Roshi Joan Halifax, Ph.D., is a professor of Buddhism, a Zen priestess, an anthropologist, and a pioneer in the field of dying care. She is the founder, abbot, and principal professor of the Upaya Institute and Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. In 1973 he completed his doctorate in medical anthropology and since then he has taught the subject of death and dying in various academic institutions and medical centers around the world. He has received prestigious awards such as National Science Foundation Fellowship in Visual Anthropology, she was an Honorary Research Fellow in Medical Ethnobotany at Harvard University and a Distinguished Professor at the Library of Congress.
During 1972-1975, I worked with psychiatrist Stanislav Grof at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center for terminal cancer patients. To this day, she continues to work with dying people and their families, and teaching healthcare professionals and other caregivers about the psychosocial, ethical, and spiritual aspects involved in caring for people in the dying process. She is the director of the Being with Dying project, the founder of the Upaya Prison Project, which develops meditation programs for prisoners, and the founder of the Nomads Clinic in Nepal.
For a decade she studied with Zen Teacher Seung Sahn and was a teacher at the Kwan Um Zen School. She received the transmission lamp from Thich Nhat Hanh and the Inka from Roshi Bernie Glassman. She is a founding teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order and the founder of the Prajna Mountain Buddhist Order. She has spent more than 4 decades dedicating her work and her practice to apply Buddhism. Her books include: The Human Encounter with Death (with Stanislav Grof); The Fruitful Darkness; Simplicity in the Complex: A Buddhist Life in America; Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Wisdom in the Presence of Death; Being with Dying: Compassionate End-of-Life Care (Professional Training Guide); Seeing Inside, among others. She is a Lindisfarne Fellow and a board member of the Mind and Life Institute.
