Anne Klein

Anne Klein

Anne C. Klein (Rigzin Drolma) is a professor in and former chair of the Department of Religion at Rice University, where she developed a contemplative studies concentration for graduate students. She is also a lama in the Nyingma tradition and a founding teacher at Dawn Mountain, a center for Tibetan Buddhism, where she teaches a variety of practices and texts, especially recently revealed (gter) practices from Adzom Paylo Rinpoche, whom she meet adventitiously in Tibet in 1996 and who named her a Dorje Lopon in 2009. She has studied and translated in three of Tibet’s five traditions. Her scholarly work encompasses both Tibetan texts and the learned oral commentary on them. Her books include Knowledge and Liberation (on Buddhist distinctions between intellectual knowing and direct experience), Path to the Middle: The Spoken Scholarship of Khensur Yeshe Thupten (on preparing to meet the ultimate), Meeting the Great Bliss Queen (contrasting Buddhist and feminist understandings of self), Khetsun Sangpo Rinpoche’s Strand of Jewels (on essential Dzogchen teachings), and, with Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, Unbounded Wholeness (a translation and presentation of a Bön Dzogchen text) and Heart Essence of the Vast Expense (on the foundational practices and lineage of Jigme Lingpa, with chantable English translations). In all these endeavors her central theme is the embodied interaction between head and heart and the paths to wholeness found throughout Buddhist scholarly and contemplative traditions.

Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche

Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche

Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche is a teacher in the Karma Kagyü lineage. His main residence is his monastery in Boudhanath, Nepal. He is the founder of a monastic college at Namo Buddha near Kathmandu and of many Buddhist centers in the West and Asia.

Barry Magid

Barry Magid

Barry Magid, MD, is a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. He is resident teacher at the Ordinary Mind Zendo in New York City and the author of Ordinary Mind: Exploring the Common Ground of Zen and Psychotherapy (Wisdom Publications).

Michael Liebenson Grady

Michael Liebenson Grady is a guiding teacher at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center who has been studying with Master Sheng-yen for the past five years.

Sheng-yen

Sheng-yen

Master Sheng-yen (December 4, 1930 – February 3, 2009) was a Chinese Buddhist monk, teacher of Chan Buddhism, and the founder of Dharma Drum Mountain.

Ajahn Thanasanti

Ajahn Thanasanti was a student of Ajahn Sumedho and received ordination in 1991 at Amaravati Buddhist Monastery in Hemel Hempstead, England, where she currently resides.

Pamela White

Pamela White is a writer and translator living in central France, where she completed two three-year retreats under the guidance of Gendun Rinpoche.

Aram Saroyan

Aram Saroyan's work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, The Paris Review,  and Rolling Stone. His books include Genesis Angels: The Saga of Lew Welch and the Beat Generation, Last Rites and Trio: Portrait of an Intimate Friendship. 

Tara Bray

Tara Bray's poetry has appeared in The Southern Review, Puerto del Sol, Many Mountains Moving, Atlanta Review, Green Mountains Review and Crab Orchard Review. She lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where she studies ashtanga yoga.

Stephanie Kaza

Stephanie Kaza

Stephanie Kaza is a longtime practitioner of Soto Zen Buddhism and an environmentalist who explores the intersections of ecology and religion. Professor Emerita of Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont, she is the author of <em>Green Buddhism: Practice and Compassionate Action in Uncertain Times</em> and <em>Conversations with Trees: An Intimate Ecology</em>. She lives in her hometown of Portland, Oregon.

Kristin Barendsen

Kristin Barendsen writes about Buddhism, yoga and travel from her home in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Melody Ermachild Chavis

Melody Ermachild Chavis is a student at the Berkeley Zen Center. Her second book, Meena, Heroine of Afghanistan: The Life of the Martyred Founder of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in August.

Shyalpa Rinpoche

The Venerable Shyalpa Rinpoche is the spiritual head of Shyalpa Monastery in Kathmandu, Nepal, as well as the Rangrig Yeshe Center and Dzogchen Ati Ling Centers in the United States. His root teacher is the renowned Dzogchen master Chatral Rinpoche.

Daniel Menaker

Daniel Menaker is an executive editor at HarperCollins and the author of two collections of stories and a novel,<i> The Treatment</i>.

Miriam Greenspan

Miriam Greenspan is the author of A New Approach to Women and Therapy. Her forthcoming book, Healing Through the Dark Emotions: the Wisdom of Grief, Fear and Despair, will be published by Shambhala.

Leonard Koren

Leonard Koren is founder of the 1970's avant-garde publication <i>Wet: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing,</i> and the author of several books, including <i>Gardens of Gravel and Sand</i> and <i>Undesigning the Bath</i>.

Kobun Chino Otogawa Roshi

Kobun Otogawa (February 1, 1938 – July 26, 2002) was a Sōtō Zen priest.

Jim Bedard

Jim Bedard is author of <i>Lotus in the Fire: The Healing Power of Zen</i> (Shambhala Publications). He is a disciple of Sensei Sunyana Graef and a member of the Toronto Zen Center.

Richard Brown

Richard Brown teaches early childhood education at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.