Advisors
Adam Lobel, PhD, practices at the intersections of ecodharma, meditation, and psycho-social political transformation. He is a scholar-practitioner of philosophy and religion, a Guiding Teacher for One Earth Sangha, an environmental justice activist working to resist the petrochemical buildout in his region, and a professor of Ecopsychology. Adam served as a teacher (acharya) in the Shambhala tradition from 2005 until resigning in 2018. A speaker on ecology and spirituality at the United Nations, he leads ecodharma workshops called “Silent Transformations,” has taught in the Ecosattva Training, and is a Greenfaith fellow. Adam’s teachings focus on Great Perfection Tibetan Buddhism, modern phenomenology, and inoperative studies (Heidegger, Foucault, Agamben). He has a longstanding interest in progressive contemplative education and transformative pedagogy. Adam teaches a critical style of contemplative training that seeks to avoid enclosure in neoliberal mindfulness while still disclosing effortless awareness. He is currently developing what he calls “four fields” of contemplative practices for potential worlds. For more on his teachings see his website: Releasement.
Pieces on One Earth Sangha
A long term student of the Diamond Approach, Catherine has been teaching Insight Meditation internationally since 1997. She is a member of the Gaia House teacher council, and since 2014 has been collaborating with Rob Burbea in shaping and teaching Soulmaking Dharma. Her teaching emphasizes embodiment and working with whatever hinders us from living our deepest knowing in the world.
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James Baraz has been teaching meditation for over thirty years He is a co-founder teacher of Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California where he regularly teaches, and he leads retreats and workshops around the United States and abroad. He created the Awakening Joy course, which has had over 9,000 participants on-site and online, since 2003. He is on the International Advisory Board of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. He lives with his wife, Jane, in Berkeley, California. He is the co-author with Shoshana Alexander of Awakening Joy: 10 Steps that Will Put You on the Road to Real Happiness. He can be reached at
Pieces on One Earth Sangha
Kaira Jewel Lingo is a Dharma teacher with a lifelong interest in spirituality, ecology and social justice. Her work continues the Engaged Buddhism developed by Thích Nhất Hạnh, and includes the interweaving of nature, ecology, embodied mindfulness practice, art and play. She has extensive experience offering nature and earth-based retreats with environmental and climate activists, children and families, and mindful hiking retreats. She draws inspiration from her parents’ lives of service and her dad’s work with Martin Luther King, Jr. After living as an ordained nun for 15 years in Thích Nhất Hạnh’s monastic community, Kaira Jewel now teaches internationally in the Zen lineage and the Vipassana tradition, as well as in secular mindfulness, at the intersection of racial, climate and social justice with a focus on activists, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, artists, educators, families, and youth. Based in New York, she offers spiritual mentoring to groups and is author of We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons in Moving through Change, Loss and Disruption and co-author of Healing Our Way Home: Black Buddhist Teachings on Ancestors, Joy and Liberation (Feb 2024).
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Lama Willa Miller is the Founder and Spiritual Director of Natural Dharma Fellowship in Boston, MA and its retreat center Wonderwell Mountain Refuge in Springfield, NH. She is Visiting Lecturer in Buddhist Ministry at Harvard Divinity School. As a writer and editor, her work has been published in Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, Buddhadharma, and the Tibet Journal. Willa’s teaching interests include compassion, non-dual embodiment and contemplative care. Lama Willa is a guiding teacher of One Earth Sangha.
Pieces on One Earth Sangha
Mark is an inner and outer explorer, who has devotedly studied mindfulness meditation practices for three decades. He is passionate about sharing the power of meditation and has taught mindfulness workshops and meditation retreats in six continents for the past twenty years. Mark is a senior meditation teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and has taught there since 2000. Through his organization Awake in the Wild, he shares his passion for integrating meditation and nature.
Pieces on One Earth Sangha
nischal neupane is a lifelong learner and is broadly and deeply interested in how private and public, and local and global moralities shape individual and communal level engagements with the world. nisch is passionate about integrating compassion, kindness and justice into conversations around climate and is currently deconstructing his understanding of and engagement with environmentalism and Buddhism. He has a Masters’ in the Human dimensions of Environmental Conservation and currently manages the Contemplative Changemaking Grants for the Mind & Life Institute.
Susie Harrington is the guiding teacher for Desert Dharma and Sky Mind Retreats, teaching both in the Southwest and internationally since 2005. She delights in teaching outdoors, knowing that nature nourishes the heart and inspires wisdom. She encourages, through silence and intimate presence, coming home to our embedded natural aliveness and belonging, and the freedom that is our natural state. Her roots are in the Insight tradition, having trained extensively with Jack Kornfield, Guy Armstrong, and Joseph Goldstein; she is also well practiced in the Tibetan and Diamond Heart traditions as well as in Hakomi Therapy. For more information: Desert Dharma
Team
Kristin is co-founder and director of One Earth Sangha whose mission is to cultivate a Buddhist response to ecological crises. She is a graduate of Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leader program and now teaches with the Insight Meditation Community of Washington (DC). As a co-founder of White Awake, Kristin has been supporting white people since 2011 with a Dharma approach to uprooting racism in ourselves and in our world. With a background in software engineering as well as environmental management, she has worked at several international environmental organizations. She is a GreenFaith Fellow and serves on the advisory board of Project Inside Out as well as the steering committee for Interfaith Power & Light DMV. Kristin was born and raised in northern New Mexico and currently lives in Washington DC, traditional lands of the Piscataway peoples.
Pieces on One Earth Sangha
Lou is a life-long environmentalist who has worked to advance laws, policies and practices that promote care for the Earth and the people and communities that call it home. Lou discovered the dharma as part of his search for balance and support in the face of the difficult emotions that arise as we dedicate ourselves to healing the world and promoting social change. He’s worked in government, civil society, academia, and the private sector, including serving as Senior Vice President at World Wildlife Fund where he led the climate change program for over a decade. Lou currently serves as Dean of the Falk School of Sustainability & Environment at Chatham University supporting students of all ages who are training to advance climate and food justice. Lou is deeply grateful for the refuge he has found in the dharma and the teachers who have helped him find it.
Pieces on One Earth Sangha
Brenda left a career in finance in order to experience the world beyond the corporate scene. This new path stretched over many years and most of this time was spent in the emergency humanitarian sector and volunteering on farms. These experiences led to a longing for community. Brenda is transitioning from her most recent community experience at Gampo Abbey in Cape Breton where she spent three years as a temporary monastic. She is grateful to be able to help One Earth Sangha in any way that she can.
dawn entered the path of the Dharma and Buddhist practice in 2009 while exploring meditation during a lifelong journey of spiritual seeking. She has always had a deep relationship with the Earth and the more-than-human world, and having lived in Michigan her whole life, she is especially appreciative of the Great Lakes Basin. In moving into retirement from a career as an attorney, dawn is bringing together her passions for the natural world and Buddhism. She is excited to be a part of One Earth Sangha and to help cultivate connection between and co-create community with practitioners.
Elena (they/them) was raised by a Buddhist father who embodied a deep care for the natural world. This infused in them a connection and appreciation between a Buddhist practice and care for the environment. As someone with a very intersectional upbringing, raised between Cuban and American culture in Tennessee as a queer child, Elena developed a natural passion for connecting the dots between seemingly different cultures, practices, faiths, and justice issues, especially related to the climate crisis. This led them to study theology and public health with a focus on climate communications and opened into a career dedicated to the science and art of environmental communications. Today, Elena resides in Chicago, Illinois with their impertinent rescue pigeon, Giselle.
Elisabeth has been a student of the Dharma and the human condition for many years, and a lover of the natural world for all of her years. She is currently living on a beach in El Salvador where she appreciates being close to the ocean and the rich natural beauty and diversity of the land, while not turning a blind eye to the suffering that surrounds her. Elisabeth is grateful daily to be on her life journey with the dharma as a guide and with all the beautiful sentient beings she gets to know and love. She hopes to continue to support Ecodharma in our world for as long as she can be of service.
Nikayla Jefferson is a political science graduate student at UC Santa Barbara, where her research focuses on the intersection of climate justice, the American environmental movement, democracy, and engaged spiritual traditions. She is interested in researching, writing, and living the questions related to what it means to be a human in this moment we call the Anthropocene. Nikayla’s work has been published in the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Guardian, the Nation, and others. Her essay, “From the Hunger Strike, With Love,” was selected for publication in the book Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility, edited by Rebecca Solnit and climate activist Thelma Young Lutunatabua.
Pieces on One Earth Sangha
Yutthichai was born and raised as a Buddhist in Thailand before immigrating to the US in 1987 to study at the United World College in NM. Living and learning with young people from all over the world at this international school, he developed a deep sense of self and an understanding of his individual capacity to impact the world. Yutthichai went on to earn a masters degree in engineering and started working in the Information Technology sector focusing on helping non-profit organizations use technology to achieve their missions. Yutthichai currently lives in the Washington DC area.