The Gay Buddhist Forum by GBF

Dale Borglum founded and directed the Hanuman Foundation Dying Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the first residential facility in the United States to support conscious dying. Working with Ram Dass and Stephen Levine, Dale helped found the conscious dying movement in the West. He has been the Executive Director of the Living/Dying Project in Santa Fe and since 1986 in the San Francisco Bay Area. He...

Jon Bernie, author of Ordinary Freedom and The Unbelievable Happiness of What Is, is a contemporary spiritual teacher who offers a compassionate, heart-centered approach to spiritual awakening. A profound enlightenment experience as a teenager ignited Jon’s spiritual search. In his early twenties he ordained as a monk in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, and spent the next four decades practici...

Carol Osmer Newhouse has studied Insight Meditation for more than 30 years and has been teaching for 20. She was given Dharma transmission by The Venerable Ruth Denison, student of the great meditation master U Ba Khin of Burma. She has studied with Dr. Rina Sircar of CIIS and Dr Thynn Thynn in Daily Life Practice. She is the founding teacher of the Lesbian Buddhist Sangha in Berkeley, and a Licen...

______________  To support our efforts to share these talks with LGBTQIA audiences worldwide, please visit https://gaybuddhist.org/ There you can:    Donate   Learn how to participate live   Find our schedule of upcoming speakers   Join our mailing list or discussion forum  Enjoy over 900 recorded talks dating back to 1995 CREDITS Audio Production: George Hubbard Producer: Tom Bruein Music/Logo/Ar...

David Viradhamma Creighton is a senior member of the Triratna Buddhist Order and on the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Buddhist Center. He has been a practicing Buddhist for over 32 years and was ordained in Bhaja, India, in 1994. His experience includes political activism in the environmental and Central American solidarity movements. For the last seven years he has been traveling regula...

Bill Weber is a senior Vipassana practitioner and a graduate from Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leaders program. He has twenty-five years of extensive retreat practice and currently practices at home with his husband or sits with a small group of gay men. He is also a documentary filmmaker and video editor, whose latest projects are “To Be Takei” and “The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin.” ______...

Alistair Shanks is the Volunteer Program Manager at Zen Caregiving Project where he has worked since 2004, first as a hospice volunteer and training facilitator, and in his current position since 2016. He completed his clinical residency, (CPE), at UCSF and currently serves as a chaplain at both the Parnassus and Mission Bay campuses. He has a Master’s degree from the Institute of Buddhist Studies...

Ordained in 2001 into the Western Buddhist Order, Suvarnaprabha (or Suvanna for short) is director of the San Francisco Buddhist Center and a writer. She teaches classes and retreats at the SFBC, workplace wellness and mindfulness based stress reduction at local businesses (stressreductionatwork.com), and occasional meditation classes at the San Francisco county jail. Her humorous advice column, “...

______________  To support our efforts to share these talks with LGBTQIA audiences worldwide, please visit https://gaybuddhist.org/ There you can:    Donate   Learn how to participate live   Find our schedule of upcoming speakers   Join our mailing list or discussion forum  Enjoy over 900 recorded talks dating back to 1995 CREDITS Audio Production: George Hubbard Producer: Tom Bruein Music/Logo/Ar...

Dale Borglum founded and directed the Hanuman Foundation Dying Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the first residential facility in the United States to support conscious dying. Working with Ram Dass and Stephen Levine, Dale helped found the conscious dying movement in the West. He has been the Executive Director of the Living/Dying Project in Santa Fe and since 1986 in the San Francisco Bay Area. He...

Bill Scheinman has been teaching mindfulness since 2001 and leads corporate mindfulness workshops throughout the Bay Area as well as classes in mindfulness-based stress reduction. He is a se- nior facilitator with the Potential Project, teaches online mindful- ness classes with eMindful, and works with individuals as a mind- fulness coach. He is a graduate of Spirit Rock’s Community Dhar- ma Leade...

John Coleman is a Jesuit priest, an associate pastor at Saint Ignatius Church in San Francisco. He holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, where he specialized in the sociology of religion. As a Jesuit he is naturally interested in spirituality and its practices. ______________  To support our efforts to share these talks with LGBTQIA audiences worldwide, please...

David Lewis has been following the dharma path for 45 years, has a degree in comparative religious studies, and is a graduate of Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s Dedicated Practitioners Program. He teaches Insight Meditation and enjoys sharing the dharma at several sanghas around the Bay Area. He is a proud long-time member of GBF. ______________  To support our efforts to share these talks with LG...

Doug is the Artistic Director of THE NOAH PROJECT, a men's ritual performance group in the San Francisco Bay Area. Through a magical blend of chant, movement, poetry and ritual, Doug weaves a spell that encompasses the estatic, the sacred and the wise fool. He draws from many of the world's religious traditions—Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, Zoroastrian, Christian, Jewish and Sufi—to create a...

Joe Rodriguez is a Soto Zen Buddhist practitioner at San Francisco Zen Center, where he sits on the board committee for diversity, inclusion, and belonging. He is a father, a social impact strategist, and a LGBT+ activist.  https://www.gardnerrodriguez.com/about ______________  To support our efforts to share these talks with LGBTQIA audiences worldwide, please visit https://gaybuddhist.org/ There...

Harley Shapiro has been a student and teacher of cultural anthropology and photography in Berkeley and San Francisco since 1966. He has traveled, worked, and lived in many parts of the world, including Latin America, the Caribbean,West Africa, India and Asia. He has worked with several HIV/AIDS community service organizations both locally and internationally. From the San Francisco Summer of Love...

In this talk, a member of GBF shares their background, what brought them to Buddhism, and how their practice and experience with the dharma has impacted their lives.  ______________  To support our efforts to share these talks with LGBTQIA audiences worldwide, please visit https://gaybuddhist.org/ There you can:    Donate   Learn how to participate live   Find our schedule of upcoming speakers   J...

Rev. Daigan Gaither (he/him) began Buddhist practice in 1995 in the Vipassana (Insight) tradition, and then began to study Zen in 2003. He received Lay Ordination in 2006 where he was given the name Daigan or “Great Vow,” and received Priest Ordination in July 2011. Daigan speaks internationally on a variety of topics particularly around gender, sexuality, social justice, and their intersections w...

Heather Sundberg began teaching meditation in 1999. She has completed the four-year Spirit Rock’s Insight Meditation Society Teacher Training. Beginning her own meditation practice in her late teens, for 20+ years, Heather has studied with senior teachers in the Insight Meditation and Tibetan traditions, and has sat 1-3 months of retreat a year for the last 15+ years. She is a teacher for Mountain...

Elia and Halimah Van Tuyl have been married for over 40 years, raised a family of four daughters in Palo Alto, and since 2005, turned their attention to problems of poverty among children in Cambodia. As co-founders of Friends of Cambodia, they have travelled many times to Asia to develop and fund programs for children who had been working and living at the infamous Steung Meanchey garbage dump cl...

Tova Green began sitting at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1990 after many years of Vipassana practice. She became a resident there in 1999 and was ordained as a priest in 2003 by Eijun Linda Cutts. Tova co-founded the Queer Dharma Group at the Center and is currently the Director of the San Francisco Zen Center's City Center. ______________  To support our efforts to share these talks with...

“Gengetsu Junsei” entered formal Buddhist practice in 1993 and received Dharma Transmission in the Soto Zen Buddhist Lineage from Zenkei Blanche Hartman in 2009. Jana led the Street Zendo at 234 Hyde Street, where meditation practices of all kinds are welcome, and was a practice leader of the Gay Buddhist Sangha. Rev. Drakka was a community activist, particularly for the rights of the poor and dis...

______________  To support our efforts to share these talks with LGBTQIA audiences worldwide, please visit https://gaybuddhist.org/ There you can:    Donate   Learn how to participate live   Find our schedule of upcoming speakers   Join our mailing list or discussion forum  Enjoy over 900 recorded talks dating back to 1995 CREDITS Audio Production: George Hubbard Producer: Tom Bruein Music/Logo/Ar...

Jerry has been attending the GBF since 2008. He was an ER doctor for over 20 years and now works in an urgent care setting. In between, he graduated from Pacifica Graduate Institute with a masters in counseling with an emphasis on depth psychology. His thesis looked at resilience among the generations of men who came out together following Stonewall. As an MFT, he has done individual counseling an...

Emilio began his Tai Chi and Qigong practice in 1973 with Grand Master Kai Ying Tung and still studies with him today. For over forty years he’s taught classes in N. California and conducted workshops for Kaiser, the VA, persons with PTSD and HIV, and at recovery conferences. He taught Qigong at the first GLBT residential retreat at Spirit Rock in 1985. Since then most meditation centers have adde...