• Shamanic Voices: A Survey Of Visionary Narratives
• The Human Encounter With Death
• Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice And Tribal Wisdom

Zen priest, Buddhist teacher, anthropologist, writer, engaged-Buddhism in the area of environment, and dying and death.

• Born in 1942 in a Navy Hospital. Her early years were spent in the south, Savannah and southern Florida.

• Educated at Sophie Newcomb College, New Orleans, and was engaged in civil rights and antiwar activism after graduation. Later she completed her graduate work at Antioch’s Union Graduate School in anthropology and worked as a cultural anthropologist in Africa. Received a Ph.D. in medical anthropology/psychology from University of Miami (1968) and since then, she has held diverse positions, including researcher of Ethnomusicology, Columbia University, and Honorary Research Fellow at Harvard University.

• 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 – a lineage holder in the Tiep Order. She was also given Inka by Roshi Bernie Glassman, a successor to Roshi Taizan Maezumi.

• Founded Ojai Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to integrating ancient Eastern and Western wisdom to daily lives. She left Ojai at the end of 80’s and founded Upaya Zen Center, a Buddhist monastery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she is also the abbot and head teacher. Upaya has a community facility for the dying. Much later in the 90’s she founded the Upaya Prison Project that develops programs on meditation for prisoners.

• A Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order, her work and practice for more than three decades has focused on engaged Buddhism, especially in the area of environmental work, and death and dying. She is the Director of the Project on Being with Dying.

• She has taught in many universities, monasteries, and medical centers around the world.