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Zen After All...Notes on the Journey from the Monastery to Google to Stone Creek
Sessei Meg Levie, Head Priest at Stone Creek Zen Center in Occidental, CA
Original Date: Thursday, April 20, 2023
Sessei Meg Levie left a doctoral program in English literature to go to Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in 1994. After studying and practicing full time at the different branches of the San Francisco Zen Center for 15 years, including ordaining as a Zen priest and raising a daughter at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in Marin, she began teaching mindfulness and emotional intelligence in the corporate world. She joined the team that developed the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI), teaching the mindfulness-based leadership program that started at Google. After ten years, she felt called to once again make Zen practice the primary expression of her life, and last year accepted the position of head priest at the newly-renovated Stone Creek Zen Center in Graton.
In her talk, she’ll explore what compelled her to leave a traditional career path and plunge into monastic life, the experience of being on the pioneering edge of the recent mindfulness movement and current perspectives, and what drew her back to focus on Buddhism and its particular flowering in the form of Zen.
Sessei Meg Levie received her BA from Stanford University and an MA from the University of Texas at Austin. She is the senior teacher trainer for the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI), and has taught hundreds of teachers internationally. Currently she serves as head priest at Stone Creek Zen Center, and she continues to develop and teach programs exploring the interface between traditional contemplative practices and the modern world.
