Mark Nunberg began his Buddhist practice in 1982 and has been teaching meditation since 1990. He co-founded Common Ground Meditation Center in Minneapolis, MN in 1993 and continues to serve as the center’s guiding teacher.
Matthew Daniell began Buddhist meditation in Asia in 1985. He practiced Zen in Japan, Tibetan Buddhism in India, and Insight Meditation in the United States, India, Burma, and Thailand, where he was an ordained monk for more than a year. His Asian teachers include Harada Roshi, Kalu Rinpoche, Dipama and Munindra. His Western teachers include Larry Rosenberg, Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, and Sharon Salzberg. Matthew is a founder and the guiding teacher at the Insight Meditation Center of Newburyport, Massachusetts (IMCNewburyport.org), and is a member of the Religious Services Department at Phillips Exeter Academy.
Matthew Hepburn caught fire with the Dharma through retreat practice in his early twenties. He began offering vipassana instruction in 2012 at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center, where he is continually inspired by the deep Dharma of daily living. He is a participant in the 2017-2021 IMS Teacher Training Program.
I find that practitioners can practice Vipassana for a long time without paying attention to the role that fear plays in their lives. Living with fear that is unacknowledged leads to fragmentation in life and practice. I encourage people to look at the energy of fear, for fear can limit our access to freedom.
It is quite possible to diligently practice mindfulness, yet keep fear at a distance. Not becoming intimate with fear creates a dualism and complacency that gives a silent nod of approval to living with fear. When we begin to look at, and become friends with, our fear, we suddenly discover a lot more space in our lives.
In the larger picture, Vipassana offers us all a practice that goes counter to the tremendous cultural momentum around us of materialism and consumerism. With practice, we can learn how to take full responsibility for ourselves, and so pay attention to developing inner qualities capable of sustaining us as we navigate the shifting sands of life.
Nakawe Cuebas Berrios feels blessed to have started along the Buddhist path in 1998 with S.N. Goenka. She then continued under the guidance of Gina Sharpe, and now studies with various other teachers, focusing on longer-term retreats. She serves as a mentor for the Prisoner Correspondence Course, sponsored by the BAUS, and is a midwife in the Bronx community. She is a participant in the 2017-2021 IMS Teacher Training Program.
I try to help practitioners approach their meditation practice and their lives with compassion and wisdom. Bringing a loving attentiveness into each moment allows us to learn kindness rather than condemnation, and discernment rather than judgment.
I feel that it is essential not to make a split between the formal practice that happens on retreat and the informal practice that happens in daily life. At the core, formal practice and daily life practice are the same. In all arenas of life we can create the same dedication to wakefulness and sensitivity. The right place to practice meditation is wherever we are. The right time to practice is right now. And the right way to practice is to know what we are doing whenever we are doing it.
We can live each moment in a fresh way, free from expectations of how things should be and open to how things are whether we are sitting on the cushion, washing the dishes, or talking with a friend. With practice, we can discover a current of underlying joy and find that all of life is sacred.
Meditation practice is an offering to the world. When we meditate, we practice not only for ourselves, but for all beings. In meditation there is a gradual purification of heart. This purification allows us to trust ourselves and to respond spontaneously to others with compassion and insight.
Nolitha is a Dharma teacher and board member at Dharmagiri Sacred Mountain Retreat Center, in SA that was founded by Kittisaro and Thanisara Weinberg. She has practised from 1997 under Kittisaro and Thanissara, who are of Ajahn Chah ‘s lineage. In her first retreat with these beloved teachers she discovered silence as a refuge and has never looked back. Nolitha completed the Community Dharma leadership program (CDL4) under Spirit Rock in 2014 and is at present a teacher trainee with IMS. Nolitha is a Psychologist in private practice and is trained in Karuna ( Group psychotherapy based on Buddhist principles) and Somatic Experiencing (SE). She is an executive coach and facilitator in leadership development. She offers in SA under Dharmagiri Race Work for reconciliation using Insight Dialogue principles. She has recently been appointed by Spirit Rock as a mentor for the TTCP program.
Developing a clear understanding of the teachings and learning to fully inhabit the body have been core parts of my Dhamma practice. These areas, as well a strong emphasis on the heart, inform and shape my teaching. The few years I spent training as an Anagarika in the Thai Forest monasteries broadened my understanding of the Buddha's teachings and instilled a profound respect for the Bhikkhu and Bhikkhuni Sangha. All along the way, I've been particularly interested in how other modalities like Nonviolent Communication and Somatics can support our growth in awakening.
Patricia Genoud-Feldman has been practicing Buddhist meditation (vipassana and Dzogchen) in Asia and the West since 1984 and teaching vipassana internationally since 1997. She is a co-founder and guiding teacher at the Meditation Centre Vimalakirti in Geneva, Switzerland.
Rebecca Bradshaw, author of Down to Earth Dharma: Insight Meditation to Awaken the Heart, has practiced vipassana and metta meditation since 1983 in both the United States and Burma. A Guiding Teacher Emeritus of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, she has been teaching since 1993. "My passion is encouraging students to drop into embodied presence, and grounding this presence in wisdom and lovingkindness. When a sense of love and kindness underlies our practice, we can explore life deeply in a truly integrated way, bringing together mind, heart, and body. Wisdom then holds it all in spaciousness. I especially enjoy connecting with young people in the Dharma and teaching students on longer retreats." For more information about Rebecca and/or to make a donation to support her teaching, visit her website at www.rebeccabradshaw.org.
Ron Denhardt has practiced Insight Meditation and in the Zen tradition for 25 years. He teaches the Elders' Group, and periodically teaches workshops classes at CIMC. He also teaches meditation at colleges, adult education centers, and other community organizations. I find it very heartening when practitioners realize personal freedom is possible and that their freedom will be beneficial to all.
A dedicated practitioner of Vipassana (insight) meditation, Roxanne Dault (she, her) has sat many long retreats in Asia and in the West. Roxanne is a Guiding Teacher at True North Insight where she teaches weekly sits and residential retreats. She is involved in different projects to share the Dharma in the West. She has completed the four-year Insight Meditation Society (IMS) Teacher Training. Her teaching is influenced by indigenous spiritual practices, her many travels and her experience in Somatic Experiencing®, a body-mind approach aimed at relieving the symptoms of trauma. Roxanne wants to share her love for the Dharma so that we can all touch freedom in every moment! She speaks French, English and is learning her ancestors' language, Anishinaabemowin. www.roxannedault.ca
Ruth King is an insight meditation teacher and emotional wisdom author and life coach. Mentored in Theravada Buddhism and the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, King teaches at insight meditation communities nationwide and offers the Mindful of Race Training program to teams and organizations. King is on the teacher’s council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and is the author of several publications including Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism From The Inside Out. www.RuthKing.net
Santikaro lived with Ajahn Buddhadasa during the last nine years of his life and became his primary translator. Ordained as a Theravada Bhikkhu in 1985, Santikaro spent most of his monastic life at Suan Mokkh. During this time he led Dawn Kiam, a small monastic community for foreigners. He is the founder of Liberation Park, a modern expression of Buddhist practice, study, and social responsibility, located in rural southwestern Wisconsin. There he continues to teach, explore nature, and translate the work of his teacher. He teaches Buddhism and meditation with an emphasis on the early Pali sources and is a lucid interpreter of the original teachings and discourses.
Sebene Selassie is a meditation teacher and certified Integral Coach®. She has been studying Buddhism since majoring in Comparative Religious Studies as an undergrad at McGill University. For over 20 years she worked with children, youth, and families nationally and internationally for small and large not–for–profits. Her work has taken her everywhere from the Tenderloin in San Francisco to refugee camps in Guinea, West Africa. Sebene is a two–time breast cancer survivor.
The most compelling part of my practice right now comes in the form of my writing. For a long time, I've focused my teaching and writing on lovingkindness. Now as I look more deeply into lovingkindness, I find that it actually rests on another foundation, the expression of faith.
Faith is the topic I am exploring most in teaching and writing. Today there is a tremendous upsurge of interest in a new kind of faith, based on a practice where people can experience a direct spirituality, one without rigid dogma or compulsory belief in a specific cosmology. This is a spirituality that rests on personal transformation.
Vipassana allows us to take a method of mind training and craft a way of life that is more compassionate, more ethical and more powerful than our unawakened lives. The Buddha's teachings give us an immediate experience of what we can do to change. Faith in the teachings means we align ourselves with a vision of our greatest possibilities. This is the heart of the practice.
Shelly Graf is Common Ground's Associate Director and is currently being trained by Insight Meditation Society as part of their four-year Teacher Training. They are a staff dharma teacher, like Mark Nunberg, the Guiding Teacher. Shelly provides direct support to the guiding teacher with developing and clarifying the center’s vision, policies, and priorities. Currently they teach the Wednesday night Weekly Practice Group, Daylong and Half-Day Retreats, and co-lead Living the Practice Workshops.
Shelly is also a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker and received their Masters degree in Social Work from the University of Minnesota in 2003. For a long time she has been interested in what it means to serve as a white social worker in brown communities. She is also a huge MN Lynx fan!
Dr. Stephen Fulder was born in the UK and received an M.A. from Oxford University and a Ph.D. He has devoted his life to exploring inner and outer healing and spirituality. He is an author and lecturer in herbal and natural medicine with 14 published books. He lives in an environmental village in the Galilee in Israel, which he helped to found and where he grows his own food. Stephen has been practicing Vipassana meditation since 1975, is the founder and senior teacher of the Israel Insight Society, the main Vipassana/Mindfulness organization in Israel, and has been teaching retreats and courses in Buddhist practice for 15 years. He has established programs and organizations, such as ‘Middleway’, which apply these teachings to aid peace and healing in the communities in the Middle East.
My biding motivation for the practice of teaching is to share my interest, my understanding and my confidence in the Buddha's way for a balanced and deeply happy life. Given the pace of our culture and the direction in which it is going, mindfulness is essential to sanity. Since my first vipassana retreat in 1975, I've experienced the wisdom of sanity, peace and freedom.
Now, the challenge in sharing the dhamma is to translate the Buddha's understanding into an idiom that speaks to the whole of our lives. As practice matures, the focus in guiding others shifts from informing the skeptic, inspiring the depressed and doubtful, soothing the suffering, energizing the lazy, cautioning the ambitious to discovering the subtler sources of suffering and happiness in our understanding and behavior. With deepening vipassana insight, students joyfully and confidently disentangle their minds.
In all of this, what sustains me as a teacher is the unwavering confidence that mindfulness is the source of our healing, sanity and freedom. Vipassana practice offers us a perspective on reality that is liberating, both personally and at every level of human interaction. Initially, my unwavering commitment was to the practice. Now my commitment includes service in sharing the dhamma and wherever possible informing, inspiring and encouraging others in the practice.
Thanissara, from London, was a nun for 12 years in the tradition of Ajahn Chah and has taught internationally for over 30 years. She is co-founder of Dharmagiri Sacred Mountain Retreat, South Africa, Sacred Mountain Sangha, California, and Chattanooga Insight, Tennessee. She has an MA in Mindfulness Psychotherapy Practice from the Karuna Institute UK and is co-author of Listening to the Heart, A Contemplative Guide to Engaged Buddhism, author of Time To Stand Up, An Engaged Buddhist Manifesto for Our Earth, and several books of poetry. She is a member of the Teacher Council at Spirit Rock and co-guiding teacher of Sacred Mountain Sangha.
Tuere Sala is a Guiding Teacher at Seattle Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock Retreat Center. She is a retired prosecuting attorney who has practiced Vipassana meditation for over 30 years. Tuere is committed to lay practice and inspired by bringing the Dharma to nontraditional places. She is a strong advocate for practitioners living with high stress, past trauma and difficulties sitting still. Tuere has been teaching since 2010 and has a long history of assisting others in establishing and maintaining a daily practice. Tuere can be contacted at tueresala.org and at https://www.dharmaground.org.
Walt Opie was first introduced to insight meditation in 1993 and began sitting retreats in 2005. Currently, his most influential teachers include Bhikkhu Analayo, Joseph Goldstein, Sayadaw U Tejaniya, and Gil Fronsdal. Walt is a graduate of the 2017-2021 IMS Teacher Training Program, as well as Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leaders program. He has led sitting groups for people in recovery and served as a volunteer teacher in several California prisons.
Will Kabat-Zinn spent his early practice years at the Insight Meditation Society with Larry Rosenberg, Sharon Salzberg, and Joseph Goldstein and at Panditarama Forest Meditation Center in Burma under the guidance of Sayadaw U Pandita. Will was deeply influenced by his friendship with Dr. Rina Sircar who carried the lineage of Mingon Sayadaw through her teacher Taungpulu Sayadaw, and by the fierce compassion of Chan Master Sheng Yen who he met and practiced with in New York. He lives in the East Bay with his wife and two sons.
Our potential as humans is vast and deep, and can be intentionally developed. There is a way that we can learn to open to all of our experience with kindness and clarity. As we begin to find this stability of heart and mind, wisdom will emerge.This emergence of wisdom, and strengthening of compassion, are the road to our individual and collective happiness and well-being.
Yanai Postelnik has been engaged in full-time dharma practice and service since 1990. He is inspired by the Thai forest tradition and nourished by time spent in nature, and has been teaching retreats around the world for over 25 years. Yanai is a member of the Guiding Teacher Council of Gaia House, in Devon, England, and of the Core Faculty of Insight Meditation Society, Massachusetts. Since 2018, Yanai has been engaged with Extinction Rebellion, seeking to bring about urgent change in the face of the climate and ecological emergency, in the service of all beings.
Zeenat Potia teaches meditation in Buddhist and secular spaces. She has over 15 years of training, with extensive silent retreat experience in the early Buddhist tradition and advanced trauma-sensitive mindfulness. Zeenat incorporates her life experience — as a South Asian immigrant, as a mother, and as a strategic communications professional in higher education, non-profit, and publishing for over 20 years — into her teaching. Her current work integrates mindfulness, 12-step recovery, and Internal Family Systems as a way to heal intergenerational trauma and transform structures of internal and external oppression. She is committed to sharing mindfulness with underserved and underrepresented populations. Zeenat has taught at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center since 2014, as well as teaching meditation in organizations and universities throughout the Boston area.
