About
Angie Boissevain is a lay priest disciple in the Soto Zen tradition, trained by Kobun Chino Otogawa and completing transmission with Vanja Palmers. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, she has taught for 40 years with focus on zazen practice and Buddhist studies. She co-founded Jikoji, a Zen temple and retreat center in the Santa Cruz mountains, and serves as teacher for Floating Zendo meditation group in Santa Clara.
Teaching focus
Boissevain's core teaching draws on shikantaza (just sitting), breath-counting, koan introspection. The frame is the Zen tradition of seated meditation and direct pointing, but the language stays plain. Boissevain doesn't lecture from height. The talks tend to think alongside whatever's actually present in the room. Recurring themes include zazen, samu, and sangha. None of those get presented as abstract ideas. They're worked into the body, into ethics, into how a practitioner shows up in family life or at work, so that the dharma stops feeling like a separate compartment. Boissevain works comfortably with longer-term practitioners. Talks assume some familiarity with sitting, and the questions tend to circle around how to keep practice alive once the early enthusiasm has thinned out. Format-wise, Boissevain teaches in in-person, group, retreat, and the tone moves easily between guided sittings, dharma talks, and Q&A. Questions tend to get answered the way they were asked, without being reframed into something cleaner. That alone tells you a lot about how the room feels.
Background
Angie Boissevain is a lay priest disciple in the Soto Zen tradition, trained by Kobun Chino Otogawa and completing transmission with Vanja Palmers. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, she has taught for 40 years with focus on zazen practice and Buddhist studies. She co-founded Jikoji, a Zen temple and retreat center in the Santa Cruz mountains, and serves as teacher for Floating Zendo meditation group in Santa Clara. Angie Boissevain is a transmitted lay priest disciple of Kobun Chino Otogawa and completed transmission with Vanja Palmers. She has been teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area for 40 years, with emphasis on zazen, and informal studies of Buddhist, especially Soto Zen, teachings. She was one of the founders, with Kobun roshi, of Jikoji, a Zen temple and retreat center in the Santa Cruz mountains, and is teacher for Floating Zendo meditation group in Santa Clara. Boissevain teaches across several communities, including Insight Meditation Center, Insight Retreat Center. That work sits within the Zen tradition of seated meditation and direct pointing, and the recurring concerns of Boissevain's teaching, ethical foundation, steady attention, and the slow softening of habitual reactivity, echo the older texts without sounding distant from a 21st-century practitioner's life. What stands out across Boissevain's talks isn't a single technique but a steadying tone. Practice is treated as something built slowly, in ordinary life, with care. There's room for the difficulties practitioners actually bring into the room, grief, restlessness, the body's complaints, family obligations, and the encouragement is consistent without being pushy.
Lineage
Boissevain teaches within the Zen tradition of seated meditation and direct pointing. Source notes mention training with Vanja Palmers, Kobun Chino Otogawa. Current affiliations include Insight Meditation Center, Insight Retreat Center. The lineage shows up less in titles than in the way Boissevain talks about practice, with steady reference to the older Buddhist vocabulary while keeping the door open for people who've never read a sutra. Whether that framing lands as monastic or lay depends on the specific talk, but the consistent thread is care for the form without letting the form become the point.
What to expect
Sitting with Boissevain, you can expect grounded instruction in shikantaza (just sitting), with space to ask questions and bring whatever's actually showing up in your practice. On retreat the structure follows a classical rhythm of sittings, walking practice, and dharma talks, with silence held between sessions. Group settings have a community feel without becoming social. People sit, listen, and check in. The teaching voice is steady. Boissevain won't push you past your edge, and there's a clear preference for slow, sustainable practice over breakthrough chasing. Bring a notebook if you like, or don't. Either way, you'll be met where you are.
