Roshi Joan Halifax is a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist, and author. She is Founder, Abbot, and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
She has worked in the area of death and dying since 1970 and is Director of the Project on Being with Dying. For the past twenty-five years, she has been active in environmental work.
Of recent, Roshi Joan Halifax was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar to the Library of Congress and the only woman and Buddhist to be on the Advisory Council for the Tony Blair Foundation.
She was Founder and Director of the Upaya Prison Project that develops programs on meditation for prisoners. She was founder of the Ojai Foundation, was an Honorary Research Fellow at Harvard University, and has taught in many universities, monasteries, and medical centers around the world.
She studied for a decade with Zen Teacher Seung Sahn and was a teacher in the Kwan Um Zen School. She received the Lamp Transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh, and was given Inka by Roshi Bernie Glassman. A Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order, her work and practice for more than forty years has focused on engaged Buddhism.
