Mark Blum is a University of California, Berkeley professor and Shinjo Ito distinguished chair in Japanese studies. He specializes in Pure Land Buddhism throughout East Asia and also works in the area of Japanese Buddhist responses to modernism, Buddhist conceptions of death in China and Japan and historical consciousness in Buddhist thought.

Walter Truett Anderson is an independent writer, lecturer, political scientist, social psychologist and author of Open Secrets: A Western Guide to Tibetan Buddhism and The Next Enlightenment, which highlights the similarities between Western constructivist thought and Eastern spiritual traditions such as Buddhism.

Jimmy Yu is the Sheng Yen assistant professor of Chinese Buddhism at Florida State University. His research interests include Buddhism and Chinese religions, the history of the body in Chinese religions, Buddhist material culture, systems of Buddhist meditation practice and Chan and Zen Buddhism.

Daniel Stuart is an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of South Carolina. He is a scholar of South Asian religions, literary cultures and meditation traditions who specializes in the texts and practices of the Buddhist tradition.

Louis Mitsunen Kyogen Nordstrom is an ordained monk in both the Rinzai and Soto schools who teaches at the Hokori-Ji Temple, a Zen community located in Lakeland, Florida. He has taught at Columbia Unviversity, Wesleyan University, New York University and more. He is the editor of Namu Dai Bosa: A Transmission of Zen to America, and […]

Sumi Loundon Kim is the Buddhist chaplain at Duke University and teacher for the Buddhist Families of Durham. She has published two anthologies about young Buddhists: Blue Jean Buddha and The Buddha’s Apprentices. Originally brought up in a Soto Zen community, she has been following the Theravada lineage for the past 20 years.

Henepola Gunaratana is the founding abbot of the Bhavana Society, community of monastics and lay people dedicated to the practice of Theravadan Buddhism. Born in rural Sri Lanka, he has been a monk since age 12 and took full ordination at age 20 in 1947. He has written several books, including Mindfulness In Plain English […]

Tara Brach is a leading Western teacher of Buddhist meditation, emotional healing and spiritual awakening. She is the senior teacher and founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington. A clinical psychologist, she is the author of Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha and True Refuge: Finding Peace & Freedom […]

Lama Migmar Tseten has been teaching and guiding students since 1989 and has been serving Harvard students, faculty and staff as a Harvard Buddhist chaplain since 1997. He founded Sakya Institute for Buddhist Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1990.