Roshi Joan Halifax is a Buddhist teacher, anthropologist, ecologist, and pioneer in the contemplative care of the dying. She is the founder, abbot, and head teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the founder of the Upaya Institute and the Project on Being with Dying.
She trained with the Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, who ordained her in 1990 into his Order of Interbeing, and with the late Roshi Bernie Glassman, who gave her Dharma transmission in 1999 in the Soto / Peacemaker lineage. Her academic background is in medical anthropology — she taught at the University of Miami School of Medicine and Columbia University, and she has worked as a researcher and a clinician in palliative care for fifty years.
The Project on Being with Dying, which she founded at Upaya in 1994, is one of the principal contemplative care training programs for clinicians in the United States. Tens of thousands of nurses, physicians, chaplains, and hospice workers have trained in the GRACE protocol she developed for compassionate clinical care. Her work has reshaped end-of-life care across major American medical institutions.
She is also a long-time researcher and writer on the contemplative traditions of indigenous peoples, particularly the Huichol of Mexico and the Tibetan and Bhutanese communities of the Himalayas. She has led expeditions and pilgrimages to the Himalayas, the Andes, and Mongolia, often in the company of senior Tibetan lamas, with whom she has co-led numerous teachings and the long-running Mind and Life Institute dialogues.
Applications for personal time are received through Upaya on a quarterly cadence. Roshi Joan prioritises those working in end-of-life care and applicants in the contemplative-clinician training pathway.
