The Gay Buddhist Forum by GBF

Nina Wise is a well-known performer who has devoted her career to investigating the relationship between art and spirit. Artistic Director of Motion, she is the recipient of multiple fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Marin Arts Council and has received seven Bay Area Critics Circle Awards. She is the author of "A Big New Free Happy Unusual Life: Self-Expression and...

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...

Kevin Griffin is a Buddhist teacher and author known for his innovative work connecting dharma and recovery, especially through his 2004 book "One Breath at a Time: Buddhism and the Twelve Steps." He has been a Buddhist practitioner for over thirty-five years and a teacher for two decades. He reaches a broad range of audiences in dharma centers, wellness centers, and secular mindfulness...

Lee Robbins is a longtime member of GBF, a Vipassana practitioner and has coordinated two GBF annual retreats. ______________  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...

Andrea Fella has been practicing Insight Meditation since 1996, and under Gil Fronsdal's guidance, began teaching meditation classes in 2003. She is particularly drawn to intensive retreat practice, and has done a number of long retreats, both in the U.S. and Burma. During one long practice period in Burma, she ordained as a nun with Sayadaw U Janaka. Andrea teaches residential retreats for I...

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...

Baruch Golden is a longtime GBF Member who has been practicing Vipassana meditation since 1998. He completed Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leaders program in 2012 and the Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Program with the Sati Center in Redwood City in 2013. He teaches dharma primarily at the East Bay Meditation Center and also taught mindfulness in elementary schools in SF and Oakland with the Mindfu...

Jim’s topic will be exploring the meanings of sexuality for gay men and the role of emptiness in men who define their behaviors as out of their control.  ____________  Jim Fishman is a licensed psychotherapist in private practice in San Francisco. He ran a therapy group for sexually compulsive gay and bisexual men Operation Concern/New Leaf in the mid-eighties through early nineties. He was co-fou...

Anne Diedrich has been practicing vipassana meditation since 2000. She has completed the Dedicated Practitioners Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. For seventeen years she has worked with a diverse clientele and a wide range of problems. From 1993-2005, her clinical home was Family Service Agency of Marin, where she worked with adults and children experiencing distress, mental suffering, an...

John Mifsud has studied insight meditation for over nine years and recently completed the East Bay Meditation Center’s Commit to Dharma Program led by Larry Yang. He is currently in the Community Dharma Leaders Training Program at Spirit Rock. He is a lead facilitator of the EBMC Deep Refuge Affinity Group for Men of Color and their Euro-descent allies. He also studied with Rodney Smith at Seattle...

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...

Thomas Faupl is a licensed psychotherapist in private practice in San Francisco. He was a Diamond Heart student for several years before returning to Buddhism as his primary spiritual path. For the past nine years, Thomas has been a student of Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, one of the first lamas to bring the Bon Dzogchen teachings of Tibet to the West. Thomas has a particular interest in the interface...

Jennifer Berezan is a unique blend of singer/songwriter, producer, and activist. Over the course of ten albums, she has developed and explored recurring themes with a rare wisdom. Her lifelong involvement in environmental, women’s, and other justice movements as well as an interest in Buddhism and earth-based spirituality are at the heart of her writing. ______________  To support our efforts to s...

Tom Moon has been a practitioner of Vipassana meditation for fifteen years, and his spiritual home is Spirit Rock Meditation Center. He is a psychologist in San Francisco, working primarily with gay men. His chief commitment is in exploring the interface between Buddhist practice and psychotherapy. ______________  To support our efforts to share these talks with LGBTQIA audiences worldwide, please...

Pauletta M. Chanco is a long-time student and practitioner of meditation in the Theravada Buddhist tradition. She was recently nominated to the Community Dharma Leadership Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre and hopes to begin this in 2012. She has taught beginning and ongoing meditation classes at Alameda Yoga Station since 2007. She is a mother of three children aged 13, 15 and...

Paul Winternitz is a fine art photographer whose work has been exhibited and published internationally. Though his images have always dealt with a spiritual theme, it was in 2004 that he started a dedicated approach to the spiritual path. He was raised an atheist and has kept an open approach while his intuition has lead him to many spiritual traditions. He has focused on the commonalities of the...

Donald Rothberg, Ph. D., a member of the Teachers Council at Spirit Rock Center, and a teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center, teaches retreats and groups on concentration and insight meditation practice, lovingkindness practice, transforming the judgmental mind, mindful communication, working skillfully with conflict, and socially engaged Buddhism. He has practiced insight meditation since 197...

Trip Weil has been practicing in the Theravadan tradition since 2004. He is a graduate of Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leader and Dedicated Practitioner programs. Trip serves on the board of San Francisco Insight, where he also leads sitting groups and teaches meditation classes. He is a psychotherapist in private practice in San Francisco and a former attorney. ______________  To support our ef...

Eugene Cash is the founding teacher of the San Francisco Insight Meditation Community of San Francisco. He teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and leads intensive meditation retreats internationally. His teaching is influenced by both Burmese and Thai streams of the Theravada tradition as well as Zen and Tibetan Buddhist practice. He is also a teacher of the Diamond Approach, a school of spir...

Rebecca Dixon has been a member of the Lesbian Buddhist Sangha for over 10 years. Her main teacher is Gil Fronsdal at IMC in Redwood City, where she teaches with their web courses and serves on the Chaplaincy Council. Rebecca lives in Oakland, has spent five years putting the East Bay Meditation Center together (vision statement, events to promote the idea, etc), and has taught a daylong there wit...

Dr. Larry Peiperl is an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCSF and has been practicing internal medicine at safety-net clinics in San Francisco and New York City for 15 years. He has worked on clinical trials in HIV prevention and treatment. He serves as an editor for the open access journal PLoS Medicine and as medical consultant at Glide Health Services in the Tenderloin. He received t...

Shahara Godfrey has trained in the Theravada Buddhist tradition for over 20 years. Other influences have been spiritual teachers from various cultures and traditions as well as the creative arts. She is a graduate of Community Dharma Leaders and Path of Engagement programs from Spirit Rock. She is a community teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center. Shahara has a Ph. D. and currently works as an...

Sean Feit Oakes, PhD (he/him, queer, Puerto Rican and English ancestry, living on unceded Pomo land in NorCal), teaches Buddhism and somatic practice focusing on the integration of meditation, trauma resolution, and social justice. He received teaching authorization from Jack Kornfield, and wrote his dissertation on extraordinary states in Buddhist meditation and experimental dance. He teaches at...

Susan Moon is a writer, editor, and lay teacher in the Soto Zen tradition. She leads Buddhist retreats and teaches writing workshops in the U.S. and abroad. Her books include "This Is Getting Old: Zen Thoughts on Aging with Humor and Dignity," "The Hidden Lamp: Stories from 25 Centuries of Awakened Women," with co-editor Florence Caplow, and most recently, "What Is Zen? Pl...

Anthony Rodgers is finishing up the DPP program at Spirit Rock this spring, and he volunteers weekly with Zen Hospice. Anthony did the caregiver training last spring, and Zen Hospice feels like his sangha these days. He is also doing the Buddhist Chaplaincy Training at the Sati Center in Redwood City and he just started a masters program towards a degree in Buddhist Studies at the Graduate Theolog...