The EcoSattva Training

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 Thich Nhat Hanh’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 the forthcoming, Healing Our Way Home: Black Buddhist Teachings on Ancestors, Joy and Liberation (Feb 2024).

Damchö is spiritual director and a founder of Comunidad Dharmadatta, one of the largest Buddhist practice communities serving Latin America. Dharmadatta Community understands the path to liberation to be a primarily collective rather than individual path. In her teachings, Damchö transmits an earth-based vision of the Dharma in which care for our more-than-human kin is integral to spiritual practice. She has a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in gender and ethics in Sanskrit and Tibetan Buddhist narratives, and is translator and co-editor of Interconnected: Embracing Life in our Global Society.

Dr Britt Wray is the Director of the Special Initiative of the Chair on Climate Change and Mental Health in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences of Stanford University School of Medicine. Her latest book Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis, is an impassioned generational perspective on how to stay sane amid climate disruption. Britt holds a PhD in science communication from the University of Copenhagen and she completed her postdoctoral training at Stanford Medicine’s Center for Innovation in Global Health. As a practicing science communicator, she has hosted several podcasts, radio and TV programs with the BBC, NPR, CBC, and is a Canadian Screen Award winner. Dr Wray has spoken at TED and the World Economic Forum and is a Chicago Council on Global Affairs Next Generation Climate Changemaker. Dr Wray is also the creator of Gen Dread, a popular newsletter about building courage and taking meaningful action on the far side of climate grief.

Dr. Larry Ward is the co-founder of The Lotus Institute, a senior teacher in Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village tradition of Engaged Buddhism, and the author of America’s Racial Karma: An Invitation to Heal. Dr. Ward holds a PhD in Religious Studies with an emphasis on Buddhism and the neuroscience of meditation. As a teacher, Dr. Ward interweaves insights with personal stories and resounding clarity that express his Dharma name, “True Great Sound.”

Lama Willa Blythe Baker is a Dharma teacher and founder of Natural Dharma Fellowship and its retreat center Wonderwell Mountain Refuge in Springfield, NH. She has a deep interest in the intersection of contemplative practice and the planet’s poly-crisis. Her most recent book is The Wakeful Body: Somatic Mindfulness as a Path to Freedom. She is a guiding teacher of One Earth Sangha.

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: https://www.releasement.org.

Kritee (dharma name Kanko) is a Climate Scientist, Zen Buddhist priest, Educator & Founding Spiritual Director of Boundless in Motion, a 501(c) nonprofit based in Boulder (Colorado). She served as a leading scientist in the Climate Smart Agriculture program at Environmental Defense Fund for about 12 years. She is also an ordained teacher in the Rinzai Zen lineage of Cold Mountain and a co-founder of Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center. She has served as faculty for courses or retreats at the intersection of Climate justice, Trauma healing and Spirituality for many organizations including Stanford University, World Council of Churches, San Francisco Zen Center, Mind & Life Institute, and Al Gore’s Climate Reality. Her experience is that identifying and releasing our personal and ecological grief in presence of a loving community is necessary to reindigenize our ecosystems in this era of global polycrisis. Her articles, podcasts and interviews have appeared in the New York Times, BBC, Washington Post, Harvard Health, Yale Climate Connections, California Public Radio and Post Carbon Institute (See a few here). For more information, visit her website.

Tim Ream is a long-time Earth activist and Soto Zen practitioner. He received lay ordination from Tenshin Reb Anderson in 1994 and has engaged since in repeated, intensive residential practice, mostly at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center and Green Gulch Farm. Tim is an organizer, campaigner, writer, and environmental attorney. His activism ranges from direct action and civil disobedience like tree-sitting and road blockading to successful lawsuits to protect wolves and other species. He is the author of Fallen Water: A novel of Zen and Earth.

Myokei Caine-Barrett, Shonin, was the first American woman and the first person of African Japanese descent to receive full ordination as a Nichiren priest. Today, she is the bishop of the Nichiren Shu Buddhist Order of North America. Based in Houston, where she is the guiding teacher of Myoken-ji Temple, she also leads two prison sanghas. She currently serves on the boards of Lion’s Roar and Dharma Relief 2 (a project providing financial support for Buddhist Teachers of Black African Descent). She is also involved in the Garden Initiative, a mentoring project for Black Women Religious Leaders. She has been active in Healing Warrior Hearts (a program for veterans returning home) and The Gathering: Buddhist Teachers of Black African Descent. Myokei Shonin recently became 1 of 3 westerners to participate in Aragyo (austerities practice) in Okayama and become a Saijo Inari priest.

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 where he offers silent nature retreats and year-long nature meditation teacher trainings.

Dr. Peggy Rowe Ward is the co-founder of The Lotus Institute, a senior teacher in Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village tradition of Engaged Buddhism, and the author of Love’s Garden: A Guide To Mindful Relationships. She has her doctorate in adult education and an MA in counseling psychology. Through meditation, movement, and art, Peggy offers a path of deep insight that enables her students to discover and embody their most creative and authentic selves.

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.

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: www.desertdharma.org.