NEW YORK ZEN CENTER FOR CONTEMPLATIVE CARE

Since 2004, Reverend Jennifer Block has served as the director of Public Education for the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco, California, creating curriculum, teaching workshops, offering spiritual care, and providing community outreach. In her current role, Jennifer shares the mission and learning of Zen Hospice Project nationally through the many curriculums she has created from her years of hospice and chaplaincy service. Jennifer also provides training and spiritual care to volunteers, clinicians, and caregivers, as well as friends and families facing the spiritual and emotional issues related to end-of-life care. With Gil Fronsdal and Paul Haller, Jennifer founded the Buddhist Chaplaincy Training program at the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies (www.sati.org), where Buddhist practitioners are are introduced to the competencies of professional spiritual care. Jennifer completed her undergraduate degree at Boston University, and her theology degree at Naropa University and is an ordained Interfaith minister and Buddhist chaplain.

Gil is the primary teacher for the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California; he has been teaching since 1990. He has practiced Zen and Vipassana in the U.S. and Asia since 1975. He was a Theravada monk in Burma in 1985, and in 1989 began training with Jack Kornfield to be a Vipassana teacher. He was ordained as a Soto Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1982, and in 1995 received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman, the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center. Gil has an undergraduate degree in agriculture from U.C. Davis where he was active in promoting the field of sustainable farming. In 1998 he received a PhD in Religious Studies from Stanford University. Gil teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center where he is part of its Teachers Collective. He is a founder of the Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Program at the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies. He is a husband and a father of two boys.

Carlyle Coash, MA, BCC

Carlyle Coash has been a hospice chaplain since 2000, in Colorado and now in California where he works currently with the Zen Hospice Project. He has worked both as a hospice chaplain and most recently as part of a Palliative Care team at Kaiser San Jose Medical Center, where he was also the Manager of Spiritual Care. He is board certified with the Association of Professional Chaplains and was one of the first Buddhist practitioners to be designated as such. Carlyle has been the Section Leader for the Spiritual Caregiving Section of the National Council of Hospice and Palliative Professionals (NCHPP) for the last four years. NCHPP represents the various professional disciplines within end of life care, and is part of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO). He also serves on NHPCO’s Ethics Committee and is chair of their educational sub-committee.

From Belfast, Northern Ireland, Ryushin Paul Haller left home in 1971, lived in London for a year, then traveled throughout Europe, the middle east, Russia, and Afghanistan. He ended up in Japan, where he lived for a year and was introduced to Zen. Then he traveled throughout southeast Asia. He was ordained a Buddhist monk in Thailand, where he spent six months sitting in a remote cave. Moving to Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in 1974, Paul was ordained as a priest by Zentatsu Richard Baker in 1980, who gave him the name Ryushin Zendo, "Dragon Heart, Zen Way." In 1993 he received Dharma Transmission from Sojun Mel Weitsman. Founder and formerly Director of Outreach at SFZC, Paul is interested in finding ways of expressing our practice in society, both as compassionate service and making it available to as many people as possible. He became abbot of Zen Center in 2003. He is a founder of the Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Program at the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies, in Redwood City, California.

Zen Master (Roshi) Bernie Glassman is a world-renowned pioneer in the American Zen Movement. He is a spiritual leader, published author, accomplished academic and successful businessman with a PhD in Applied Mathematics. Dr. Glassman currently teaches and travels, giving talks and workshops on spiritual practice, socially responsible business and international peacemaking. He is the founder and co-spiritual director of the Zen Peacemakers. Bernie is the co-author, with Rick Fields, of Instructions to the Cook: A Zen Master’s Lessons in Living a Life that Matters (Bell Tower, April 1996), the author of Bearing Witrness: A Zen Master’s Lessons in Making Peace (Bell Tower, May 1997), and Infinite Circle: Studies in Zen (Shambhala Publication, spring 2002).

Dr. Diane E. Meier is Director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC), a national organization devoted to increasing the number and quality of palliative care programs in the United States. She is also Director of the Lilian and Benjamin Hertzberg Palliative Care Institute; Professor of Geriatrics and Internal Medicine; and Catherine Gaisman Professor of Medical Ethics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City where she has served on the faculty since 1983. Meier is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2008 MacArthur Fellowship, National Institute on Aging Academic Career Leadership Award, the Open Society Institute Faculty Scholar’s Award of the Project on Death in America, the Founders Award of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, and the Alexander Richman Commemorative Award for Humanism in Medicine. She is the recipient of a five-year NIA Academic Career Leadership Award, and she is the Principal Investigator of an NCI-funded five-year multi-site study on the outcomes of hospital palliative care services in cancer patients.

Woodson C. Merrell, MD, ScD (hc) is the M. Anthony Fisher Director of Integrative Medicine at the Continuum Center for Health and Healing and the Chairman of the Department of Integrative Medicine at Beth Israel. He has expertise and special interests in mind-body therapies (especially yoga, qi gong, and meditation), acupuncture, botanical therapies, nutrition and nutraceuticals, homeopathy, and indigenous healing systems (particularly Tibetan and Chinese Medicine). He has served as director, scientific director, co-developer, presenter and on the advisory boards for many professional medical conferences such as: Nutritional Medicine; Botanical Medicine; Native American Healing Traditions; Tibetan Medicine; CAM Expo; and Models of Healthcare. He has served as Chairman of New York State's Board of Acupuncture, and since 1995 has been a Board Member of New York State's Office of Professional Medical Conduct. Dr. Merrell is on the Steering and Policy Committees of the national Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine, comprising 25% of the nation's medical schools, pledged to transform medical education and physician training with integrative medicine. In 2004 he was a finalist for the first annual Bravewell Award for leadership in integrative medicine. He is a frequent guest and commentator for all major media both regionally and nationally, including CBS Morning Show, CNN, NPR, WBAI, Time, Forbes, NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and more.

Rev. T. Kenjitsu Nakagaki is the head resident minister of New York Buddhist Church — Jodoshinshu (Shin Buddhist) Temple; chairperson of the Eastern District Buddhist Ministers Associations of BCA; former president of the Buddhist Council of New York; former UCM Buddhist Chaplain at Columbia University; Board of Trustee of the Institute of Buddhist Studies; adviser of American Buddhist Study Center; Active in Interfaith Circles such as the Interfaith Center of New York(vice chair), The Interfaith Alliance (board). Religions for Peace (board); Also active in Asian and Japanese communities such as Japanese American Association of New York (board member), Japanese American Lions Club (honorable advisor), Asian & Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV/AIDS (religious advisor). He is an author of “New York Bozu Indo o Aruku (Gendai-shokan Publisher in Japan, 2003).” He has been active in peace-building activities. He has organized Interfaith Peace ceremony to commemorate Hiroshima/ Nagasaki atomic bombing every year on August 5, since 1994. He has organized Annual Floating Lanterns Ceremony to commemorate WTC 9-11 tragedy at Hudson River on September 11, since 2002.

In 1987, Frank Ostaseski co-founded the Zen Hospice Project, the first Buddhist hospice in American 2004, he created Metta Institute to bring his work to a broader audience and develop the End-of-Life Care Practitioner Program that Frank leads with faculty members Ram Dass, Zoketsu Norman Fischer, Rachel Naomi Remen MD, and many others.Frank is a dynamic, original, and visionary teacher. His public programs have introduced thousands to the practices of mindful and compassionate care of the dying. His groundbreaking work has been widely featured in the media, including the Bill Moyers television series On Our Own Terms, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and in numerous print publications. In 2001, Frank was honored by the Dalai Lama for his years of compassionate service to the dying and their families.

Richard K. Payne, Dean of the Institute of Buddhist Studies, grew up in the San José area where there is a large and vibrant Japanese American community centered on the San Jose Buddhist Betsuin. At San JosJosé State University his interests came to focus on modern Continental philosophy and psychology, completing his studies for both a BA (Philosophy-Psychology, 1972) and an MA (Philosophy,1975) there. He also pursued studies at the Nyingma Institute, Berkeley, receiving an MA (Buddhist Studies, 1981), with a thesis on the concept of apoha in the Buddhist epistemologists (published, Journal of Indian Philosophy, 1987). In order to continue work on Buddhism, he entered the doctoral program in History and Phenomenology of Religion at the Graduate Theological Union. His dissertation research was on the votive fire offering in the Shingon tradition, and included training for the Shingon priesthood on Mt. Koya in Japan. He graduated in 1985, at which point he began teaching for the Institute of Buddhist Studies. In 1994 he was appointed to his current position. He continues to be active in the fields of Japanese Buddhist studies, ritual studies, and the cognitive study of religion. He also serves as editor-in-chief of the Institute's annual journal, Pacific World, and is chair of the Editorial Committee of the Pure Land Buddhist Studies Series.

Sharon Salzberg is cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts. She is one of America's leading spiritual teachers and authors, and has been a student of Buddhism since 1971, leading meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. Sharon's latest book is The Force of Kindness, published by Sounds True. She is also the author of Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience, published by Riverhead Books; Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness and A Heart as Wide as the World, both published by Shambhala Publications; and co-author with Joseph Goldstein of Insight Meditation, a Step-by-Step Course on How to Meditate (audio), from Sounds True. For more information about Sharon, please visit: www.SharonSalzberg.com.

Gina Sharpe is a co-founder and Guiding Teacher of New York Insight Meditation Center. She is a graduate of the first Spirit Rock Community Dharma Leaders Program. Her primary mentor is Jack Kornfield. She has been teaching meditation and Dharma for 11 years. She has taught at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Insight Meditation Society (IMS), Asia Society, Tibet House, the New York Open Center, the Katonah Yoga Center, and at other centers in the U. S. and helped to initiate and teach People of Color retreats at IMS. For the past four years, she has been a volunteer teacher of Dharma and meditation at the only maximum security prison for women in New York State.

Alessandra Strada, PhD is Assistant Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. She is also Attending Psychologist in the department of Pain Medicine and Palliative Care at Beth Israel Medical Center, in New York City. Alessandra is the director of the Supportive Treatment and Resources (STAR) Program, a specialist palliative care program that focuses on palliative care and hospice patients who do not have caregiver support or whose caregivers are too distressed to meet their loved ones’ needs. Alessandra is Core Faculty and member of the education committee in the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship and the Pain Medicine Fellowship at Beth Israel Medical Center. She serves as faculty in the psychology internship program in the department of psychiatry. Alessandra is also assistant Professor in the department of East-West Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.

Polly Young-Eisendrath, Ph.D., Jungian analyst and psychologist; Clinical Supervisor and Consultant in Leadership Development, Norwich University, Northfield, Vermont; Clinical Associate Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont; Private Practice, Central Vermont; has published fourteen books, translated into twenty languages, including: The Self-Esteem Trap: Raising Confident and Compassionate Kids in an Age of Self-Importance; The Cambridge Companion to Jung: New and Revised (both in press); Awakening and Insight: Zen Buddhism and Psychotherapy; The Resilient Spirit: Transforming Suffering into Insight and Renewal.