Dr. Roshi Joan Halifax

Joan Halifax Roshi is a Buddhist teacher, anthropologist, author, and social activist. For the past 25 years, she has lectured on the subject of death and dying at many academic institutions, including Harvard Divinity School and Harvard Medical School, Georgetown Medical School, University of Virginia Medical School, Duke University Medical School, and the University of Connecticut Medical School, among many others. She has worked with individuals suffering from life threatening illnesses since 1970, beginning at the University of Miami School of Medicine, where she was a medical anthropologist; has done field work among the Dogon of Mali, the Huichols of Mexico, among others; worked with psychiatrist Stanislav Grof at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center on pioneering work with dying cancer patients, using LSD as an adjunct to psychotherapy. Since the LSD project, she has continued to work with dying people and their families. She also continues to teach health care professionals as well as lay individuals on dying and in the inner life.

Roshi Joan has authored many articles and contributed chapters to many books on a wide range of subjects, including having worked with Joseph Campbell on his Historical Atlas of World Mythology. Her books include: The Human Encounter with Death (with Stanislav Grof); Shamanic Voices; Shaman: The Wounded Healer; The Fruitful Darkness; Simplicity in the Complex: A Buddhist Life in America and Being with Dying:, Wisdom Beyond Wisdom (with Kazuaki Tanahashi); and Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death.

Founder of the Ojai Foundation, an educational institution where she lived and worked until 1990, Roshi Joan then founded Upaya Zen Center, a Buddhist study and social action center located in Santa Fe, where she now practices, teaches, does social and environmental work, works with individuals who have catastrophic illnesses, and also serves as director of the Upaya Prison Project and founder of the National Network of Contemplative Prison Programs. Students from around the work come to Upaya to study the relationship between contemplative practice and social action. She has also founded the Upaya Prison Project, the Project on Being with Dying, the Partner's Program, and co-founded the Mind and Life Institute. She is a Founding Teacher in the Peacemaker Community and Zen Peacemaker Order.

Roshi has practiced Buddhism since 1965, receiving Refuge Vows in 1976 by Zen Master Seung Sahn. Ordained In 1980 as a Teacher in the Kwan Um Zen School, in 1990 she received the Lamp Transmission from Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. In 1997 she was ordained as a Soto Priest by Bernard Glassman Roshi, from whom she received Dharma Transmission and Inka in 1999. She has also studied with renowned Vajrayana teachers, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Venerable Khyentse Rinpoche, Venerable Chakdud Rinpoche, and others.

Joan Halifax Roshi received her BA from Tulane University, and her Ph.D. in medical anthropology from Union Graduate School. Her academic teaching credentials include being on the faculty of Columbia University, the University of Miami School of Medicine, the New School for Social Research, and the Naropa Institute, among others.