Victoria Cary has been practicing insight meditation and studying the Dharma since 2006. She is currently in Retreat Teacher Training at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, where she previously graduated from the Community Dharma Leaders program. Victoria is the co-founder and one of the core teachers of San Francisco People of Color Insight Sangha. Victoria has worked as a volunteer at Zen Hospice and is particularly interested in the integration of the Dharma in everyday life.
Vinny Ferraro has been practicing meditation since 1993. He has studied with several renowned spiritual teachers including Ajahn Sumedho and the Dalai Lama. In 1998, he spent a year sitting bedside with the dying through the San Francisco Zen Center Hospice Program, as well as experiencing "A Year to Live" practice (based on the book by Stephen Levine). He has taught meditation to incarcerated youth and adults and is currently the head trainer for MBA, The Mind Body Awareness Project. Vinny also leads workshops for youth in schools internationally for a non-profit organization called Challenge Day. He is a Spirit Rock Community Dharma Leader and has been teaching the weekly Friday night insight meditation group Urban Dharma in San Francisco since 2004.
Wes Nisker is a dharma teacher, author, radio commentator and performer. He is the founder and co-editor of Inquiring Mind and a member of the Spirit Rock Teachers Council. His latest book is Crazy Wisdom Saves the World Again!
Will Kabat-Zinn has practiced Vipassana meditation intensively in the U.S. and in Burma for over ten years. He currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and teaches regularly at SF Insight, Spirit Rock, and at meditation centers around the country. For eight years Will taught meditation and awareness practices to incarcerated youth in New York City and Oakland. In addition to sharing the Dharma, Will is an MFT Intern in private practice in San Francisco and Oakland. He completed four years of teacher training with Jack Kornfield.
Our potential as humans is vast and deep, and can be intentionally developed. There is a way that we can learn to open to all of our experience with kindness and clarity. As we begin to find this stability of heart and mind, wisdom will emerge.This emergence of wisdom, and strengthening of compassion, are the road to our individual and collective happiness and well-being.
Yvonne Rand was a meditation teacher and lay householder priest
in the Soto Zen Buddhist tradition, active from 1972 until her
death in 2020. She started her studies in Eastern religion while
an undergraduate at Stanford University, where she majored in
Chinese intellectual history.
Rand became a close student of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in 1966,
served as his personal assistant and advisor, and with his wife
Mitsu Suzuki, cared for him through his dying and death in 1971.
She was a founder of the San Francisco Zen Center, was ordained
as a priest there, served on the board of directors for many
years, and continued to practice and teach there for many years.
She studied with Dainin Katagiri Roshi and received dharma
transmission from him in 1989. In the course of her career, her
profound interest in the Dharma led her to study closely with
notable teachers in various Buddhist traditions, including
Rinzai Zen with Maureen Stuart Roshi and Shodo Harada Roshi;
Theravada Buddhism with Ven. Henepola Gunaratana and Achan
Sumedho; and the Himalayan Buddhist tradition with His Holiness
the Dalai Lama, Lama Anagarika Govinda, and Tara Tulku Rinpoche.
Rand was instrumental in developing a ceremony of remembrance in
the West called the Jizo Ceremony (after the Japanese
bodhisattva) for children, born and unborn, who have died. This
ceremony continues as part of her Dharma legacy, as numerous
other Buddhist teachers have taken it up. Her understanding of
the inseparability of life and death led her to sit with and
tend people in end-of-life care over many decades. She also
taught and counseled extensively both professional and volunteer
caregivers working with the terminally ill.
