Home June Workshop – For Participants

June Workshop – For Participants

Rhonda Magee speaking at the 2013 Workshop on Mindfulness in Legal Education

Rhonda Magee, Professor at University of San Francisco School of Law, speaks to law teachers and administrators at the 2013 Workshop on Mindfulness in Legal Education at Berkeley Law.

A growing number of law instructors and law schools are interested in offering mindfulness courses and programs to their students. This page is meant to serve as a hub of information on the subject, including syllabi, useful audio/video and articles, and research.

The June 2013 Workshop on Mindfulness in Legal Education at Berkeley Law was a seminal event in bringing together law teachers involved in mindfulness initiatives around the country. To view videos from the event, please click here.

Syllabi for Mindfulness/Contemplative Law courses and programs

Emotional Intelligence – William Blatt, University of Miami School of Law

Contemplative Lawyering – Deborah Calloway, University of Connecticut School of Law

The Law and Your Life: Aligning Personal Values with the Practice of Law / Fundamentals of Professional Development – Judith Gordon and Ken Klee, UCLA School of Law (proposed revision)

Effective and Sustainable Law Practice: The Meditative Perspective – Charles Halpern, Berkeley Law

Mindfulness and Professional Identity – Angela Harris, UC Davis School of Law

Inns of Court Program handout – Todd Peterson, George Washington University School of Law

Emotional Intelligence in Law – Richard Reuben, University of Missouri School of Law

Tools of Awareness for Lawyering Course (a.k.a. Conflict Management in the Legal Profession) – Len Riskin, University of Florida School of Law

Audio-Visual Resources

This is a small selection of videos connecting mindfulness and law. Please also see the videos from the June 2013 Workshop on Mindfulness in Legal Education.

In the video/presentation below, David Zlotnick, a professor at Rogers Williams University School of Law and a former federal prosecutor, discusses the application of mindfulness to trial advocacy, one of the most stressful and demanding forms of law practice. Zlotnick has been incorporating mindfulness training into his teaching for several years. (Video courtesy of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society)

Below, Jack Kornfield presents “The Case For Mindfulness and Wisdom in Law” at Berkeley Law in February 2012, as part of the Berkeley Initiative for Mindfulness in Law speaker series. Kornfield eloquently explains how practices of the heart can address difficulties faced by lawyers and improve the quality of justice. He also leads a series of mindfulness exercises that help illustrate the transformative potential of meditation.

Below, Sujatha Baliga, a leading practitioner and advocate for restorative justice who was featured recently in a NY Times Magazine cover story, discusses the nexus of mindfulness and restorative justice in a talk co-sponsored by the Berkeley Initiative for Mindfulness in Law and the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice. Her personal path to mindfulness and restorative justice is a moving story worth very much worth hearing.

Participant profiles

Lisle Baker is a professor at Suffolk
University Law School. He integrates meditation into his property, mediation
and law practice planning classes. He is co-writing an article, “On Engagement:
Learning to Pay Attention,” with Daniel Brown.

Barbara Bernier is a professor at the
Charlotte School of Law. She created a number of programs, including an
Introduction to Emotional Intelligence program for 1L students, a 4 module
Professional Skills Program that incorporates meditation skills into professional
practice, and The Mindful Lawyer in the Technological Age – an intersession 2
credit course. Currently writing a book tentatively entitled “Mindful
Meditation for Lawyers,” and a contemplative practice workbook for bar takers.

William
Blatt is a professor at the University of Miami School of Law. He teaches
Emotional Intelligence: Life Skills for Lawyers, a three-credit course that
integrates mindfulness. Author of “What’s Special About Meditation?
Contemplative Practice for American Lawyers.” 7 Harv. Neg. L. Rev. 125 (2002).

Stephen Bundy
received his J.D. from Boalt Hall, and teaches civil procedure, complex litigation and legal ethics at Berkeley Law. He clerked for Judge John J. Gibbons of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and was associated with the New York firm of Cravath Swaine & Moore, where he specialized in litigation. Bundy joined the law school faculty in
1984.

Deborah Calloway is a professor at University of Connecticut School of Law. She teaches Criminal Law, Employment Discrimination Law,
Disability Law, Contemplative Lawyering, and Mediation. Her Contemplative Lawyering course was the first for-credit law course focusing on contemplative practices. She is the author of articles connecting meditation and law, including
Using Mindfulness Practice to Work with Emotions
10 Nev. L.J. 338
(2010) and
Are you Listening? Contemplative Lawyering
9 Bodhi Magazine 130
(2007). She is also the author of
Becoming a Joyful Lawyer, Contemplative Training in Non-Distraction, Empathy, and Emotional Wisdom
(2012).

Deborah
Cantrell is a professor at the University of Colorado School of Law. She
integrates contemplative practices into her clinical course, and has been a
core faculty member in an experimental first-year course called the “Telos
Project,” designed to offer 1Ls an opportunity to reflect on difficulties they
encounter in law school. She has been running the project for three years. She
has written multiple articles where she has explored the possibilities of
contemplative practices, including “The Role of Equipoise in Family Law,” “With
Lovingkindness and Compassion: One Buddhist Woman’ Response to Feminist
Domestic Violence Advocacy,” and the forthcoming “Re-Problematizing Anger in
Domestic Violence Advocacy.”

Christy
Cassisa recently joined BarBri as Director of Professional Effectiveness. She came to BarBri after serving as an adjunct professor at California Western School of Law, where she created a mindfulness-based seminar called Life Skills for Lawyers. She will be working with BarBri to create mindfulness-based CLE programs to improve the effectiveness of young law firm associates.

Alexandra
Lee Delgado is a Reference Librarian and Adjunct Assistant Professor of
Legal Research at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law. She
is is interested in bringing mindfulness into the library space and into her
teaching.

Teresa Drake
is a professor of law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. She
has developed mindful teaching modules for the Intimate Partner Clinic at the
Law School. She is currently researching an article involving therapeutic
jurisprudence.

Rob Durr
is a staff psychologist at Northwestern University, where he offers a weekly
mindfulness meditation drop-in and has facilitated numerous introductions to
mindfulness workshops where he discusses the use of mindfulness in legal
education and practice.

Bill Fernholz
received his J.D. from Boalt Hall, where he
served as senior executive editor of the California Law Review during
his third year. He practiced plaintiff-side poverty and civil rights law for
seven years as a staff attorney for California Indian Legal Services and as an
associate at Rosen, Bien & Asaro. Fernholz joined the law school faculty in
2000.

Clark
Freshman is a professor at the University of California
Hastings School of Law. He works with the Center for Contemplative Mind to
promote meditation and other contemplative practices among lawyers and law
students. He teaches a course calles Conflict, Emotion, Mindfulness and “Lie
Detection.”

Anahid
Gharakhanian is Vice Dean for Academic Affairs, Director of the Externship Program and Professor of Legal Analysis, Writing and Skills. She has begun a
mindfulness program for first-year students at Southwestern.

Victor Goode
is a professor at the CUNY Law School. He co-founded a Contemplative Practice
and the Law course four years ago, and has been participating in CUNY’s
mindfulness program for six or seven years. He is currently working on a
chapter for a book on law and spirituality being edited by Professor Marjorie
Silver.

Mary Dolores
Guerra is an assistant professor at the Phoenix School of Law. She brings
mindfulness and contemplative self-assessment into her classes. She has also
written an article about using a self-assessment book, called “Student
Self-Assessment Book (SAB): Reflective Thinking and Journaling in Law School.”

Charles Halpern is Director of the Berkeley Initiative for Mindfulness in Law and a Lecturer at Berkeley Law. For the past five years he has taught a for-credit seminar at Berkeley Law, “Effective and Sustainable Law Practice: The Meditative Perspective,” which teaches students a range of mindfulness techniques and a framework for applying them to legal education and law practice. He was the chair of the 2010 Mindful Lawyer Conference, the 2011 Lawyers Retreat at Spirit Rock, and has spoken widely on the importance of mindfulness to the legal profession. He is the author of a book, Making Waves and Riding the Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom, a recent article in the Journal of Legal Education, “The Mindful Lawyer: Why Contemporary Lawyers Are Practicing Meditation,” and “Running on Empathy” an article in the LA Daily Journal on empathy in judicial nominations.

Angela Harris is Professor of Law at UC Davis King Hall School of Law. She writes widely in the field of critical legal theory, examining how law
sometimes reinforces and sometimes challenges subordination on the basis
of race, gender, sexuality, class, and other dimensions of power and
identity. Most recently, she has begun to apply these insights to the
fields of environmental and food justice. She is also interested in the
role of contemplative practices, such as mindfulness meditation, in the
teaching and practice of law. She is the author of the article “From The Art of War To Being Peace: Mindfulness and Community Lawyering in a Neoliberal Age” and “Toward Lawyering as Peacemaking: A Seminar on Mindfulness, Morality, and Professional Identity.”

Peter Huang
is a professor and DeMuth Chair at the University of Colorado School of Law. He
incorporates coverage of mindfulness in such courses as Financial
Decision-Making and Legal Ethics and Professionalism. He also intends to
propose and teach a seminar about mindfulness and law. He is the author of a
chapter called “Happiness 101 for Legal Scholars: Applying Happiness Research
to Legal Policy, Ethics, Mindfulness, Negotiations, Legal Education, and Legal
Practice,” in the forthcoming Handbook of Behavioral Law and Economics.

Tim
Iglesias is a professor at the University of San Francisco. He teaches a
seminar called “Contemplative Lawyering” and participates in weekly meditation
and refletion sessions for students, staff and faculty.

Jan
Jacobowitz is a lecturer and Director of the Professional Responsibility
and Ethics Program at the University of Miami School of Law. She teaches
Mindful Ethics: Professional Responsibility for Lawyers in the Digital Age, and
Mindful Ethics: Professional Responsibility on the Cutting Edge. Co-authored
the book Mindfulness and Professional Responsibility – Incorporating
Mindfulness into the Law School Curriculum.

Diana Lopez-Jones is an assistant
professor at the Phoenix School of Law. She integrates mindful approaches into her
law classes, discussing the circle process to resolve an Indian
Child Welfare Act. She published an article entitled “Stock Stories, Cultural
Norms, and the Shape of Justice for Native Americans Involved in Interparental
Child Custody Disputes in State Court Proceedings” in the Spring 2012 issue of
the Phoenix Law Review.

Michael Kaye is a professor at Washburn
University School of Law and Director of the Center for
Excellence in Advocacy. He teaches trial advocacy, evidence, criminal
law and
criminal procedure, and would like to integrate contemplative
practices into
his classes.

Tammy Kuennen is a professor at the
University of Denver Sturm College of Law. She hopes to co-facilitate a class
or series of workshops to discuss the benefit of mindfulness on professional
and personal levels. She has begun writing an article that explores the benefits of
mindfulness to clinical law teaching and supervision.

Rhonda Magee is
Professor of Law at University of San Francisco Law School and
President of the Board of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society.
Her scholarly work focuses on race law and policy as well as on
humanizing
legal education and the practice of law. This effort aims to
help law
students and practitioners cope with pressure in order to be
more
successful and effective. Magee’s courses share a common theme
of
examining how law responds to the vulnerable in society. She is
the
author of numerous journal articles, including “Educating Lawyers to
Meditate?” (University of Missouri-Kansas City Law Review,
2011), “Slavery as Immigration?” (University of San Francisco Law
Review, 2009), and “Competing Narratives, Competing Jurisprudences: Are
Law Schools Racist?” (University of San Francisco Law Review, 2009).

Nathalie Martin is a professor at the
University of New Mexico School of Law. She is a certified yoga instructor and is
interested in deepening her use of mindfulness into her Contracts, Business and
Tax, and Bankruptcy Law classes.

Rachel Van Cleave is Dean and Professor of Law at Golden Gate Law School. She is interested in incorporating mindfulness into the law school. Her research interests include Comparative Criminal Justice, Property/Wills & Trusts, and State Constitutional Law.

Manoj Mate is
an Assistant Professor of Law and Director of the Center for
International and Comparative Law at Whittier Law School, and Professor
(by courtesy) of Political Science at Whittier College. Mate’s research
centers on comparative law, judicial politics, constitutional law, law
and society, law in India and South Asian Politics. At Whittier,
Professor Mate teaches international law, constitutional law, and
election law, and serves as a faculty advisor to the Jessup
International Moot Court team. He is currently working on a book
manuscript analyzing the expansion of the power of the Supreme Court of
India in the post-Emergency era.

Shari Motro is a tenured professor at
the University of Richmond. She teaches a seminar called the Lawyer as
Peacemaker, which includes an introduction to mindfulness meditation.

Jane Murphy is a professor at the
University of Baltimore School of Law. She works to create a supportive
learning environment in her clinics, and hopes to use contemplative practices
to improve her teaching in large classes, seminars and clinics on Family Law. She co-authored a textbook, Family Mediation: Theory and Practice, which
touches on contemplative practices, and several law review articles exploring
the new paradigm for family dispute resolution which de-emphasizes lawyers, law
and the adversarial model in family dispute resolution.

David Onek is the Executive Director of
the Northern California Innocence Project at Santa Clara, and would like to
bring contemplative practices both into the work of the Project and into the
law school generally. He was previously a Senior Fellow and lecturer at Berkeley Law and the Founding
Executive Director of the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice (now part of
the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy).

Scott Peppet is a professor at the
University of Colorado School of Law. He has led a student meditation group for
the last few years and has written about mindfulness in a symposium issue of
the Harvard Negotiation Law Review, in a piece called “Can Saints Negotiate?”

Todd
Peterson is a professor at George Washington University Law School. He
integrates contemplative practices into the Inns of Court program, an innovative new program for 1Ls (syllabus here). Author of
“Stemming the Tide of Law Student Depression: What Law Schools Need to Learn
from the Science of Positive Psychology,” and “The Happy Lawyer: The
Centerpiece of a Course Every Law School Should Teach.”

Stephanie
Phillips is a professor at the State University of New York (SUNY) at
Buffalo Law School. She created and taught a seminar with Jim Milles called
Religion, Spirituality, and Cognitive Science: Contemporary Establishment
Clause Issues, which included a weekly meditation practicum. Is considering
writing an article that defines mindfulness instruction in higher education
from Establishment Clause challenges, in the context of her “Religion and the
Constitution” class.

Marc
Poirier is a Professor of Law and the Martha Traylor Research Scholar at
Seton Hall Law. He teaches and writes in the areas of property theory,
environmental and natural resources management, cultural property, and
law, gender, and sexuality. He runs a silent meditation group at the law school, and offers
meditation instruction and occasional dharma talks. He co-taught Continuing Legal
Education workshop on Contemplative Practice an Law Practice for Seton Hall alumni. He is author
of “Is Buddhism a Religion, and Does This Matter to Legal Practitioners,” an
article that he presented at the 2010 Mindful Lawyer conference.

Patty Powell is the Dean of Students at
the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. She is hoping to incorporate
mindfulness into her teaching.
She practiced law for 12 years in the Denver area, working as a
litigator in both the public and private sectors, including the Colorado
Attorney General’s Office, the Denver District Attorney’s Office and a
large corporate law firm.

Mark Rabil is Director of the Innocence and Justice Clinic at Wake Forest School of Law, as well as an adjunct professor of trial advocacy at the law school.
He is working on incorporating a course at Wake Forest on the topic of
contemplative practices, and/or starting a sangha for law students. Mark has
spoken at North Carolina Bar Association events regarding mindfulness/meditation
practices. He has discussed the value of contemplative practices for those
practicing criminal law in his articles, “My Three Decades with Darryl Hunt,”
and “Panzer Mind/False Statements: How the Sheriff Got Two Men to Say Beetle
Borings Were Gunshot Wounds.”

Richard Reuben is a professor of law at
the University of Missouri School of Law. He has taught mindfulness as a
component in an Emotional Intelligence course that he has taught for the last
three years. He is currently preparing an empirical study on whether
mindfulness can be helpful for first-year law students in reducing stress,
improving academic performance, and enhancing overall satisfaction with law
school. He has also written an article for the Journal of Legal Education
Symposium edition on incorporating mindfulness into law teaching, called
“Bringing Mindfulness into the Classroom: A Personal Journey.”

Len Riskin is Chesterfield Smith Professor of Law at the University of Florida
College of Law and has been a Visiting Professor at Northwestern School
of Law since 2010. He previously served as
Director of the Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution and Isidor
Loeb Professor of Law at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He teaches
and writes about mediation, negotiation, and alternative dispute
resolution, and has led a major project to integrate dispute resolution
into standard law school classes. He also works on integrating mindfulness into the education of lawyers and other dispute resolution
professionals. He is the author of “The Contemplative Lawyer: On the Potential Contributions of Mindfulness Meditation to Law Students, Lawyers, and their Clients.” 7 Harv. Negot. L. Rev. 1 2002

Scott
Rogers is a lecturer and Director of Mindfulness in Law Program at the
University of Miami School of Law. Professor Rogers is a leader in the area of
mindfulness and the law and works with law school faculty and administrators
across the country interested in developing mindfulness classes and
programs. He has written a law review article on mindfulness at Miami Law,
and a chapter in the forthcoming Handbook of Mindfulness on Mindfulness
in Law. Also the author of three books on mindfulness for lawyers, law
students, and law faculty.

Corie Rosen
Felder is a legal writing professor at the University of Colorado Law
School. She teaches optimistic attribution style, defensive pessimism, and the
growth mindset in her classes. She is hoping to develop a course on psychology
and law with a mindfulness component, and has published articles such as
“Creating the Optimistic Classroom,” “The Method and the Message,” and “The
Accidental Optimist,” forthcoming.

Thomas Ross
is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. He has begun to
incorporate mindfulness principles into his classes. He is currently writing a
book, tentatively titled, “The Present Moment,” that examines the use of
mindfulness, Zen Buddhism and the Tao with the world of business and law
practice. Ross has also created a blog at www.onlyhereonlynow.com, presenting
meditations on various aspects of mindfulness, Eastern thought, and his
personal and professional path.

Sue Schechter
has spent most of her
career since graduating from law school in 1988 in law school administration
and law student support positions. Prior to coming to Boalt Hall, Schechter
worked at Golden Gate University School of Law as the Associate Dean for
Student Services; the Honors Lawyering Program Administrative Director; and
Assistant Dean for Law Career & Alumni Services.
For more than a decade,
Schechter has been teaching in and helping to administer field placement
programs. She was an Adjunct/Clinical Professor at Golden Gate and is currently
Boalt Hall’s first full-time Field Placement Coordinator working with students
doing general field placements, judicial externships, and away placements.

Jeff Selbin
was appointed clinical
professor of law in 2006 and faculty director of the East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC),
Berkeley Law’s community-based clinic. He founded EBCLC’s HIV/AIDS Law Project
in 1990 as a Skadden Fellow, and served as EBCLC’s Executive Director from 2002
through 2006. During the 2010-11 academic year, Selbin was a visiting clinical
professor at Yale Law School. He currently directs EBCLC’s Policy Advocacy
Clinic.
Selbin is active in
local and national clinical legal education and anti-poverty efforts. In recent
years, he chaired the Poverty
Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) and
co-chaired the Lawyering in the Public Interest (Bellow Scholar) Committee of
the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education.

He served two terms as an elected
member of the board of directors of the Clinical
Legal Education Association.
From 2004-2006, Selbin
served on the California State Bar Committee
on the Delivery of Legal Services, dedicated to improving and increasing
access to justice for low-income Californians.
Selbin’s research interests include clinical education
and community lawyering, with an emphasis on evidence-based approaches. Recent
publications include The Clinic Lab
Office in the Wisconsin Law Review (2013 with Jeanne Charn); Service Delivery, Resource Allocation
and Access to Justice in the Yale Law Journal Online (2012 with Jeanne
Charn, Anthony Alfieri and Stephen Wizner); Access to Evidence in The Center
for American Progress (2011 with Josh Rosenthal and Jeanne Charn); The Clinic Effect in the Clinical
Law Review (2009 with Rebecca Sandefur); and From “The Art
of War” to “Being Peace”: Mindfulness and Community Lawyering in a Neoliberal
Age in the California Law Review (2007 with Angela Harris and Margaretta
Lin).

Tirien Steinbach
is the executive
director of the East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC). Tirien joined
EBCLC in 2001 in the Income practice where she incubated Clean Slate practice,
which she directed. In 2006 Tirien served as EBCLC’s Director of Clinical &
Program. Tirien is currently a Lecturer at Boalt Hall School of Law (UC
Berkeley), and co-teaches “Community Law Practice at EBCLC,” the companion
seminar for Boalt students enrolled in EBCLC’s clinical program.
In law
school, Tirien was active in the public interest and student of color
communities, where she served as co-president of the Berkeley Law Foundation
Student Steering Committee and Vice President of Recruitment for Law Students
of African Descent. Upon graduating from Boalt, Tirien is the recipient of
numerous fellowships and awards, including an Equal Justice Works fellowship
sponsored by the California Appellate Project, a Berkeley Law Foundation grant
for her work at EBCLC, and the inaugural Thelton E. Henderson Social Justice
Prize.

Judi Cohen practiced law for 25 years and taught at the University of San Francisco School of Law for ten of those years. She then co-created a course at USF called Contemplative Lawyering and founded a company called Warrior One LLC, to give lawyers and students the tools to transform our profession into one that is grounded in wisdom and compassion. Warrior One offers Essential Mindfulness for Lawyers (EML) trainings and one-to-one Mindfulness-Based Leadership Coaching to lawyers. Since 2010, Judi has also taught EML and Mindfulness for the Bar at Golden Gate University School of Law in San Francisco.

Allison
Smith is a Public Interest Advisor at the ITT Chicago Kent College of Law.
She intends to bring mindfulness into her school’s externship program and its
associated class. After earning her Juris Doctor degree from the University of Notre Dame,
Allison defended a myriad of public and private entities in federal and
state litigation, including appellate practice, from 2004 – 2011. In
2011, Allison also completed her Master of Science in Education – Higher
Education Administration degree at Northwestern University. She
earned her Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the
University of Iowa and is a member of the Illinois Bar.

Conference Staff Profiles

Dan Carlin is a recent graduate of Berkeley Law, focusing on environmental policy and entrepreneurship. Since being introduced to meditation in college, he has found mindfulness practice to be a source of creativity, insight and balance. Before law school, he worked as a reporter in Southern California and Paris, France, and as a management consultant in Chicago. In addition to his role as Assistant to the Director of the Mindfulness Initiative, Dan is President of the Environmental Law Society, and coordinates the Berkeley Law Mindfulness Group, which offers weekly guided meditations and occasional retreats for students, faculty and staff at the law school.

Ellen Beilock was introduced to and inspired by meditation eight years ago through an MBSR course at UC San Francisco where she served as Mediation Officer, directing an internal mediation program serving faculty, staff, students and administrators. Before making the transition to working as a mediator, Ellen practiced law for more than 20 years. She has provided mediation training to lawyers and other professionals and taught dispute resolution and negotiation to law students. Ellen is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and received her law degree from Berkeley Law.

Martha Ruch is a rising 2L at Berkeley Law, and is currently working at the Neighborhood Justice Clinic at the East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC). Martha grew up in Washington D.C. and has a B.A. from UC Berkeley in Spanish language and literature and international development. She recently completed a teaching fellowship with the Ministry of Education in Spain, and spent her last year before law school working as an in-office English teacher in São Paulo, Brazil. Martha has been practicing yoga for eight years and integrates seated meditation with ashtanga yoga and Ayurveda to maintain balance and wellness in law school. She was a participant in Charlie Halpern’s Introduction to Mindfulness in Law course for 1Ls in Fall 2012.

Robin Fisher is interested in supporting the development of well being, compassion and wisdom in her life and in the lives of others. She feels that promoting the growth of mindfulness in the study and practice of law connects this interest with the skills that she developed over the last thirty years while working in the fields of health, neurology, law and education. Following receipt of a B.S. in Occupational Therapy from the University of Oklahoma, Robin specialized in the treatment of burn, neurological and brain injured patients in the Los Angeles Area. After graduating from the University of Tulsa College of Law, she clerked for Judge Lee R. West of the Western District of Oklahoma and practiced law as an associate in Tulsa and San Francisco. Most recently, she managed and developed an education system for her children and other Bay Area children that emphasized an interactive immersion in cultural resources, as well as national and international travel.

Lauren Klein likes to joke that she’s a recovering graduate. She received her Bachelors Degrees in Rhetoric and Psychology from UC Berkeley in May 2012 and now that the University no longer keeps her busy as a student, it keeps her employed as a writer. For its online publication, The Greater Good, she researches the latest and greatest scientific articles on topics like compassion, empathy and altruism that when taken together tell a compelling story on how we can all live a more meaningful life.

About Our Meditation Teachers

Mirabai Bush was a co-founder of the Center for
Contemplative Mind in Society and served as Executive Director until
2008. Under her direction, The Center developed its programs in
education, law, business, and activism and its network of thousands of
people integrating contemplative practice and perspective into their
lives and work.

Mirabai holds a unique background of organizational management,
teaching, and spiritual practice. A founding board member of the Seva
Foundation, an international public health organization, she directed
the Seva Guatemala Project, which supports sustainable agriculture and
integrated community development. Also at Seva, she co-developed
Sustaining Compassion, Sustaining the Earth, a series of retreats and
events for grassroots environmental activists on the interconnection of
spirit and action. She is co-author, with Ram Dass, of Compassion in Action: Setting Out on the Path of Service, published by Random House.

Mirabai has organized, facilitated, and taught workshops, weekends,
and courses on spirit and action for more than 20 years at institutions
including Omega Institute, Naropa Institute, Findhorne, Zen Mountain
Monastery, University of Massachusetts, San Francisco Zen Center,
Buddhist Study Center at Barre, MA, Insight Meditation Society, and the
Lama Foundation. She has a special interest in the uncovering and
recovery of women’s spiritual wisdom to inform work for social change.
She has taught women’s groups with Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Sharon
Salzberg, Joan Halifax, Margo Adler, Starhawk, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Vicky
Noble, and other leaders.

Her spiritual studies include meditation study at the Burmese Vihara
in Bodh Gaya, India, with Shri S.N. Goenka and Anagarika Munindra;
bhakti yoga with Hindu teacher Neemkaroli Baba; and studies with Tibetan
lamas Kalu Rinpoche, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Kyabje Gehlek Rinpoche,
Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and others. She also did five years of intensive
practice in Iyengar yoga and five years of Aikido with Kanai Sensei. Her
earlier religious study included 20 years of Catholic schooling, ending
with Georgetown University graduate study in medieval literature. She
holds an ABD in American literature from the State University of New
York at Buffalo.

Before entering the foundation world, Mirabai was the first
professional woman to work on the Saturn-Apollo moonflight at Cape
Canaveral and later co-founded and directed Illuminations, Inc., from
1973 to 1985 in Cambridge, MA. Her innovative business approaches, based
on mindfulness practice, were reported in Newsweek, Inc., Fortune, and
the Boston Business Journal. She has also worked on educational programs
with inner-city youth of color.
Mirabai has trekked, traveled, and lived in many countries, including
Guatemala, Mexico, Costa Rica, India, Nepal, Morocco, Ireland, England,
Scotland, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Germany, Austria, Italy, Pakistan,
and the Caribbean. She is an organic gardener in Western Massachusetts
and the mother of one adult son, Owen.

Zoketsu Norman Fischer is a poet and Zen Buddhist priest. For many years
he has taught at the San Francisco Zen Center, the oldest and largest
of the new Buddhist organizations in the West, where he served as
Co-abbot from 1995-2000. He is presently a Senior Dharma Teacher there
as well as the founder and spiritual director of the Everyday Zen
Foundation, an organization dedicated to adapting Zen Buddhist teachings
to Western culture.

A person of unusually wide-ranging interests, his Zen teaching is known
for its eclecticism, openness, warmth, and common sense, and for his
willingness to let go of everything, including Zen. His chief interests
in addition to poetry and traditional Zen and Buddhist teachings, are
the adaptation of Zen meditation and understanding to the worlds of
business, law, conflict resolution, interreligious dialog (he works
especially with Jewish meditation and Catholic intermonastic dialog),
care of the dying (he has for many years been a teacher with and is
emeritus chair of the board of the Zen Hospice Project), the world of
technology, and anything else he can think of.

Norman has been particularly interested in the application of Zen to
issues of Western culture and everyday life in the world. His Zen essays
on topics ranging from racism to monasticism to romance appear
frequently in “Tricycle,” “Shambhala Sun” and “Buddhadharma” and have
been included in every issue so far of the annual “Best Buddhist
Writing.” In addition to his regular work at Zen Center, and with
Everyday Zen, he has taught extensively, with his old friend Rabbi Alan
Lew, on the relationship between Buddhist and Jewish practice (work
which has been discussed in Judith Linzer’s book “Dharma and Torah”). He
teaches Buddhist principles to business people, Buddhist
compassion-in-action to lawyers and conflict resolvers, and poetry
writing and appreciation to children and adults. He’s led workshops at
Esalen Institute in California, the Open Center in New York City, and
Hollyhock Farm, in British Columbia, as well as at Zen Center, and
teaches Zen regularly at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California, as
well as in Canada, Mexico, and Europe. He’s participated with His
Holiness the Dalai Lama in conferences on Buddhist Christian dialog and
non-violence.

Norman’s workshops for business people entitled “Company Time,” are held
several times a year at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in Marin, north of
San Francisco. He does poetry retreats in various locations on the West
Coast, and regular workshops and classes at Makor Or, the new Jewish
meditation center in San Francisco founded by Rabbi Lew. He also teaches
at Elat Chayyim, a Jewish meditation center in Connecticut. Norman was
the “zen advisor” to Zoza, a now defunct clothing company started by a
boyhood friend of his, Mel Zeigler, who created Banana Republic with his
wife Patricia.

In 2002 he began work on the faculty of the Metta Institute, a new
program to dedicated to training health professional to serve as mentors
for the dying.

In addition to his teaching with the Everyday Zen sangha in the Bay
Area, Norman is guiding teacher to five other Zen groups: the Red Cedar
Zen Community in Bellingham (WA), the Mountain Rain Zen Community
(Vancouver, B.C.), Mar de Jade (Mexico), The New York Zen Circle (New
York City), and the Seattle Soto Zen Group (WA).

Norman was born in a small town in Pennsylvania where he attended public
schools; he went to college in upstate New York, and graduate school at
the famed University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop (MFA) and the Graduate
Theological Union in Berkeley, where he received an MA in the history
and phenomenology of religion. He was a Danforth scholar and a Woodrow
Wilson scholar.

He lives with his wife Kathie at Muir Beach, CA. a mile and a half from
the Green Gulch Zen temple where he lived for many years. Their twin
sons Aron and Noah live in Brooklyn; Aron is an attorney and Noah an
installation and performance artist (see his website
www.certainlynot.com).

About our Sponsors

The Frederick P. Lenz Foundation for American Buddhism (www.fredericklenzfoundation.org)
seeks to inspire
the emergence of an enlightened American society that reflects
the
universal Buddhist values of compassion, mindfulness and
wakefulness. The June Workshop on Mindfulness in Legal Education is made
possible in part by a generous gift from the Foundation. We are pleased that the Foundation’s co-presidents, Norman Oberstein and Norm Marcus, will be joining us for the June Workshop.

The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society transforms higher education by supporting and encouraging the use of
contemplative/introspective practices and perspectives to create
active learning and research environments that look deeply into
experience and meaning for all in service of a more just and
compassionate society. We are grateful for generous in-kind donations by the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society that helped make the June Workshop possible.