Speakers David Abram is a philosopher, ecologist and author of the award-winning book The Spell of the Sensuous (1996). He received a Ph.D. in 1993 for his work on the ecological dimensions of perception and language. Drawing upon his experience visiting indigenous cultures in Southeast Asia and extensive research on pre-literate societies, in The Spell of the Sensuous, Abram explores the relationship between human cognition, language and the natural world. According to Abram, by using language to process experience, humans in modern societies have become estranged from the earth, resulting in feelings of duality and separation from each other and the animate world of plants, animals, mountains, clouds, and rivers. To relieve this disconnect, Abrams calls for “a rejuvenation of our carnal, sensorial empathy with the living land that sustains us.” The Spell of the Sensuous received the prestigious Lannan Literary Award for Non-Fiction in 1996. Other papers and essays by Abram have been published in journals such as Environmental Ethics, Orion, The Ecologist, Parabola and Wild Earth and have been reprinted and anthologized in numerous books.

Roshi Joan Halifax is a Buddhist teacher, anthropologist and author. In addition to being the Founder, Abbot, and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center, a Buddhist monastery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she has a Ph.D. in medical anthropology. For over thirty years, Joan Halifax Roshi has lectured extensively on the subject of death and dying at academic institutions, monasteries and medical centers around the world and has worked closely with health care professionals, families and individuals in practicing compassionate care of those suffering from life-threatening illness. She is also Director of the “Project on Being with Dying,” a Founding Teacher in the Zen Peacemaker Order, and Founder and Director of the “Upaya Prison Project.” She has practiced Buddhism since the late 1960s and was formally ordained in 1976 by Zen Master Seung Sahn. In 1990, she received the Lamp Transmission from Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. She is the author of: The Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom (2004), A Buddhist Life in America: Simplicity in the Complex (1998); Being with Dying (1997); Shaman: The Wounded Healer (1983); Shamanic Voices (1979); and The Human Encounter with Death (with Stanislav Grof, 1977). Jon Kabat-Zinn is an author and Professor Emeritus of Medicine at the University of Massachusetts. His research focuses on the emerging field of mind-body medicine, especially the clinical, social, and human performance effects of mindfulness meditation training in various populations. These include people with chronic pain, stress related disorders, and/or a wide range of chronic diseases with a particular focus on breast cancer, multi-ethnic and multi-racial inner city communities experiencing high psychosocial stress due to poverty and associated social conditions, and inmates and corrections personnel in the prison system. Other areas of his research include the effects of regulated attention on healing processes, stress in medical education, cost-effectiveness of mind-body interventions, stress related to work and organizational re-engineering; mindfulness in the physician-patient relationship, the development of psychological resilience to stress, and implementation of mindfulness-based stress reduction educational curricula. He is the author of Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness (2005), Mindfulness Meditation (2002), and Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness (1990­). Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede (pronounced BODE’n COAL-heed) is Abbot of the Rochester Zen Center, to which he has devoted himself full-time for thirty-five years. Prior to coming to the Center in 1970, he received a B.A. in psychology from the University of Michigan. He was ordained as a Buddhist priest in 1976 and went on to spend several years traveling extensively with the Center's founder, Roshi Philip Kapleau, and working closely with him on three of his books. After completing twelve years of koan training under Roshi Kapleau, Roshi Kjolhede spent a year on pilgrimage through Japan, China, India, Tibet, and Taiwan. In 1986 he was installed by Roshi Kapleau as his Dharma-successor and, the following year, Abbot of the Center. Since then he has conducted some 150 retreats (sesshin), most of seven days, in the United States, Sweden, Germany, and Mexico. He has published numerous articles and travels widely (most recently to Taiwan) to participate in Buddhist teachers' conferences. He now devotes most of his time to teaching at the original Dharma center and residential training facility of the Rochester Zen Center and nearby at Chapin Mill, its country retreat center. In his twenty years of teaching, Roshi Kjolhede has sanctioned five of his students as Zen teachers, who now lead Zen centers in Chicago, Mexico, Sweden, Finland, and New Zealand. Kenneth Kraft, is Professor of Religion Studies at Lehigh University and a scholar of Japanese Zen and socially engaged Buddhism. He received a Ph.D. from Princeton University and in 1984-85 he was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies. At Lehigh, he has served as Chair of the Religion Studies Department and Director of the College Seminar Program. He has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore College, and the Stanford University Japan Center in Kyoto. He has served on many advisory committees, including The Buddhist Peace Fellowship (Berkeley, California), Forum on Religion and Ecology (Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions), Journal of Buddhist Ethics, Religion Working Group on Genetically Modified Organisms (University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics), and World Faiths Development Dialogue (World Bank). Kraft has lived in Japan for five years and traveled widely in Asia. In The Wheel of Engaged Buddhism: A New Map of the Path (1999), he explores spiritually based responses to social and environmental issues. Dharma Rain: Sources of Buddhist Environmentalism (2000), coedited with Dr. Stephanie Kaza, brings together ancient and contemporary Buddhist teachings about human/nature relations. Kraft's book Eloquent Zen: Daito and Early Japanese Zen (1992) was selected as an “Outstanding Academic Book” by Choice magazine. His anthology of present-day Zen masters and scholars, Zen: Tradition and Transition (1988), is widely used in college courses and the book was translated into French in 1993. Kraft’s other edited books include Inner Peace, World Peace: Essays on Buddhism and Nonviolence (1992) and Zen Teaching, Zen Practice: Philip Kapleau and the Three Pillars of Zen (2000).