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Collective Dharma Insight Circle's Members
 I
was born in Madrid, in 1966, and I grew up in a working class
district in the suburbs. Since early puberty I felt dissatisfied
with my life, as I did not identify with the sex I was born
with. This has influenced me for years: in my studies, relationships
with others, attitude to life… I studied Nursing at the
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and since then I have
followed this profession. My encounter with Buddhism was accidental,
after reading One Straw Revolution, a book about agriculture
and philosophy by Masanobu Fukuoka, which was a great influence
on my life. After that I learned about Zen and Buddhism in
general, and I started to study and to practice this healing
path in Baolin.org, the virtual school of Benito Carral, whom
I especially admire. At the moment I live with my partner
in the country. There we try to learn and to cultivate a smallholding
using natural agricultural techniques. We have also started
to become interested in responsible or conscious consumption
and fair trade, trying to simplify our lives. Interest in
Buddhism has awoken a certain curiosity in Psychology, so
that this year I have decided to begin studying in the Universidad
Nacional de Educación a Distancia.
| Benito Carral, Founder
and Co-ordinator |
 When
I was still a child I realized that I didn't like what adult
life offered me. I wanted to believe that there was something
more, and after searching in the library of my town, Oviedo
(in Asturias, Spain), I started my walking along the Buddhist
path: first trying to practice the teachings of the books
I had, and then expanding my knowledge with every good master
I was able to met. I would like to make special mention here
of the now-deceased Jydin, who ordained me priest in the Chan
(Zen) tradition, and the now-deceased Yinlang, who one evening
gave me his personal English copy of the Sixth Patriarch
Sutra. I have met other kind teachers since then: Jesús
Martínez (Soto Zen, Barcelona), Kemmyo Taira Sato (Shin,
London), Thich Nhat Hanh (Thien, Bordeaux), Jinghui (Chan,
Hebei), and many other good individuals. Since 1997, I have
used the Internet for spreading the Buddha's teachings in
the Spanish-speaking world, and I have translated and added
commentaries to several sutras and treatises in Spanish. I
also directed a Buddhist center in Barcelona and have been
collaborating with the Nalanda Zen Dojo and leading Chan meditation
retreats. Nowadays I teach a lay, skeptical, engaged, and
non-sectarian Buddhism in the Baolin.org
virtual school. I also collaborate with different initiatives
and study Psychology at the Universidad Nacional de Educación
a Distancia.
 I
am not a Buddhologist. I am a scholar of religion, and Buddhism
just happens to be my field of specialisation. Ever since
I was a child I had this terrible addiction to reading and
writing. It got so bad that when I became a Buddhist in 1984,
I decided that I should go to university and learn something
about this choice I had made. So I enrolled in the Religious
Studies programme at the University of South Africa in 1986.
When I graduated, they offered me a job, which would mean
more reading and writing for the rest of my life. How could
I resist? I eventually read and wrote my way to a PhD in Religious
Studies, and at the moment I am the only academic in South
Africa who specialises in the study of Buddhism. I tend to
avoid involvement with any specific Buddhist organisation,
for two reasons. Firstly, I feel that the best thing I can
do for Buddhism in this country is to focus on my academic
work and to produce, year after year, another bunch of undergrads
who at least have heard of the Four Noble Truths. Secondly,
I find the political infighting in organised religion even
more unpalatable than that in academia!
| Mitchell Ginsberg,
Co-founder |
 Since
1982, I have had a psychotherapy practice that now includes
work with survivors of torture (refugees & others). I
grew up near Philadelphia, and have degrees from the Univ.
of Pennsylvania and Michigan, and Antioch Univ. I have taught
(1965 on) in departments of philosophy, psychology, and Far
East & Buddhist studies at the Univ. of Michigan, Yale,
Antioch, the American Institute of Buddhist Studies, and elsewhere.
My serious studies in Buddhism, including many retreats, began
in 1970; I was trained as a meditation teacher (kalyana-mitta)
in the Thai Buddhist Meditation Tradition by V.R. Dhiravamsa,
formerly Chao Khun (Abbot) of the Thai Buddhist Mission to
Great Britain. From 1975 on, I led intensive meditation retreats
with Dhiravamsa and independently, in Europe and the USA.
Since 1996, I have been moderator of Insight Practice (a Yahoo
discussion group). I am also on the faculty at International
University of Professional Studies (IUPS).
Two relevant books of mine are The
Far Shore and The
Inner Palace; see also my home
page.
 I'm
a captain in the merchant marines, and when I was younger
I spent some 14 years in this work which took me to different
places of the world. And so I was able to know various cultures,
especially the oriental ones, and it was then that my interest
in them began to awaken. Later, I had the opportunity of visiting
India and Japan, where I lived for a while and was able to
see how their philosophies were lived out experientially.
Subsequently, I got a Law degree at the University of Barcelona
(Universidad de Barcelona), and since I had been a sailor,
I specialized in Maritime Law; I then practiced law until
my retirement. In the 1970s, I met different spiritual masters.
I had contact with Tibetan lamas and later had a relationship
with master Taisen Deshimaru, who ordained me as a Buddhist
monk. In 1981, in Deshimaru's only visit to Spain, he inaugurated
the Dojo Zen of Barcelona (Nalanda), of which I am now the
director. During the 1992 Olympic and Para-olympic Games of
Barcelona, I was one of the three Buddhist representatives
(and of the three, the only Spaniard) in the Abraham Center,
where the athletes' spiritual needs were attended to. I collaborate
nowadays with various associations devoted to interfaith dialog.
 I
grew up on a small ranch in the high mountains of Colorado.
I attended the University of Colorado and earned a PhD from
the University of Missouri in English and History, specializing
in Mediaeval and Renaissance studies. I taught at various
Universities for about 12 years. While teaching at an Illinois
university I met Lucian Stryk, who had studied zen in Japan
and was author or editor of several books on zen and Japanese
poetry. I only started to study buddhism seriously several
years later and read for some years before I started to meditate
seriously. I met people from Renzai ji, founded by Joshu Sasaki
Roshi about 15 years ago, and I studied under them and sat
meditation about 1.5 hours/day, five days/week for about 6
years. I moved away from that region and have not meditated
seriously since, although I still meditate almost daily for
shorter times. I have continued to read and discuss Buddhism
throughout this time.
 I
am a Meditation teacher, Group Facilitator, and poet. I have
led retreats and workshops in Buddhism, Deep Ecology, and
Social Responsibility in the US and Europe for more than twenty
years and have trained with Buddhist teachers in several traditions
since 1971—including Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh in whose
lineage I was a teacher for ten years. I am co-founder of
Ordinary Dharma
in Los Angeles, and Manzanita
Village Retreat Center in Warner Springs.
 I
started my Buddhist practice in the early 1980s with Zen (Soto
Zen and Korean Chogye) and Jodo (Pure Land), beginning at
the same time studies in Comparative Religion and Religious
Symbolism in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Thinking that
I had exhausted the possibilities of further growth in Brazilian
Buddhism at that time, I moved to USA in order to deepen my
practice in Zen/Jodo, but while training at the Providence
Zen Center I had a revealing encounter with the writings of
Thai master Achaan Chah. It turned my focus completely towards
Theravada school and was further enhanced by my encounter
with Venerable Maha Ghosananda and Satya Narayan Goenka. I
started to practice vipassana and eventually moved to Thailand,
where I lived for about a year in Ven. Achaan Buddhadasa's
Wat Suan Mokkh, and another full year in India, Nepal and
Malaysia. Tan Achaan Buddhadasa became my main teacher till
he died in 1993, but I also practiced with other Buddhist
teachers. Having returned to Brazil in 1989, I started the
Nalanda Buddhist
Center in Belo Horizonte, and strengthened a connection
with the Burmese tradition. In more recent years, besides
my work in Psychological Counseling and directing the center,
I have been dedicating myself to publish Buddhist books (translating
and writing) and helping organizing retreats and meditation
courses also with foreign teachers whom I invite regularly
to come to Brazil. In 1998 I created Buddhismo-L, the first
Buddhist mailing list in Portuguese language and in 1999 I
began the establishment of Nalandarama
Retreat Center (The Forest of Generosity Without End),
the first Theravada center in South America exclusively dedicated
to intense meditation retreats in the forest tradition.
 Am
I Kate Lila Wheeler? Do I live in Somerville, Massachusetts,
USA? Is it really an ordinary street? Am I 49 years old? This
photo of me was taken in New York just after the WTC attacks,
which—though I hate to admit it, because somehow it feels
too USA-centered compared to the suffering in so many other
parts of the world—seem to have shifted the world on
its axis a little. I hope we can all learn from what is happening
now and in general. I live with a male partner who's an anthropology
professor, and a dog. When invited, which is a few times a
year nowadays, I teach meditation based on Vipassana instructions.
Working at home, writing fiction, is lovely but also not easy
so I'm glad that I'm also able to travel a lot, for journalism,
pilgrimages and retreats. I feel very happy on the road--a
result, probably, of having grown up in South America as a
foreigner, moving all the time. Somehow I find myself much
calmer than when I first started to practice Buddhism in 1977,
though I still suffer enough to mention. Just now I'm putting
off working on my second novel—by editing the second
volume of talks by my Burmese teacher, Sayadaw U Pandita.
This spring Wisdom Publications issued Nixon Under the
Bodhi Tree, an anthology of Buddhist fiction edited by
me but written by various authors many of whom were previously
unpublished, but some of whom were well-known.
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