Maha Sangha Retreat
The Heart of the One
Who Asks
Pueblo Mountain Park, Colorado
June 9-14, 2019
Here is an introduction to our teachers who are generously
offering themselves to make this rich gathering possible. (Only their travel
expenses will be incorporated into cost of this retreat.) Please look
towards the next email for retreat specifics.
Open Source Teachers
Sarah Bender, Tenney Nathanson, Andrew Palmer, & Megan Rundel
Sarah Bender is a Roshi (fully authorized Zen master) in Joan Sutherland’s Open Source Koan Zen tradition, of the Pacific Zen School. Since 2007, she has served as the resident teacher for Springs Mountain Sangha. From 2007 to 2013, she also served as Cadet Chapel Buddhist Program Leader for the United States Air Force Academy, and supported the Wet Mountain Sangha, our sister Open Source sangha in Pueblo, CO.
Sarah also has an MA in Learning Disabilities and teaches children with learning difficulties, in private practice in Colorado Springs.
Tenney Nathanson is a teacher in the
Open Source / Pacific Zen tradition, authorized to teach by Joan Sutherland in
March 2012. He started studying with Joan in 1997, regularly attending retreats
with her in northern California and in Santa Fe. In 2008 he and Jennifer
Sellers started Desert Rain. A poet as well as a scholar of American poetry,
Tenney is fascinated by the life-changing power of both koans and poems to open
us up to intimate experiences of emptiness and form, and by the ways these
experiences can change our day to day lives. Tenney lives in Tucson with his
family, where he teaches in the University of Arizona English Department and
helps lead the arts collective POG (http://gopogorg.dot5hosting.com/about/).
Here’s a link to his University of Arizona web page (http://english.arizona.edu/users/tenney-nathanson).
Andrew Palmer, Sensei is the resident
teacher for Wet Mountain Sangha in Pueblo, CO. He also teaches with Springs
Mountain Sangha and serves as the Buddhist Program Leader for
the Cadet Chapel at the Air Force Academy. Andrew began Zen practice with
Springs Mountain Sangha in 1999, was named a meditation instructor in 2007, and
was authorized to teach by Joan Sutherland, Roshi in 2011. He is
continually amazed by and appreciative of the enduring power of this ancient
Way and the ways it manifests again and again, always relevant and meaningful
to the very lives we’re living.
Megan Rundel, Sensei is the founding teacher at Crimson Gate Zen Community in Oakland. She is dedicated to the beautiful work of liberation, the tenderness of not knowing, and the audaciousness of the Bodhisattva Way.