025.

Mimi Kwa

An international news anchor, Mimi Kwa was the first Asian Australian on a major television network. She’s also the author of a new memoir, House of Kwa.