In the narrative of Zen Master Ji Haeng, the journey unfolds from the bustling stages of the music world to the tranquil realms of Zen practice. From his beginnings as a skilled musician, sharing the spotlight with icons like Frank Sinatra and Aretha Franklin, to his eventual immersion in the serene landscape of Zen, the story is one of profound transformation.

Ani Palmo, the director and resident teacher of Song San Gampo Buddhist Center in Lakewood, Ohio, shares her spiritual journey from a Catholic upbringing to discovering Tibetan Buddhism. Growing up in Garfield Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, Ani Palmo navigated her Catholic education with a sense of dissatisfaction, grappling with the teachings and treatment of women within the faith. Her exploration led her through various spiritual traditions, including New Age practices and Zen Buddhism in Japan, but she found them lacking in depth and spiritual fulfillment. It was during a retreat in Southern Thailand that she encountered Theravada Buddhism, which resonated deeply with her, offering a methodical approach to developing inner qualities.

Lisa, currently residing in Nashville, Tennessee, originated from Florida and spent part of her youth in Atlanta before settling in Nashville. Discovering Buddhism at the age of 17 during a high school elective on Zen Buddhism, Lisa found solace in the teachings of impermanence, especially during a challenging period when she lost both parents at the age of 16.

Lama Thupten was always drawn to meditative practices, even before they were formally defined as such. He lived in many places throughout his life, but one of the most significant was Selma, Alabama. Thupten witnessed the brutality of racism firsthand, but he also found solace in nature and solitude. Even as a child, he spent a lot of time alone, observing the world around him. 

But same time they said, well, Shambala is having a level 1/2 Trump came up with the very. Yeah actually in retrospect a really clever way to to get past the overemphasis of the religion part of it and really just give us the tools to become own meditation instructor.

Guo Yuan Fashi is a Buddhist monk trained in Chan Buddhism. In 1985 he first encountered Master Sheng Yen’s teachings while attending a seven-day retreat in New York. He then decided to become a disciple before finally leaving his job in Toronto, Canada, to become a monk in the Chan tradition. He was ordained in 1987 in Taiwan. For over twenty years, he accompanied and became translator to Master Sheng Yen in various Chan meditation retreats in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, and Mexico.

Shinge Roko Sherry Chayat Roshi is abbot of the Zen Studies Society’s mountain monastery, Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-ji, and New York City temple, New York Zendo Shobo-ji, and is also abbot of the Zen Center of Syracuse Hoen-ji in Syracuse, NY.

I’m the Buddhist chaplain at Syracuse University. Which is an amazing thing for me, because I came here as a student when I was 18, and this is where I learned about Buddhism and got interested in Buddhism. And then to come back much later in my life after I retired from a job teaching in the city schools here to to return to the very place that I used to hang out all the time.

And I met Allen Ginsberg there, and I met the Grateful Dead. Allen Ginsberg and, you know, Gregory Corso and he Wolfman a Bob Dylan. I just hung out there and Allen Ginsberg came up to me one day and he said, Do you look like you could try some meditation like Merton? And I said, Oh, okay. And so he brought me to a little room and there were other people there. And he said, You know, you just sit and breathe.

My wife had a little bookshelf there for books for sale, pulled out a copy of Awakening the Buddha Within My Love of Syria and said, You need to read this. Oh, okay. So I took it home and I did. I read it. In fact, I was I still had a studio up in New Mexico, had some property up there, and I'd built a studio up there. And so shortly after that, I went back up to spend some time in the studio up there, and I took the book with me where I ended up the whole time reading that book and learning to meditate. And there was a at the end of the book, there was a thing about who he was, whose emissary was, and and there was a name, you know, the Dzogchen Foundation.