About
Beth Kanji Goldring began Zen practice in 1995 and was ordained that same year. She studies vipassana with Gil Fronsdal, tonglen with Alan Wallace, and has trained in Reiki. A former university humanities teacher and human rights worker, Goldring founded Brahmavihara Cambodia in 2000, an organization providing chaplaincy, social work, and material support to approximately 500 patients with AIDS, tuberculosis, and cancer in hospitals, hospices, prisons, and homes throughout Cambodia. Brahmavihara Cambodia received the IMC Karuna award in 2009.
Teaching focus
Goldring'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. Goldring 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. There's a steady invitation in the talks to keep practice human-sized. Sit when you can, return when you've drifted, and trust that small consistent attention does more over the years than dramatic breakthroughs. Format-wise, Goldring teaches in in-person, 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
Beth Kanji Goldring began Zen practice in 1995 and was ordained that same year. She studies vipassana with Gil Fronsdal, tonglen with Alan Wallace, and has trained in Reiki. A former university humanities teacher and human rights worker, Goldring founded Brahmavihara Cambodia in 2000, an organization providing chaplaincy, social work, and material support to approximately 500 patients with AIDS, tuberculosis, and cancer in hospitals, hospices, prisons, and homes throughout Cambodia. Brahmavihara Cambodia received the IMC Karuna award in 2009. Beth Kanji Goldring began sitting Zen in 1995 and was ordained in 1995. She studies vipassana with Gil Fronsdal. She has also studied tonglen with Alan Wallace, and Reiki with Glynn DeBrocky. A former university humanities teacher and human rights worker, Beth lives in Phnom Penh where she founded Brahmavihara Cambodia, formerly Brahmavihara/Cambodia AIDS Project, in 2000. Brahmavihara provides chaplaincy, social work, and material support to some 500 patients with AIDS, tuberculosis and cancer in various hospitals, hospices and prisons and in their homes Brahmavihara Cambodia has received a number of awards, including the IMC Karuna award in 2009. Further information is available at www.brahmavihara.cambodiaaidsproject.org. Goldring 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 Goldring'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 Goldring'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
Goldring teaches within the Zen tradition of seated meditation and direct pointing. Source notes mention training with Gil Fronsdal, Alan Wallace. Current affiliations include Insight Meditation Center, Insight Retreat Center. The lineage shows up less in titles than in the way Goldring 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 Goldring, you can expect grounded instruction in shikantaza (just sitting), with space to ask questions and bring whatever's actually showing up in your practice. The teaching voice is steady. Goldring 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.
