Our Community
Our Staff
We are a volunteer-run center supported and guided by monastics from our monastery upstate. Each week, our teachers travel into the city to offer meditation sessions, community gatherings, and Dharma teachings. Alongside them, dedicated volunteers help create a warm, welcoming environment where everyone can practice with ease.
Lorem & Ipsum
Our Teachers
Maya Thompson
Maya has taught meditation for over a decade, offering a grounded, secular approach that helps students feel safe and at ease. She works especially well with newcomers who carry religious trauma or aversion to personality cults and guru worship, gently clarifying that meditation can be practiced without belief.
Venerable Sunwoo
A visiting monastic from the upstate monastery, Venerable Sunwoo brings together years of traditional Buddhist training with a scientific background, holding a PhD in chemistry from NYU. His teachings emphasize sincerity, presence, and discovering clarity in both the laboratory of the mind and everyday life.
Sister Lena Hu
Sister Lena’s teachings center on gentleness, steadiness, and the art of returning to oneself. After spending several years in monastic communities, she brings a quiet depth that helps students recognize the stillness already available within. Her guidance emphasizes softening, listening, and finding spaciousness amid the pace of modern life.
Daniel Rivers
Daniel draws from both Zen training and mindfulness-based stress reduction, weaving traditional insight with practical relevance. His teaching highlights the ways attention, breath, and daily habits shape the mind. Students appreciate his ability to make subtle ideas feel clear, steady, and applicable to everyday living.
James O'Malley
With a background in social work, James offers a trauma-sensitive approach that honors each person’s history and pace. He helps students build inner stability through gentle awareness and grounded embodiment. His classes emphasize safety, dignity, and learning to meet experience with patience and resilience.
Priya Raman
Priya blends traditional breath practices with training in modern psychology, creating a warm and accessible entry point for new meditators. She guides students through wandering thoughts with patience, emphasizing kindness as a practical skill. Her approach helps people reconnect with steadiness and ease in daily life.
Michael Chen
Michael focuses on attention training and insight practice, drawing from both classical teachings and contemporary contemplative science. He encourages students to notice subtle shifts in body and mind as a way to understand how experience unfolds. His instruction highlights clarity, discernment, and the quiet joy of steady awareness.
Venerable Mira
Venerable Mira brings a warm, steady presence shaped by years of monastic training. She guides students in discovering practice through both stillness and mindful movement, emphasizing that every action can become a moment of awakening. Her teachings invite sincerity, embodied awareness, and a gentle return to the present.
The Heart of Our Center
Our Volunteers
Alex Gomez
Alex is a researcher at Google with a PhD in neuroscience from Harvard whose research explores attention, perception, and the neuroscience of contemplative practice. At the center, Alex helps coordinate weekly sessions and supports newcomers, bringing both scientific insight and a warm, steady presence.
Sophia Martins
Sophia is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist at The New Yorker whose writing investigates the human experience with depth and clarity. At the center, she manages event check-ins and assists with communications, helping connect people with the teachings in an inviting, accessible way.
Jordan Patel
Jordan is a landscape architect whose work focuses on creating restorative outdoor spaces in urban environments. At the center, he supports programs by setting up meditation halls and preparing materials, bringing a grounded attention to detail that helps participants settle into a calm, welcoming atmosphere.
Emma Li
Emma is a former small-business owner who now dedicates much of her time to community-based hospitality work. She leads the center’s welcome team, greeting visitors, offering tea after sessions, and helping newcomers feel at home with her warm, attentive presence.
Harold Bennett
Harold is a retired electrical engineer who previously specialized in designing systems for scientific research labs. At the center, he provides technical support for lectures and hybrid programs, offering a steady, thoughtful presence that keeps everything running smoothly and without distraction.
Nina Alvarez
Nina is a high-school counselor whose work focuses on supporting students’ emotional well-being. She helps coordinate volunteer schedules and assists teachers during programs, bringing enthusiasm, kindness, and a natural gift for helping people feel understood and supported.
Leo Armstrong
Leo is a retired literature professor who spent decades teaching courses on world wisdom traditions. He now maintains the center’s library and resource shelves, guiding practitioners toward books that deepen their understanding of the Dharma with a gentle, scholarly curiosity.
Hannah Brooks
Hannah works as a community health advocate, collaborating with local nonprofits to make wellness programs more accessible. At the center, she supports daily operations and community gatherings, helping create spaces where everyone feels welcomed, safe, and encouraged in their exploration of meditation.
Marcus Tran
Marcus is a studio potter who spends much of his time crafting functional pieces inspired by simplicity and presence. At the center, he offers quiet, reliable support with setup, cleanup, and countless behind-the-scenes tasks, helping maintain an atmosphere of care that allows practice to unfold with ease.
Lena Cho
Lena is a graduate student in philosophy at UC Berkeley, where her research explores ethics, consciousness, and the nature of human flourishing. At the center, she helps facilitate discussion groups and supports newcomers, bringing a thoughtful, reflective presence that bridges academic inquiry with lived contemplative practice.