Please support Dharma Seed with a 2024 year-end gift.

Your donations allow us to offer these teachings online to all.

In Memoriam: Rick Woudenberg


The greatest gift is the
gift of the teachings
 
Dharma Teachers of Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley
next ››      1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Vinny Ferraro
Vinny Ferraro has been practicing meditation since 1993. He has studied with several renowned spiritual teachers including Ajahn Sumedho and the Dalai Lama. In 1998, he spent a year sitting bedside with the dying through the San Francisco Zen Center Hospice Program, as well as experiencing "A Year to Live" practice (based on the book by Stephen Levine). He has taught meditation to incarcerated youth and adults and is currently the head trainer for MBA, The Mind Body Awareness Project. Vinny also leads workshops for youth in schools internationally for a non-profit organization called Challenge Day. He is a Spirit Rock Community Dharma Leader and has been teaching the weekly Friday night insight meditation group Urban Dharma in San Francisco since 2004.

Walt Opie
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.

Wendy Johnson

Wes Nisker
Wes Nisker is a dharma teacher, author, radio commentator and performer. He is the founder and co-editor of Inquiring Mind and a member of the Spirit Rock Teachers Council. His latest book is Crazy Wisdom Saves the World Again!

Will Kabat-Zinn
Will Kabat-Zinn has practiced Vipassana meditation intensively in the U.S. and in Burma for over ten years. He currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and teaches regularly at SF Insight, Spirit Rock, and at meditation centers around the country. For eight years Will taught meditation and awareness practices to incarcerated youth in New York City and Oakland. In addition to sharing the Dharma, Will is an MFT Intern in private practice in San Francisco and Oakland. He completed four years of teacher training with Jack Kornfield.

Yvonne Rand
Yvonne Rand was a meditation teacher and lay householder priest in the Soto Zen Buddhist tradition, active from 1972 until her death in 2020. She started her studies in Eastern religion while an undergraduate at Stanford University, where she majored in Chinese intellectual history. Rand became a close student of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in 1966, served as his personal assistant and advisor, and with his wife Mitsu Suzuki, cared for him through his dying and death in 1971. She was a founder of the San Francisco Zen Center, was ordained as a priest there, served on the board of directors for many years, and continued to practice and teach there for many years. She studied with Dainin Katagiri Roshi and received dharma transmission from him in 1989. In the course of her career, her profound interest in the Dharma led her to study closely with notable teachers in various Buddhist traditions, including Rinzai Zen with Maureen Stuart Roshi and Shodo Harada Roshi; Theravada Buddhism with Ven. Henepola Gunaratana and Achan Sumedho; and the Himalayan Buddhist tradition with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Lama Anagarika Govinda, and Tara Tulku Rinpoche. Rand was instrumental in developing a ceremony of remembrance in the West called the Jizo Ceremony (after the Japanese bodhisattva) for children, born and unborn, who have died. This ceremony continues as part of her Dharma legacy, as numerous other Buddhist teachers have taken it up. Her understanding of the inseparability of life and death led her to sit with and tend people in end-of-life care over many decades. She also taught and counseled extensively both professional and volunteer caregivers working with the terminally ill.

next ››      1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Creative Commons License