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Born in Cuba of African and Spanish
heritage, Hilda Ryumon Gutiérrez Baldoquín is a Soto
Zen priest in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. A student
of Roshi Blanche Zenkei Hartman, she is the founder of the
People of Color Sitting Group at the San Francisco Zen Center
and co-founder of the Buddhist Meditation Group for the LGBTQ
community at The Center, also in San Francisco. She leads
retreats for People of Color at both Dhamma Dena Meditation
Center in Northampton, Massachusetts, and is a practice leader for the
Zen Sangha at the Cerro Gordo Temple in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Ryumon
is the editor of Dharma,
Color and Culture: New Voices in Western Buddhism.
A
graduate of UCLA, Ven. Chodron (then Cheryl Greene) taught
in the Los Angeles schools. Ordained as a Buddhist nun
in 1977, she studied and
practiced Tibetan Buddhism under the guidance of His Holiness the Dalai
Lama, Tsenzhap Serkong Rinpoche, Zopa Rinpoche, and other Tibetan masters
for many years in India and Nepal. She has been resident teacher at Amitabha
Buddhist Centre in Singapore and at Dharma Friendship Foundation
in Seattle and was co-organizer of "Life as a Western Buddhist Nun," an
educational program in Bodhgaya in 1996. In 2003, she founded
Sravasti Abbey, one of the few Buddhist monasteries in the
United States, near Newport, Wash. She is involved in interfaith
dialogue, conferences between scientists and Buddhists, meetings
of Western Buddhist teachers, and gatherings of Western Buddhist
monastics. She teaches Buddhist philosophy, psychology, and
meditation worldwide, including in Israel, Latin America,
and former communist countries and is active doing prison
work. Her books include Open
Heart, Clear Mind; Buddhism
for Beginners; Working with Anger; Taming the Mind; and Blossoms
of the
Dharma: Living as a Buddhist Nun. Ven. Chodron emphasizes the practical
application of Buddha's teachings in our daily lives and is especially
skilled at explaining them in ways easily understood and practiced by
Westerners.
Rosalyn Driscoll has been a visual
artist for 30 years, as painter, photographer, papermaker
and sculptor. For the last 15 years her work has primarily
explored touch as a way of knowing and how it differs from
sight. Her research takes the form of making and exhibiting
tactile sculptures, learning from people with visual impairments, gathering
viewers’ responses,
conducting workshops for educators, writing a book on touch
in the visual arts, Whole Body Seeing, and collaborating with
touch researchers Christopher Moore and Mandayam Srinivasan at MIT. Her
sculpture has been exhibited nationally and received awards and fellowships
from the New England Foundation for the Arts, Massachusetts Cultural
Council, and Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. She began practicing
vipassana meditation with S.N. Goenka in 1971, and is especially interested
in the perceptual implications of the practice.
Read
more about Rosalyn Driscoll's installation >
Jane Hirshfield is a poet, essayist, and translator, whose poetry has been called “passionate and radiant” by the New
York Times Book Review and whose collection of essays, Nine
Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (HarperCollins, 1997), was found by the Japan Times to be “indispensable.” A practitioner of Soto Zen for over 30 years, she is the author of five books of poems, most recently Given
Sugar, Given Salt (HarperCollins, 2001), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. She has also edited and co-translated three now-classic collections documenting the spiritual and emotional lives of women poets from the past. Her honors include fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Among other awards are multiple selection in the Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize anthologies, the Poetry Center Book Award, and the California Book Award. A former visiting professor at U.C. Berkeley, Elliston Poet in Residence at University of Cincinnati, and member of the writing faculty of Bennington College’s MFA program, Hirshfield has been featured numerous times on Garrison Keillor’s Writers
Almanac NPR program, as well as in two Bill Moyers PBS specials. More >
Visit
the Poetry Center's Web site >
bell hooks, a visionary feminist
thinker, cultural critic and writer, is a Distinguished Professor
of English at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, and is among
the leading intellectuals of her generation. Her writings
address a range of topics, including gender, race, teaching,
and media in contemporary culture. Her critically acclaimed
love trilogy -- All About Love (2001), Salvation: Black
People and Love (2001), and Communion: The Female Search for
Love (2003) -- boldly and eloquently outline her
assertions and questions about a topic that has occupied
and inspired human philosophy and art for centuries. Her
most recent publications include: The
Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (2004), We Real Cool:
Black Men and Masculinity (2003), and
a companion to Teaching to Transgress: Education As the Practice
of Freedom (1994), Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of
Hope (2003). She is also increasingly
becoming known as a writer of children's books. Since her
first book,
Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, published in 1981
-- which was named one of the "twenty most influential women's
books of the last twenty years" by Publishers Weekly -- hooks
has written 22 books. More >
Carolyn Jacobs is the Elizabeth
Marting Treuhaft Professor and Dean of the School for Social
Work at Smith College. Her areas of professional interest include religion
and spirituality in social work practice, social work research, and statistics.
She has written and presented extensively on the topic
of spirituality in social work, including presentations within the School's
network of field agencies; she is the co-editor of Ethnicity and
Race: Critical Concepts in Social Work. Dr. Jacobs received her B.A. from Sacramento
State University, her M.S.W. from San Diego State University,
and her doctorate from the Heller School of Brandeis University. She
is a Spiritual Director trained at the Shalem Institute for Spiritual
Formation. She was also elected as a Distinguished Practitioner in the
National Academies of Practice in Social Work in 2001.
Diana Lion is the founding director
of the national Buddhist Peace Fellowship Prison Project. She is also
a Canadian dharma practitioner and a long-time activist. She has been
doing prison dharma work at BPF since 1998. She is a graduate of Spirit
Rock Meditation Center's Community Dharma Leaders Program, is a certified
trainer in Nonviolent Communication, and is on the teaching team of
the first Bay Area Buddhist Chaplaincy program. She is passionately
involved in dharma and diversity issues, and has worked in many other
activist arenas (peace, women, LGBT, farm workers, and human rights)
over the last 30 years.
Eve Marko co-founded Peacemaker
Circle International with Bernie Glassman and serves as the organization’s
vice president. She works in the building of coalitions in the Middle
East and Latin America, supervising project directors and training programs.
She is a Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order and continues
to develop the Order. During the 1980s and the 1990s she also worked
with the Greyston Mandala, a Buddhist-inspired network of for-profits
and not-for-profits working together in Yonkers, New York, and providing
housing, child care, jobs, training, and AIDS-related medical services
to some 1,200 men, women and children every year.
Meredith Monk is a composer, singer,
director/choreographer and creator of new opera, musical
theater works, films and installations. A pioneer in what is now called "extended
vocal technique" and "interdisciplinary
performance," Monk creates works that thrive at the intersection
of music and movement, image and object, light and sound
in an effort to discover and weave together new modes of
perception. Her ground breaking exploration of the voice as an instrument,
as an eloquent language in and of itself, expands the boundaries of musical
composition, creating landscapes of sound that unearth feelings,
energies, and memories for which we have no words. She has alternately
been proclaimed as a "voice
of the future" and "one of America's coolest composers." During
a career that spans more than 35 years she has been acclaimed
by audiences and critics as a major creative force in the
performing arts. More >
Susanne Mrozik is Assistant
Professor of Religion at Mount Holyoke College, where she
teaches courses on Buddhism. Mrozik earned
her Ph.D. in religion from Harvard University. Her research
focuses on Buddhist ethics, especially Buddhist perspectives
on body and gender. Mrozik is also a member of the conference
planning committee.
Wendy Egyoku Nakao is the abbot
of the Zen Center of Los Angeles. After studying with Taizan Maezumi
Roshi for seventeen years at the Zen Center of Los Angeles, Egyoku moved
to Yonkers in 1995 to complete her formal Zen training under Roshi Bernie
Glassman. Glassman empowered her as a teacher in 1996. In 1997, she returned
to Los Angeles to take over the abbotship of the Zen Center. She reorganized
the forms and focus of practice at the Zen Center to incorporate an organizational
training model of shared stewardship and the social awareness emphasized
by Glassman. She received the final seal of approval from Roshi Glassman
in June, 2004, granting her the title of Roshi.
Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara
is the abbot of the Village Zendo in Manhattan. She received
priest ordination from Maezumi Roshi and Dharma Transmission
and Inka from Roshi Bernie Glassman. The example of her teachers
encourages her work in the ordinary running of an urban temple,
and in peacemaking activities. Much of Enkyo’s
activism is in the world of HIV/AIDS. An ongoing exploration
for her is articulating a Zen Buddhist approach to issues
of difference around race, class, sexuality and health. Working
with Bernie Glassman, Roshi is involved in the design of
the Maezumi Institute, a study center for Zen and peacemaking.
Roshi Enkyo was Associate Professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the
Arts and taught video and interactive arts for twenty years.
A special thrust of her temple at the Village Zendo is the
value and importance of authentic expression.
Virginia Straus is executive director
of the Boston Research Center for the 21st Century (BRC),
a peace and justice institute founded by Buddhist teacher Daisaku Ikeda,
President of the Soka Gakkai International. Straus has directed the Center
since its founding in September 1993. The Center is committed to social
change through dialogue and education aimed at cultivating an inclusive
sense of community, locally and globally. Its current programs focus
on women's leadership for peace, global citizenship education, and the
philosophy and practice of community building. In addition to public
forums, BRC produces multi-author books that have been used in over 220
college and university courses to date. Before joining the Center, Straus
co-directed Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based public policy think tank,
which she helped to establish in 1987. During the 1970's, she worked
in government in Washington, DC, where she served as a legislative researcher
and publisher in the House of Representatives, a financial analyst in
the Treasury Department, and an urban policy aide in the Carter White
House.
Sharon A. Suh is the Director of
Asian Studies and Assistant Professor of World Religions
at Seattle University. She received her Ph.D. in Buddhist
Studies from Harvard University in 2000 and is the author of Being
Buddhist in a Christian World: Gender and Community in a Korean American
Temple published by
the University of Washington Press in 2004. She is currently
working on a project entitled Sacred Seattle that looks at the role of
Buddhism in Seattle’s
Asian American communities. She is particularly interested
in the transmission of the Dharma to the younger generations. Prior to
moving to Seattle in 2000, she worked as the Executive Director of the
Korean American Museum in Los Angeles and as a researcher for the Center
for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California.
Tara Dhatu is an international organization dedicated to
empowering and uplifting humanity through the sacred arts.
The organization was formed at the request of His Eminence
Tai Situ Rinpoche, an accomplished and revered Tibetan
Buddhist master. He had witnessed the Dance of the 21 Praises
of Tara, choreographed by one of his students, Prema Dasara.
He asked that an organization be established to protect
the dance's integrity as a Vehicle of Liberation. He rejoiced
in witnessing the devotion and peace transmitted by the dance and encouraged
it to be broadcast, in video and in communal celebrations. Since 1985
the dance has traveled throughout the world and the organization
has grown to sponsor workshops and trainings in the Tara
Dance and other Dharma Dances, offering celebrations, pilgrimages
of citizen diplomacy, and an array of Charity Projects
seeking to benefit the Tibetans-in-exile. More >
Karma Lekshe Tsomo's doctoral research
focused on death and identity in China and Tibet. Her primary
academic interests include women in Buddhism, Buddhism and
bioethics, religion and cultural change, and Buddhism in
the United States. In addition to her academic work, she
is actively involved in interfaith dialogue and in grassroots
initiatives for the empowerment of women. She is president
of Sakyadhita: International Association of Buddhist Women
(www.sakyadhita.org) and director of Jamyang Foundation (www.jamyang.org),
an initiative to provide educational opportunities for women in the Indian
Himalayas. More >
Helen Tworkov grew up in New York City and studied Anthropology at Hunter
College and the City University of New York. From 1964 to 1966 she traveled
extensively in Asia, and taught English for six months in both Kyoto and Katmandu as well as working in a Tibetan Refuge Camp in Nepal. Her Buddhist Studies have been primarily with teachers of the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism and with Maezumi Roshi and teachers within his Soto Zen lineage.
Helen Tworkov is the author of Zen in America: Five Profiles of American
Zen Teachers (published by North Point Press in 1989; reprinted by Kodansha in
1994); in 1990 she founded Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, an independent
quarterly which she edited until 2001. Currently she works as a consultant to
Tricycle, and divides her time between upstate New York and Cape Breton, Nova
Scotia.
Arinna Weisman has studied Insight
Meditation for 20 years and has been teaching for 12.
Her root teacher is Ruth Denison who was empowered by the
great teacher U Bha Khin. She has also studied with Thich
Nhat Hanh in the Zen tradition, Punjaji in the Advaita tradition
and Tsokney Rinpoche in the Dzogchen tradition. She teaches
insight meditation throughout the United States and is the founding
teacher of the Dhamma Dena Meditation Center in Northampton.
She is co-author of A Beginner's Guide to Insight Meditation. Her
dharma practice and teaching have been infused with her political
and environmental activism. She was the first Theravadin
teacher to lead insight meditation retreats for the gay,
lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community. She also leads
retreats focused on racism and multiculturism. More >
Carol Wilson was introduced to
Buddhist meditation in Bodh Gaya,
India, in 1971. She has been involved in practicing and studying
Theravada Buddhism steadily since that time, including ordaining
as a
nun in Thailand for a year in the early 1980's. She began
leading
intensive meditation retreats at the Insight Meditation Society,
in
Barre, Massachusetts, in 1986. Currently she leads both vipassana
(insight meditation) and loving kindness, or metta retreats,
both at
IMS and around the world. While a great deal of her practice
has been
in the West, Carol also feels deeply connected to the roots
of the
forms of Vipassana that come from Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand,
both
places where she has had the good fortune to connect with
inspirational teachers, such as Sayadaw U Pandita and Achaan
Buddhadasa. The meeting of ancient and more structured forms
of
transmitting the Dharma with forms appropriate for modern
western
practitioners is an area of ongoing interest for Carol. She
is
presently serving as one of the Guiding Teachers of the insight
Meditation Society, as well as being on the board of directors
for
the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, and the Dharma Seed
Archival
Center. In the past two years, she has been inspired to be
a part of
the MettaDana Project, founded by Steven Smith, which assists
the
people of the Sagaing Hills, in Burma, through support of
education,
health care, and the support of their monasteries and nunneries. |
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Hilda
Ryumon Gutiérrez Baldoquín
Venerable Thubten
Chodron
Rosalyn Driscoll
Jane Hirshfield
bell hooks
Carolyn Jacobs 
Diana
Lion
Eve Myonen Marko
Meredith Monk
Susanne Mrozik
Roshi
Wendy Egyoku Nakao
Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara
Virginia Straus
Sharon A. Suh
Tara Dhatu
Venerable Karma
Lekshe Tsomo
Helen Tworkov
Arinna Weisman
Carol Wilson