Joan Halifax is a Zen Buddhist Roshi, anthropologist, ecologist, civil rights activist, hospice caregiver, and the author of several books on Buddhism and Spirituality. She currently serves as abbot and guiding teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a Zen Peacemaker community which she founded in 1990. In the 1970s she collaborated on LSD research projects with her ex-husband Stanislav Grof, in addition to other collaborative efforts with Joseph Campbell and Alan Lomax. She is founder of the Ojai Foundation in California, which she led from 1979 to 1989. As a socially engaged Buddhist, Halifax has done extensive work with the dying through her Project on Being with Dying (which she founded). She is on the board of directors of the Mind and Life Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated in exploring the relationship of science and Buddhism.
Roshi Joan speaks with Joanna about aging and death, engaged Buddhism and systemic activism, personal and social transformation, the historic significance of LSD as a Dharma door, embodied compassion with dying people, speaking truth to power…
Music: “Song without words to Bohdana Pivnenko, I.-Elegy” (from Fleeting Melodies) by Valentin Silvestrov {Bohdana Pivnenko (violin) and Valeriy Matiukhin (piano) }
Tim Ward is the author of the newly released Savage Breast: One Man’s Search for the Goddess. This is the first book that explores the Goddess from an explicitly male perspective, and how the loss of the feminine divine has affected men and women’s relationships. Tim believes it is in men’s enlightened self interest to work together with women to move beyond patriarchy, and this is the conversation he will engage his audiences in as he shares his experience of exploring Goddess sites and ruins of the ancient Europe throughout 2006-07.
Tim is the author of three previous books: Savage Breast: One Man’s Search for the Goddess, Arousing the Goddess: Sex and Love in the Buddhist Ruins of India (where he first encountered the Goddess) What the Buddha Never Taught (about life in a Thai Monastery), and the Great Dragon’s Fleas (his search for living Bodhisattvas). He has lectured in colleges and institutions across North America, and all of his books have been used as texts in various schools and universities. Tim has a degree in Philosophy from the University of British Columbia, in his native Canada.
Tim now lives in Bethesda, Maryland with his wife and their two children where he teaches communications courses for international development organizations in Washington D.C. and globally. (See www.intermediact.com for this very different side of his professional life).
Tim speaks with Joanna about his life-changing experiences with the archetypes of the Goddess and the rising awareness of our interconnectedness with the Earth, “what the Buddha never taught”, a new non-patriarchal relationship between fathers and sons, our responsibility in the creation of a new ecological society…
Music: “Prayer to Goddess Saraswati – Raga Kalavati” by Pt. Shivkumar Sharma
Jason Kirkey grew up in the North Atlantic watershed of Massachusetts in a small town north of Boston. He moved to Boulder, Colorado where he attended Naropa University and in 2007 obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in “Interdisciplinary Studies with concentrations in Contemplative Psychology and Environmental Studies.” Throughout his undergraduate career he was also heavily influenced and inspired by deep ecology, ecopsychology, Buddhism, and the Shambhala tradition of enlightened warriorship as taught by Chögyam Trungpa.
He has released three collections of poems, Portraits of Beauty (2006), Songs from a Wild Place (2007), and The Ballad of the Sea-Sweet Moon and Other Poems (2008).
In late 2008 Jason completed a manuscript entitled The Salmon in the Spring: The Ecology of Celtic Spirituality which deals with the themes of Irish mythology and the re-invention and integration of the human species into consonance with the living cosmos. It draws heavily on ecological studies, mythology and folklore, and the nondual mystical traditions.
Most recently Jason has moved to San Francisco to study at the California Institute of Integral Studies in the “Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness” program. He is in the early stages of writing a fourth collection of poems and is developing experiential programs in order to bring his work with Place, Nature, Soul, and Story to the public.
Jason speaks with Joanna about nature, soul, storytelling, ecological mysticism and his own initiatory experiences from the diferent facets of the Irish Dreamtime
“We can’t engage with the entire universe, or with the aspect of our being that is the universe until we start engaging with our local identity, our local place, our local culture, our ecosystem, through that engagement, we can find the larger story, but it has to start with the local wawtershed, and finding our own story there, before finding the Big Story.”
Known to many as the “Matisse of Japan”, Mayumi Oda has done extensive work with female goddess imagery. From 1969 to the present Mayumi has exhibited over 40 one-woman shows throughout the world. Her artwork is also part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Library of Congress in Washington D.C. and many others. Mayumi is also a global activist, participating in anti-nuclear campaigns worldwide. She has lectured and held workshops on Nuclear Patriarchy to Solar Communities at the United Nations NGO Forum and the Women of Vision Conference in Washington DC. In 2000 she started Ginger Hill, a farm and retreat center on the Big Island of Hawaii. Mayumi currently lives at Ginger Hill Farm and travels worldwide, teaching workshops in creativity and self-realization.
Cynthia Jurs is an authorized Buddhist teacher (dharmacharya) who has practiced in the Tibetan Vajrayana and Zen Buddhist traditions for almost 30 years. In 1994 she received formal transmission from Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh to teach engaged Buddhism and now directs the Open Way Sangha in Santa Fe, New Mexico, teaching an approach to living in awareness through practice, ceremony, retreat, and pilgrimage. Cynthia also teaches meditation to environmental activists at the Center for Whole Communities in Vermont. In 1990 she met Charok Rinpoche, a 106-year-old lama living in a cave in Nepal, and received a Tibetan practice to bring healing and protection to the Earth. The practice involves filling earth treasure vases and burying them in places of need around the world. As a filmmaker, she recently directed and produced the film, Turning Prayer Into Action: Indigenous Grandmothers Meet the Bioneers. Her next film will document the pilgrimages of the earth treasure vases in order to share the story and practice more widely.
Talk given at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe on May 25. Joan Halifax Roshi is a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist, and author. She is Founder, Abbot, and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center, a Buddhist monastery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is Director of the Project on Being with Dying. A Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order, her work and practice for more than three decades has focused on engaged Buddhism.
Joan Halifax is a Zen Buddhist Roshi, anthropologist, ecologist, civil rights activist, hospice caregiver, and the author of several books on Buddhism and Spirituality. She currently serves as abbot and guiding teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a Zen Peacemaker community which she founded in 1990. In the 1970s she collaborated on LSD research projects with her ex-husband Stanislav Grof, in addition to other collaborative efforts with Joseph Campbell and Alan Lomax. She is founder of the Ojai Foundation in California, which she led from 1979 to 1989. As a socially engaged Buddhist, Halifax has done extensive work with the dying through her Project on Being with Dying (which she founded). She is on the board of directors of the Mind and Life Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated in exploring the relationship of science and Buddhism.
Tim Ward is the author of the newly released Savage Breast: One Man’s Search for the Goddess. This is the first book that explores the Goddess from an explicitly male perspective, and how the loss of the feminine divine has affected men and women’s relationships. Tim believes it is in men’s enlightened self interest to work together with women to move beyond patriarchy, and this is the conversation he will engage his audiences in as he shares his experience of exploring Goddess sites and ruins of the ancient Europe throughout 2006-07.
Jason Kirkey grew up in the North Atlantic watershed of Massachusetts in a small town north of Boston. He moved to Boulder, Colorado where he attended Naropa University and in 2007 obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in “Interdisciplinary Studies with concentrations in Contemplative Psychology and Environmental Studies.” Throughout his undergraduate career he was also heavily influenced and inspired by deep ecology, ecopsychology, Buddhism, and the Shambhala tradition of enlightened warriorship as taught by Chögyam Trungpa.
Known to many as the “Matisse of Japan”, 
