photo of Lama Tsomo

Lama Tsomo

Lama Tsomo is an American Buddhist teacher in the Namchak lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. She is the author of <em>Why Is the Dalai Lama Always Smiling?</em>

Van Jones

Van Jones

Van Jones is a lawyer, CNN political commentator, and founder of The Dream Corps. His new book is <em>Beyond the Messy Truth: How We Came Apart, How We Come Together</em>.

Bob Doppelt

Bob Doppelt facilitates the Dharma teachers Climate Collaborative and directs the Resource Innovation Group. He is the author of <i>From Me to We: The Five Transformational Commitments Required to Rescue the Planet, Your Organization, and Your Life.</i>

Dosho Port

Dosho Port is the founder and guiding teacher of <i>Vine of Obstacles: Online Support for Zen Training</i> and the author of the blog Wild Fox Zen.

Patrick Brady

Patrick Brady is an inmate at the California State Prison in Corcoran.

Joan Tollifson

Joan Tollifson was on staff at Toni Packer’s springwater Center for five years. She is the author of <i>Bare Bones Meditation</i> and <i>Nothing to Grasp</i>, and is currently writing a book about aging and dying.

Jim Willems

Jim Willems has been a Buddhist practitioner for more than forty years and a student of Joseph Goldstein since 1992. He teaches vipassana and jhana meditation at the east Bay meditation Center in Oakland, California.

Maureen Connor

Maureen Connor (Samten Wangmo) was ordained as a lay teacher in the Tibetan Karma Kagyu tradition in 2004.

Ann Shaftel

Ann Shaftel

Ann Shaftel is a preservation consultant and conservator specializing in Buddhist art. Her clients include museums, governments, universities, and Buddhist monasteries around the world.

Geoffrey Samuel

Geoffrey Samuel is a professor at Cardiff University in Wales, and a research fellow at the University of Sydney, specializing in anthropology and religion in Tibetan societies. He is the author of Introducing Tibetan Buddhism and a co-editor of Religion and the Subtle Body in Asia, both published by Routledge.

Gregory Shepherd

Gregory Shepherd is an associate professor of music at Kauai Community College in Hawaii. He has been a student of Zen in Hawaii and Japan since the early 1970s.

Ajahn Viradhammo

Ajahn Viradhammo is abbot of Tisarana Buddhist Monastery near Perth, Ontario, which is in the Thai Forest Tradition of Ajahn Chah and Ajahn Sumedho. He took bhikkhu ordination in 1974 with Ajahn Chah.

Eve Rosenthal

Eve Rosenthal is a Shambhala acharya, or senior teacher, who became a close friend and dharma sister to Lisa Hilliard after moving to Nova Scotia in 1990.

Paul Copp

Paul Copp teaches in the department of East Asian languages and civilizations at the University of Chicago.

Catherine Toldi

Catherine Toldi is a Zen priest in the lineage of Suzuki roshi and a longtime member of the Santa Cruz Zen Center. For the past thirty years she has worked as a professional facilitator and trainer, helping groups work collaboratively. She is a coauthor of <i>Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making </i>(Jossey-Bass).

Ayya Dhammadipa

Ayya Dhammadipa

Ayya Dhammadipa has been practicing Buddhism since 1987. She was ordained as Rev. Konin in the Soto Zen tradition in 2007 but moved ten years later to Aloka Vihara, where she took up the Theravada Forest Tradition, a natural extension of her longtime metta practice and study of the Pali suttas. She was recently ordained as a bhikkhuni. She also teaches in Spanish, is an interfaith chaplain, and enjoys being a mother

Brian Arundel

Brian Arundel is a book editor and writer whose fiction and nonfiction essays have appeared in a number of literary journals. His play, Sam, Sara, Etc., is forthcoming from Červená Barva Press.

Frank Ostaseski

Frank Ostaseski is the founder of the Metta institute, cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project, and a coordinating teacher for a new multiyear training program at spirit rock Meditation Center called Heavenly Messengers: awakening through illness, aging, and Death.