Able, Vanessa
Koji Vanessa Able is a Soto Zen priest living in Aix-en-Provence in Southern France. She has studied in both European (Deshimaru) and American (Suzuki) traditions and currently serves as a practice facilitator for a small sitting group. Vanessa has trained as an Interfaith Hospital Chaplain and is a teacher for the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies’ Spiritual Care training programs. Vanessa is also the founder and editor of the online journal of spiritual literature, The Dewdrop. She lives with her husband, daughter and two cats.
Allen, Kim
Kim Allen has been practicing Insight meditation since 2003, and has trained intensively in the US and Asia. Originally trained at IMC with Gil Fronsdal, she is a teacher at Insight Santa Cruz and offers classes and sutta study around the Bay Area, as well as farther afield. Dedicated to a life of deep Dharma practice in the West, she draws from a background in science, contemplative practices, and creativity to offer classical Dharma in a modern context.
Bernhard, Tony
Rev. Tony Bernhard is a Buddhist chaplain and teacher. He maintains an active practice with inmates in Folsom Prison and hosts sitting groups in Davis. He sits on the board of the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies and teaches regularly around the bay area and central valley. His practice is non-traditional, guided by his chaplaincy work in prison, his teaching and by his study of the early Pali scriptures.
Block, Jennifer
Jennifer Block provides spiritual care to people in crisis, mentoring to caregivers and teaches people how to access their innate capacity for caring and healing. She is a longtime dharma practitioner and Buddhist chaplain. A nationally-recognized educator and consultant, Jennifer teaches the Buddhist Chaplaincy Training program with Paul Haller and Gil Fronsdal at the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies.
Bowling, Daniel
Daniel Bowling is a mediator and mediation trainer for the US District Court for Northern California. He co-edited/co-authored Bringing Peace into the Room — the first book on mediation to focus on the importance for resolving conflict of the mediator’s personal qualities. He helped start mediation in South Carolina, where he practiced law after graduating from Harvard Law School. He has practiced meditation since 1976 and participated in Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leaders Training. He currently is on the Spirit Rock Board of Directors and Ethics and Reconciliation Committee.
Bunce, Renshin
Renshin Bunce was a resident of Zen Center from 2001 to 2008, first for three years at Tassajara
and then for four more years at City Center. She has helped hundreds of students sew their rakusus in the City Center sewing room, where she currently leads a class every other Saturday afternoon. She is also known for her photographs, and her page of photos has been called “The Zen Center Yearbook.” Renshin was priest ordained with Zenkei Blanche Hartman in 2003; was Shuso (head monk) with Myogen-Roshi at Tassajara in 2008; and received dharma transmission from him in 2013. She lives on the Peninsula, where she works as a hospice chaplain. For more information you can see her website at Renshin Bunce.
Byrum, Barbara
Barbara Byrum is a priest in the Zen tradition. She has a meditation center in Pacifica, California, where she holds meditation retreats and facilitates nondenominational study groups. Barbara transcribes the audio talks of Shohaku Okumura, a nationally known Zen teacher and author. Learn more about Barbara at Montara Mountain Zendo.
Barbara has moved out of the area and will no longer be teaching at Coastside Vipassana. We wish her well.
Andrea, Castillo
Andrea Castillo has practiced Insight Meditation since 1998. Her teachers have been Gil Fronsdal and Andrea Fella. Andrea has taught Dharma in Spanish at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood, CA, since 2011, and offers residential retreats in the US and Latin America. She completed a Ph.D. in the Humanities at Stanford University in 2009. Andrea is a graduate of the Sati Center Chaplaincy Training Program, the Dharma Mentoring Training Program, and the Local Dharma Leaders taught by Gil Fronsdal and Andrea Fella. Presently she is part of the Insight Meditation Society’s Teacher Training Program.
Chapman, Beata
Hobu Beata Chapman has practiced Zen with chronic nerve pain and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for 23 years. She studied with Katherine Thanas at Santa Cruz Zen Center and with Darlene Cohen until her untimely death, and received Dharma transmission from Tony Patchell in 2013. Beata continues the Suffering & Delight groups for people with chronic pain that Darlene founded around 15 years ago, and teaches an online S&D group she began for people not able to attend in person. For more information about Beata’s work with chronic pain, you can see sufferinganddelight.org or sanddgroups.net. Beata is an organizational consultant currently doing corporate leadership training and assisting health care organizations to develop compliance systems. She recently started a zazen group in San Mateo (PenZen.net).
Clark, Diana
Diana teaches graduate-level courses on Theravada Buddhism at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley and Introduction to Meditation at IMC. She has cumulatively spent more than a year in silent meditation retreats, has a Master’s degree in Buddhist Studies and is a graduate of the Sati Center Buddhist Chaplaincy program. She is also trained as a scientist and serves the dharma community by being the former treasurer of IMC, the current treasurer of IRC and on the board of the Buddhist Insight Network.
Clements, Joseph
Joseph Clements was introduced to the Buddhist practice through guidance from longtime childhood friend, Noah Levine. He later found refuge in his meditation practice to heal from the suffering of addiction. As a foundational member of Refuge Recovery—a Buddhist path to recovery from addiction—Joseph has spent the last 3 years teaching mindfulness in various intensive outpatient programs and drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers in Northern CA. Following his heart, Joseph is excited to serve at-risk youth by teaming up with the MBA Project. Joseph has been trained to facilitate Mindfulness and Buddhist meditation through Against the Stream Meditation Society.
Clifford, Chris
Chris Clifford has practiced insight meditation since 1995. She appreciates the integration of intensive meditation retreats with daily life Dharma practice and service. Chris is an instructor, mentor and coordinator for Insight Meditation Center’s Eightfold Path Program and the Online Introduction to Meditation. She also manages retreats for The Mountain Hermitage in New Mexico and serves as the volunteer kitchen manager for Insight Retreat Center. She is a retired software engineer.
Cohn, David
In my late 20’s I became a resident at the San Francisco Zen Center where I practiced Zen for 14 years, including Tassajara monastery, Green Gulch Farm, and the City Center, and was ordained as a priest. When I left the Zen Center I became married, had a child, and owned and operated two San Francisco restaurants. I am now retired and practice Vipassana, primarily associating with Insight Meditation Center and Gil Frosdal, where I am a mentor to individual students, am on the Chaplaincy Council, and the IMC board. I have been a chaplain volunteer for 15 years at Peninsula Hospital, and was a hospice bedside volunteer with the Zen Hospice Project for 20 years.
Collazo, Enrique
Enrique Collazo is a new generation Mindfulness meditation teacher. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he has been teaching and living in the Bay Area for the last 7 years. His passion is teaching the practice of mindfulness to teens. He is well-loved and respected for his inspirational work at Challenge Day during the school year where he facilitates social and emotional learning workshops for thousands of young people all over the country. Enrique’s skill with teens has led to teaching internationally for Inward Bound Mindfulness Education (IBME). He is on the Guiding Teacher Counsel and Equity and Interdependence Committee for IBME.
Enrique is a champion for helping young people create pathways that align with their goals and deepest intentions and empowering them to broaden their confidence by opening their eyes to what’s possible. He believes deeply in the power of marginalized voices to change the world.
Cusick, Robert
Robert Cusick is the Co- Founder & Director of the Applied Compassion Training (ACT) program offered through the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research & Education (CCARE) at Stanford University. ACT is a groundbreaking 11-month global program that is founded on and incorporates the principles of applied compassion. ACT supports individual participants in the development and implementation of unique public facing offerings that respond to the challenging issues of today’s world.
Robert trained at Stanford School of Medicine in the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. He is a Stanford Lecturer and Certified Sr. Stanford Compassion Training Instructor and teaches at Stanford University, UCSF, Kaiser Permanente Medical Centers and in multiple other venues. As a longtime meditator and former monk, Robert ordained in Burma under the renowned meditation master, Ven. Pa Auk Sayadaw, and studied with him from 2003 – 2012. In addition to his teaching, Robert provides grief counseling and bereavement support for adults at Kara in Palo Alto, CA where he facilitates retreats for fathers grieving the loss or death of a child. You can contact him at: rcusick@stanford.edu
Ezequelle, Susan
Susan Ezequelle has been practicing Insight Meditation since 1997. She is a past IMC Board President and worked closely with founding teacher Gil Fronsdal and other community members to found in 2001 the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA. She has been teaching at IMC since 2003 and in 2008, in response to a deep desire to engage with the world through her Buddhist practice, she completed the year-long Sati Center Chaplaincy Training Program and has served as a hospital chaplain for the past 5 years.
Fisher, Sydney
Sydney Fisher has been a dharma practitioner for five years and is passionate about the dharma practice and believes in the Budda’s teaching as the way towards liberation. She has completed Against the Stream’s facilitator 1 training and continues to study under guiding teachers Joanna Harper and Vinny Ferrero. Sydney works full time as a school social worker in a public high school in San Francisco and is committee to bringing mindfulness to the students and staff at her school.
Juskiewicz, Christina
Born near Chicago, Illinois, Christina was drawn to Buddhist ideas at the age of seventeen. A few years later she traveled to Nepal, where she became ordained as a nun in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and then went on to study and do meditation retreats in Nepal and India. She soon met Segyu Rinpoche, with whom she has worked for over twenty years as an assistant, a student, and now as a co-founder of Juniper. Christina co-develops Juniper’s content and practices and teaches meditation at the Juniper Meditation Center, and works at the Juniper Integrative Care Clinic in San Francisco.
Kaplan, Shunzan Jill
Jill has been practising Zen since 1993 with Zen Heart Sangha in Woodside, CA and received Dharma Transmission from Misha Merrill in July 2013. She received priest ordination in 2001 and was Shuso (head monk)for the Sangha’s first practice period in 2008. She is currently helping lead the evening and Saturday programs at the Sangha, as well as teaching the sewing of the Buddha’s robes. Jill has a psychotherapy practice in San Jose, is a teaching member of Sandplay Therapists of America, and teaches Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. She resides in Redwood City with her husband and has two grown sons.
Loll, Stan
Stan Loll started meditating in in 1979 as part of the process of getting sober in 1979. After years of hit and miss meditation he started getting serious about Dharma practice about six years ago. Since then he has 78 days of silent meditation retreats. He completed the Eightfold Path program and is now acting as an Eightfold Path mentor. He also completed Sati Center year long Buddhist chaplaincy training and has been serving as a spiritual care volunteer at a local hospital for over a year. Currently he is exploring the Dharma with a mentor and serving as a host at Coastside Vipassana.
Long, Judy
Judy Long is an outpatient palliative care chaplain at UCSF, where she provides interfaith spiritual care with a deep commitment to care for caregivers, both family members and clinicians, that grew out of her experience as a hospital and hospice chaplain and facilitating grief and family caregiver support groups. As a chaplain and educator, she provides evidence-based trainings in compassion and mindful resilience to make caregiving sustainable and reduce burn-out, including the G.R.A.C.E. training, developed by Roshi Joan Halifax, PhD, Upaya Institute. You can reach Judy at judith.long@ucsf.edu.
Lopon Namchek Dorji
Lopon Namchak Dorji is from Bhutan and has studied under many of the greatest living masters of Tibetan Buddhism. Lopon Namchak has taught at several monastic universities in Bhutan, India and Nepal. An erudite scholar practitioner, he strives to bridge the gap between traditional Buddhist philosophy and western life. He
spends most of his time composing, editing, translating, and serving as a resident teacher of Ewam Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism.
Maddock, Rick
Rick Maddock, MD, is a professor of psychiatry who teaches and conducts neuroscience research at the UC Davis School of Medicine. A long-time dharma practitioner with a focus on the teachings and practices of early Indian Buddhism, Rick has completed Spirit Rock’s training programs for senior students and teaches dharma in the greater Sacramento area and in the Bay Area. His teachings explore the convergence between contemporary scientific insights about the human brain and mind and the wisdom traditions and practices of Buddhism.
Maes, Anthony “T”
Anthony “T” Maes was born and raised in the East Bay. He has practiced Buddhist meditation since 2003, including long retreats and living in a monastery in Thailand. He is a teacher at East Bay Meditation Center and at Inward Bound Mindfulness Education, where he teaches week-long teen meditation retreats and leads diversity trainings, multiracial liberation, and relational mindfulness. He has volunteered with Spirit Rock’s Family Program since 2009 including New Years’ teen retreats, family program day retreats, and the Abhayagiri monastery weekend teen retreat. “T” graduated from UC Berkeley in 2004, completed the yearlong Commit2Dharma program at EBMC in 2011, and the 2017 Facilitator-1 training at Against The Stream Buddhist Meditation Society, where he also teaches Qi Gong. He is currently in the 3-year Organic Intelligence practitioner training. For more information about “T” you can see his website at Anthony “T” Maes.
Merrill, Misha
Misha Merrill was ordained a Zen priest in 1988 by Les Kaye Roshi in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi of the San Francisco Zen Center. She received Dharma Transmission from him in 1998 and has been leading a meditation group in Redwood City since 1993. She also teaches young children at the Peninsula School of Menlo Park. She lives in the hills above Stanford with her husband and joyfully cultivates a large garden.
Neal, Dawn
Dawn Neal has accumulated over two years of silent meditation retreat practice since 2005. Early on, she explored Bon, Soto Zen, Vajrayana. In 2009, she took temporary Theravādin monastic ordination in Burma. She holds an MA from the Institute of Buddhist Studies. Dawn works as a spiritual care professional (Interfaith Chaplain), ordained in the Insight Meditation Tradition by Gil Fronsdal. She serves as a Buddhist teacher, facilitator, and scholar in and beyond the Bay Area.
Nguyen, Day
Day Nguyen was first exposed to mindfulness practice at the tender age of 12. Little did he know that when his parents tricked him into attending a five-day meditation retreat they would be igniting his deepest passion: to understand. Attending white Catholic institutions while navigating his own Asian-American duality was initially a source of great sorrow – a source that eventually alchemized into the insight of embracing multiple, fractal truths.
At the age of 20, he decided to explore life as a Buddhist monk, in France, with peace activist and Nobel Peace-Prize Nominee Thich Nhat Hanh. He spent the next 10 years immersed completely in monastic community, where he organized and facilitated hundreds of retreats internationally, as well as champion and model the need for transparency and support of gay, celibate monasticism.
In 2016, Day received the Lamp Transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh, officially recognizing him as a teacher and lineage holder in the Plum Village Tradition.
At 33 he continues his journey – no longer in monastic robes – to understand himself, his joys & fears. He is currently apprenticed to a 5 Element Chinese Acupuncturist, studying East West Psychology through the lens of restorative justice at CIIS, and committed to his own growth as a trauma integration facilitator. Fractal is currently his favorite word.
Podolske, Jim
Jim is a scientist who has been a Vipassana student of Gil Fronsdal since 1998. He serves the Insight Meditation Center sangha both as a volunteer and introductory meditation instructor, and is a former IMC board member. He has sat Vipassana, Samadhi, and Brahmavihara retreats over the last 15 years, including a six week retreat with Joseph Goldstein in 2003. Jim enjoys sailing on the San Francisco Bay.
Powell, Liz
Liz Powell has been practicing Vipassana meditation since 2004. She is currently in teacher training with Gil Fronsdal and Andrea Fella. A graduate of the Dharma Mentoring Training and Local Dharma Leader Training Programs with Gil Fronsdal and Andrea Fella at Insight Meditation Center, she also completed the Dedicated Practitioners and Advanced Practitioners Programs at Spirit Rock. She co-led programs at IMC for children, families and parents for many years, as well as offering Introduction to Meditation, half-day and daylong retreats for adults. For a number of years she served as IMC Board President and Managing Director of the Insight Retreat Center. Liz takes joy in teaching IMC’s Eightfold Path Program online, Happy Hour on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and co-teaching the Thursday night online sitting. She loves teaching retreats as well as sitting them.
Puhakka, Kaisa
Kaisa Puhakka, PhD, teaches psychotherapy and its integration with Buddhist practice as a core faculty member at California Institute of Integral Studies. She also works with clients and supervises students and interns in private practice. Her ongoing personal inquiry draws from Dzogchen texts, Krishnamurti, and vipassana and Zen practices, among others.
Kaisa has moved out of the area and will no longer be teaching at Coastside Vipassana. We wish her well.
Rath, Devon
Devon is a queer woman who cares deeply about the power of mindfulness practice to as a tool to heal and liberate. She has practiced meditation since 1997 and has been formally teaching mindfulness since 2010. Devon is a founding member of the Dharma Homies Teaching Collective. Devon specializes in offering trauma informed mindfulness, and integrates mindfulness In her anti-racism, specifically in work with white people to wake up to whiteness power and privilege. Devon is passionate about making mindfulness accessible to all, specifically historically marginalized populations, including people of color, LGBTQIA+ folks, people of size and different body abilities. For more information you can see her website at Devon Rath.