Joan Halifax has been a very influential teacher in Buddhism for many decades in which she has built on her wide experience working with people in difficult circumstances to come to a teaching that is rooted in the traditional but open to the modern world and its problems and contradictions.
This film was made in 2015, and consists of a review of her life and travels, and how she came to the place she is now at spiritually as well as physically. It looks at her work with her first husband Stanislav Grof, exploring the use of LSD with people who are dying.
It also notes her first major Buddhist teacher, the Korean zen master Seung Sahn; and her later teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, and her American teacher Bernard Glassman, all of whom she learned from, but without finally satisfying her own personal quest, which incorporates both social activism and zen practice. In 1990 she founded the Upaya Zen Centre in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is where she still lives and teaches.
The film includes extensive interviews with Roshi Joan and also with some of the people around her to paint a picture of someone who is very committed and quite intense, while at the same time being accepting and understanding.
The film has Dutch subtitles for the English parts, and there are about 5 minutes of interviews in Dutch which have no English subtitles. More can be found out about Roshi Joan by following up on this wikipedia article.
if the video does not appear on the page, try reloading the page; and if that doesn’t work, leave a comment so I can update the page (the comment is not published)
to see an album of screenshots click here