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PAST DHARMA TEACHERS

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Ven. Suhita Dharma, Mahathero (May 4, 1941- December 28, 2013), called "Bhante" by his students, was a well-known senior Buddhist bhikkhu ordained in the three lineages: Mahayana, Theravada, and Vajrayana. He was the first African American to be ordained a Buddhist monk; he was ordained by the late Ven. Thich Thien An, the first Vietnamese Buddhist master to come to Los Angeles. Bhante worked to Mexico at the end of his life; on a pilgrimage to pay respects to the ancient deities of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, praying to ask permission for the establishment of a Buddhist center in Mexico at the request of the Mayans, Yaquis, Tarahumaras, Pimas, and Aztecs, and to meet with the shamans in those traditions. A longtime social justice activist and social worker, Bhante began working with Indo-Chinese refugees entering the U.S. in 1975 and worked with homeless persons, people with HIV/AIDS, and formerly incarcerated people. Bhante taught compassion meditation for everyday life and practice for those who are working with people in different communities, emphasizing a one-to-one approach as well as introducing students to the practice of Kalyanamitta (spiritual friend) and helping those who are within the sea of samsaric suffering.

Shaila Catherine is the founder of Bodhi Courses, an online Dhamma classroom, and Insight Meditation South Bay, a Buddhist meditation center in Silicon Valley in California. She has been practicing meditation since 1980, accumulating more than eight years of silent retreat experience, and has taught internationally since 1996. Shaila studied with masters in India, Thailand, and Nepal, and also with the founders of western meditation centers. She completed a one-year intensive meditation retreat with the focus on concentration and jhāna, and authored Focused and Fearless: A Meditator’s Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm, and Clarity. From 2006-2015 Shaila practiced under the direction of Venerable Pa-Auk Sayadaw. She authored Wisdom Wide and Deep: A Practical Handbook for Mastering Jhāna and Vipassanā to help make this traditional approach to samadhi and vipassana accessible to western practitioners.

JoAnna Hardy has been exploring and practicing multiple traditions since 1999. In 2005, her focus landed on Buddhism and Vipassana meditation. Helping communities and individuals that don’t typically have access to the traditional dharma settings, social/racial justice and building multicultural community is top on her list of priorities. She is an empowered teacher in the Spirit Rock, IMS lineage and the Guiding Teacher of Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society.

Rev. Michaela O'Connor Bono is the resident priest and co-leader of the Mid City Zen sangha in New Orleans. She has been practicing Zen for almost ten years, having done most of their monastic training at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center and Green Gulch farm, which are part of the San Francisco Zen Center. Rev. Michaela took ordination in 2010. Rev. Michaela is involved in prison meditation and chaplaincy work and she is on the Board of Sakyadhita USA, a branch of the International Association of Buddhist Women.

Bhante Buddharakkhita was born and raised in Uganda, East Africa. He first encountered Buddhism in 1990 while living in India, and he began practicing meditation in 1993. He was ordained as a Buddhist monk by the late Venerable U Silananda in 2002 at the Tathagata Meditation Center in San Jose, California and then he spent eight years under the guidance of Bhante Gunaratana at the Bhavana Society, West Virginia. He is the founder of the Uganda Buddhist Center in Uganda. Besides spending time at the Buddhist Center in Uganda, he is on the council of spiritual advisers to the Global Buddhist Relief, New Jersey. Bhante has been teaching meditation in Africa, Australia, Europe, Asia, and the U.S, since 2005. His book, Planting Dhamma Seeds: The Emergence of Buddhism in Africa, tells the story of his religious and spiritual work in Africa.

Bhante is the Former Spiritual Director of Flowering Lotus Meditation Center. We are so grateful for Bhante’s guidance for our first 9 years of existence! He helped inspire our Founder to start Flowering Lotus.

Sarah Vekasi, M.Div. is the founder of the Eco-Chaplaincy Initiative, in Black Mountain, NC, which provides pastoral support for social justice and environmental justice activists throughout Central Appalachia and North Carolina. Sarah is a longtime student and colleague of Joanna Macy, facilitating and teaching the Work That Reconnects and Active Hope with her for many years. Originally from rural Montana, Sarah entered the world of direct action activism and community organizing as a teenager. She lived in a tree for nearly a year in Western Washington and helped organize large protests and movement spaces throughout the west coast in the late 1990’s. In her young twenties she needed answers about suffering and the Bodhisattva pledge, so she moved into a traditional Zen monastery in Japan for several years, practicing with Tangen Harada Roshi, before returning to the United States in 2004 to coin and create Eco-Chaplaincy. Sarah has a Master of Divinity from Naropa University, and has worked as a Chaplain within the movement to end mountaintop removal coal mining and towards a sustainable Appalachia since 2009.

David Chernikoff, M.Div., L.C.S.W., began the study and practice of meditation in 1971 and started teaching insight meditation in 1988. He trained as a yoga teacher at the Integral Yoga Institute and completed the Community Dharma Leader program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. His teaching has been influenced by senior teachers from the Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock, Tibetan teachers with whom he studied during a 3-year stay in Nepal, and spiritual guides from other contemplative traditions, most notably Ram Dass, Father Thomas Keating, and Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. David taught psychology and meditation for many years at Naropa University. He currently serves as one of the guiding teachers of the Insight Meditation Community of Colorado and has a private practice as a spiritual counselor and psychotherapist in Boulder.

Bhikkhu Pannadipa was Co-Abbot of Heartwood Refuge, located in North Carolina. His clarity, stillness and finely honed skills will add unspeakable depth to the practitioner’s experience. Powerfully present with penetrating awareness, he guides meditators towards jhanic attainment (a concentrated mind), teaching them how to use this empowerment in all circumstances of practical life. He is a Theravadan monk, formerly Chan, and a Tien Shen Pi Shr Fu.

Dolores Watson, Founder and Director Emerita of Flowering Lotus Meditation and Retreat Center, has been involved with healing modalities of mind, body and spirit for many years. Her vision for Flowering Lotus is to provide a peaceful place where people of all backgrounds can come to experience healing through meditation, gentle movement and wholesome vegetarian food. Certified to teach hatha yoga and meditation by Integral Yoga over 35 years ago, she has continued expanding her knowledge of healing through meditation, visualizations and affirmations. She has also been rigorously engaged with two transformational groups for more than 20 years: Landmark Education and Insight. Having completed her first 10 day Vipassana meditation course led by S.N. Goenka in 2003, she has committed herself to the practice of Vipassana meditation and the sharing of this process with others. Dolores founded Radiance, a wholistic healing center, in New York City in 1984. The center focused on a strictly vegetarian diet of raw foods, vegetable juice fasting and internal cleansing. Dolores guided her students through a 4 week process that resulted in self-healing of many diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, abnormal lumps, joint and muscular pain just to name a few. Besides intestinal cleansing products, she engaged them in meditation, chanting and visualizations. Prior to Radiance, Dolores taught elementary, junior high, adult education and junior college in New York City.

Dolores retired from Flowering Lotus March 2019. It’s because of Dolores’ vision and generosity that Flowering Lotus exists. We wish her happiness and send her much loving kindness in her retirement.

Michael Grady is a core teacher at the Insight Meditation Society and has been a guiding teacher for more than 20 years at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center, an urban dharma center that emphasizes contemplative practice in daily life. Michael began practicing Insight meditation in 1974 with Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg. More recently, he trained with the late Master Sheng Yen and was introduced to the practice of Silent Illumination in the Chan tradition. This practice emphasizes cultivating a wise and compassionate attitude in meditation practice, as well as including all of life as an opportunity for awakening.

Ruth King is an Insight Meditation Teacher and Emotional Wisdom author and consultant. King teaches at Insight Meditation communities nationwide. She is a guiding teacher at Insight Meditation Community of Washington, DC, core teacher in the Dedicated Practitioner Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and the founder of Mindful Members Practice Community in Charlotte, NC. She is the creator of the Mindful of Race Training -- A Stimulus for Social Healing and Leadership, the 8-week course Mindfulness Practices for Living Well, the DVD program Mindful Approaches to Cultural Competency, and the audio program Embracing the Mad Mind -- Cultivating Calm in Chaos. King is also the author of The Emotional Wisdom Cards, Soothing The Inner Flames of Rage -- Meditations That Educate the Heart and Transform the Mind, and Healing Rage–Women Making Inner Peace Possible

Susan Piver is a meditation teacher, writer, entrepreneur, and a professional speaker who has been invited to share her expertise everywhere from Procter & Gamble and Hubspot to CNN, Oprah, and the TODAY show. Known for her ability to merge the profound and the practical, Susan is founder of the Open Heart Project, an international online meditation center with close to 15,000 members. In her new book, Start Here Now, she presents the practice of meditation as something more than just the latest “life hack,” but as a path to wisdom and compassion. Susan is an award-winning New York Times best-selling author of nine books that have sold more than 400,000 copies and been translated into 10 languages.

Anushka Fernandopulle teaches meditation and provides leadership coaching to individuals and teams that brings Eastern practices to Western modern life. She is interested in the synthesis of leadership, innovation and awareness, helping leaders to develop courage, clarity and compassion to make their vision come to life. She has over twenty years of training Buddhist meditation; primarily Vipassana or Insight Meditation and studied Buddhism at Harvard University. She is a member of the Teacher’s Council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, a driving force behind the San Francisco Insight Meditation Center, a blogger on the Huffington Post about meditation and a mayoral appointee to the San Francisco Citizen’s Committee on Community Development. More about her work, publications, guided meditations and teaching can be found on her website, www.anushkaf.org

Dr. Hans Gruenig is a Dharma and meditation teacher and a professor at Tulane University, where he teaches courses on Buddhism, Asian Philosophy, and Happiness and Human Flourishing. He has been teaching meditation for more than 15 years and gave talks as a Designated Speaker for the Dalai Lama leading up to his visit to New Orleans in 2013. Since 1995 Hans has attended Buddhist teachings and meditation retreats with dozens of monastic and lay teachers in the USA, Europe, and India -- and completed a Dhamma & Meditation Teacher Training at the Bhavana Monastery with Henepola Gunaratana. After a decade of Theravada practice, Hans started attending retreats in nondual Zen and Vajrayana lineages as well. He received teachings from the Dalai Lama in India, Dzogchen initiations from Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and completed a nondual facilitator training at the Kanzeon Zen Center. Hans has also completed trainings intensive trainings in positive psychology based coaching, Marshall Rosenberg’s work on compassionate communication, Byron Katie’s work on transforming stressful thoughts, and has been certified to teach John Gottman’s principles and practices for successful relationships.

Dr Vimalasara (Valerie) Mason-John M.A is a TEDx speaker, author of 8 books including Detox Your Heart, Meditations for Emotional Trauma, and her award-winning books Eight Step Recovery - Using The Buddha’s Teachings to Overcome Addiction and her novel Borrowed Body. She is a senior teacher in the Triratna Buddhist Order, practicing for 27 years, chair of Vancouver Buddhist Centre, President of the Buddhist Recovery Network and one of the organizers of the GENX Buddhist Teacher’s gathering in 2019. She curated the Tricycle series Teachings for Uncertain Times 2018, and was the recipient of a European Diversity Awards 2018, for her past work in the LGBTQ communities in the UK. She is a co-founder of Mindfulness-Based Addiction Recovery MBAR and trained as a telephone counsellor for Night Line UK. She lives in Canada and tours internationally as a public speaker and is one of the new leading African Descent voices in the field of Mindfulness Approaches for Addictive Behaviours.

Terry Ray is a licensed psychotherapist who has been practicing Vipassana meditation since 1974, and teaching for over 30 years. She completed the first Community Dharma Leader’s program at Spirit Rock, leads retreats and teaches through the Insight Meditation Community and at Naropa. Terry also studied intensively with Charlotte Selver in Sensory Awareness, and is certified to lead this somatic based mindfulness practice.

Sister Santussika is an American Therevadan Buddhist nun. She started teaching chi gong and energy healing in 1997, began teaching meditation in 1999, began guiding people through self-reflective, visualization processes for resolving suffering and stress in 2001, and completed a four-year interfaith seminary program, receiving a Master of Divinity degree in 2002. She first took robes in 2005 and ordained as a samaneri (10-precept nun) in 2010. She has trained at Amaravati and Chithurst Buddhist Monasteries in England and Aloka Vihara in San Francisco. She now resides at the One Heart Center in Los Altos Hills, California.

Carla Brennan is a Vipassana teacher in the Santa Cruz area and offers a weekly meditation group, classes, retreats and other programs with the Bloom of the Present Sangha. She is a visiting teacher with the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA. Before founding Bloom of the Present in 2009, she taught with Vipassana Santa Cruz for five years. Carla began meditation practice in 1975 in the Zen tradition and was a student of Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn in Cambridge, MA. A few years later she began attending the newly formed Insight Meditation Society, completing many retreats with Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein and others. Later she added the Tibetan Buddhist practice of Dzogchen with Lama Surya Das, Lama John Makransky and Tsoknyi Rinpoche. In the early ’90’s, Carla began attending wilderness retreats with John Milton and Sacred Passage, completing 2 one-month solo retreats near Crestone, CO, and training to be a Sacred Passage Guide. As part of her regular teaching she offers meditation in nature and encourages her students to open to the wisdom of the natural world. Carla has also worked as an artist and illustrator and is a former psychotherapist and counselor trainer in Psychosynthesis, a spiritual psychology. She has taught Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for 18 years. In addition to teaching Vipassana meditation, Carla is a teacher of Natural Wisdom and Compassion Meditation with Lama John Makransky and the Foundation of Active Compassion. Her personal spiritual practice also includes qi gong and hatha yoga.

Pascal Auclair has been immersed in Buddhist practice and study since 1997, sitting retreats in Asia and America with revered monastics and lay teachers. He has been mentored by Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Massachusetts and Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California, where he is now enjoying teaching retreats. Pascal teaches in North America and in Europe. His depth of insight, classical training, and creative expression all combine in a wise and compassionate presence. In addition, his warmth and humour make Pascal a much appreciated teacher.

Ralph Steele has been teaching meditation retreats since 1987. He was instrumental in establishing people-of-color retreats at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA, and Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA. Ralph is a Vietnam veteran; he practiced, as an ordained monk, in the monasteries of Burma and Thailand with masters of Buddhist Psychology. He has also received extensive training from Tibetan, Zen, and Hindu meditation masters for over forty-five years. He is the guiding teacher for Life Transition Meditation Center. Ralph's book, Tending The Fire, will be available for sale.

Dr. Paul Levy has studied and practiced inner work of various kinds for many years utilizing diverse modalities. His signature practice is sitting Kundalini Energy Meditation (originally developed by Swami Rudrananda aka Rudi), which he studied with his teachers, Stuart Perrin and Jagna Schwartz, for 20 years. Paul has been teaching this practice for 16 years. Paul is a doctor of chiropractic, who resides in Chicago with his wife, Nina, a certified Kundalini Yoga instructor.

Master John W. Ellis IV is a martial artist with more than 25 years of experience in helping people strengthen the connections between the mind, body and spirit. He teaches a variety of people, including toddlers, youth, adults senior citizens, athletes, the physically challenged, teen mothers and autistic children. He has more than 20 years of meditation practice in Christian, Zen, Vipassana and New Thought traditions. John teaches the Five Realms of Life, a Meditative Movement practice that explores the properties of Fire, Water, Earth Air and Space.

Mary Rees has been teaching Insight and Mindfulness Meditation since 1989 and Relational Meditation since 2001. Her first vipassana teacher and mentor was Rodney Smith whose focus on spaciousness remains her primary context for practice. Though Mary has worked with many teachers in several traditions, she is now a participant in the Integrated Study and Practice Community at Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. She is the author of Being Prayer--Transforming Consciousness and currently a PhD student in Psychology and Interdisciplinary Inquiry at Saybrook University.

Dr. Patricia Brawley maintains a therapy and consulting practice and is a university professor. She has always been deeply interested in mind-body interaction, health psychology, creativity, consciousness, and dreams. She is strongly influenced by mindfulness meditation practice, Buddhist philosophy, yoga, and humanistic values and beliefs. Dr Brawley is an independent scholar and researcher with an interest in phenomenological thought and methodology. She has presented professional papers at national and international conferences across the United States, Canada, Japan, Italy, Finland, and Russia. She is a member of the American Psychological Association, the American Counseling Association, the International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals, American Mental Health Counselors Association, the Mississippi Licensed Professional Counselors Association, the Mississippi Counselors Association, the Mississippi Psychological Association and the International Human Science Research organization. Dr Brawley, a published author, enjoys writing and leading writing groups. She lives in McComb, MS with her husband and three cats, Kwan Yin, Nightmare, and Goldilocks.

Rebecca Bradshaw, is the Guiding Teacher of the Insight Meditation Center of Pioneer Valley in Easthampton, Massachusetts, and one of the Guiding Teachers at the Insight Meditation Center in Barre, MA. She has been practicing Vipassana meditation since 1983 in the United States and Myanmar (Burma) and teaching since 1993. She completed her dharma teacher training at Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, where she is part of the three month retreat teacher team, leads retreats for young adults, and serves as a member of the diversity committee. She also teaches at other locations in the United States and abroad, including Spanish language retreats, bringing a style that explores the convergence of love and wisdom. Rebecca has a master's degree in Counseling Psychology and is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC).

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