Home Base
Santa Fe, New Mexico USA

Foundation of Teaching
Self-Realization, Love, Presence, Non-Duality, Buddhism

Example of Teaching
“Whether or not enlightenment is possible at the moment of death, the practices that prepare one for this possibility also bring one closer to the bone of life.”

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Roshi Joan Halifax

Roshi Joan Halifax is a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist, and author. She is Founder, Abbot, and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

She has worked in the area of death and dying since 1970 and is Director of the Project on Being with Dying. For the past twenty-five years, she has been active in environmental work.

Of recent, Roshi Joan Halifax was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar to the Library of Congress and the only woman and Buddhist to be on the Advisory Council for the Tony Blair Foundation.

She was Founder and Director of the Upaya Prison Project that develops programs on meditation for prisoners. She was founder of the Ojai Foundation, was an Honorary Research Fellow at Harvard University, and has taught in many universities, monasteries, and medical centers around the world.

She studied for a decade with Zen Teacher Seung Sahn and was a teacher in the Kwan Um Zen School. She received the Lamp Transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh, and was given Inka by Roshi Bernie Glassman. A Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order, her work and practice for more than forty years has focused on engaged Buddhism.



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Quotes

  1. "The awakened Way is unsurpassable. Nothing is greater than awakening to the fact that you and I abide in ultimate closeness."
  2. "We live in a time when science is validating what humans have known throughout the ages: that compassion is not a luxury; it is a necessity for our well-being, resilience, and survival."
  3. 'The wondrous thing is that people are dying all around us and we do not realize that it can happen to us."
  4. "Compassion is the ability to see clearly into the nature of suffering."
  5. "I learned that any attachment to outcome would deeply distort my capacity to be truly present to the whole person."
  6. "The enemies of genuine compassion: pity, moral outrage, and fear."
  7. "All beings, including each one of us, enemy and friend alike, exist in patterns of mutuality, interconnectedness, co-responsibility and ultimately in unity."
  8. "Zen practice is about relating to each other face to face, mind to mind, heart to heart...with nothing but clear, connecting space between us."
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