Teachers

Seiso, Paul Cooper, Sensei, Director and head teacher: Seiso Sensei is a member of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association & the American Zen Teacher’s Association. He has studied and practiced in both the Soto and Rinzai Zen traditions. He received precepts in 2000. Seiso was ordained as a priest and dharma transmitted in the Soto Zen Buddhist lineage of Dainin Katagiri. Seiso is a Member and certified as a dharma teacher by the Soto Zen Buddhist Association. Seiso is also a practicing psychoanalyst and an award-winning author and poet. He recently published the critically acclaimed The Zen Impulse and the Psychoanalytic Encounter. Seiso Sensei is available to provide one-on-one and group teachings at your location and via internet. For further information leave a comment below.

Kagayaki, Karen Morris, Co-founded Two Rivers where she serves as  a lay teacher. She facilitates a collaborative action and study group on juvenile sex-trafficking and child pornography. She is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City and Narrowsburg, N.Y., a poet and the author of numerous articles on psychoanalysis and poetics. Her article “Torture and Attachment: Conscience and the Analyst’s World-Seeing Eye,” which addresses psychologist’s participation in state sanctioned torture in Abu Ghraib through the lens of classical Persian and Sufi poetry, received the Gradiva Award (NAAP, 2010). Her recent poetry collection, Cataclysm and Other Arrangements was published by Three Stones Press (2014). She serves as  an Ambassador of Hope for Shared Hope International.

For further information: www.sharedhope.org .

Myoki Marcia Nehemiah, is a co-founder and president of Two Rivers Zen Community. She began practicing and studying with her teacher, Seiso Paul Cooper, in 2011, received lay ordination in 2013, and lay entrustment in 2020. She has been involved in the life of her community as a member of a writers collective and an environmental advocacy group. She is co-founder and president of Growing Older Together, a not-for-profit, all-volunteer organization that provides assistance to older adults in the Upper Delaware region so that they can live independently in their homes.

Dharma Heritage Ceremony & Certification, November 2016, Camp Courage Minnesota