About
Brenda Phillips is a lecturer in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Boston University and director of the BU Lab for Contemplative Studies. She holds a PhD in developmental psychology and an MA in clinical psychology. Phillips graduated from the Upaya Chaplaincy Program in 2021. Her research examines social cognition and resilience, with focus on existential concerns in women with cancer and the mental health impacts of environmental exposure in marginalized communities. She has worked as a clinician with trauma survivors and as a psychotherapist serving low-income and homeless families. As a chaplain, she leads meditation support groups for college students and clients at the Healing Garden Cancer Support Center in Harvard, Massachusetts.
Teaching focus
Phillips's teaching at Upaya sits inside the center's Soto Zen container. The basic form is zazen, just sitting, with the posture and breath held lightly and the mind allowed to settle without force. Around that core, Upaya's programs build out a wider arc that includes the Bodhisattva precepts, oryoki meal practice, walking meditation (kinhin), dharma talks, and the GRACE framework Roshi Joan developed for clinicians working at the bedside. Phillips teaches inside that framework, which means the work isn't just on the cushion. Students are asked to bring practice into the spaces where it actually gets tested: at the bedside, in conversation, in moments of grief or political reactivity, in the long, slow work of climate and justice. Upaya's approach is recognizable for its refusal to keep zazen and the world in separate boxes. The cushion and the clinic, the cushion and the kitchen, the cushion and the protest line are all treated as the same field of practice, not different ones. Phillips's contribution stays in that key. Teaching sessions emphasize uprightness, attention, and the Bodhisattva vow as something lived in specific situations rather than recited as an idea. There's room for silence. There's also room for hard conversations about what practice asks of a person in a world under pressure.
Background
Brenda (Bree) Phillips appears in Upaya Zen Center's teacher and faculty roster as part of the wider contemplative community Roshi Joan Halifax has gathered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, over the past four decades. The biographical material on file is drawn directly from Upaya's own teacher page and reflects what Phillips has chosen to share there. Brenda (Bree) Phillips is a graduate from the Upaya Chaplaincy Program in March 2021. She is a lecturer in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Boston University. She is also the director of the BU Lab for Contemplative Studies. She holds a doctorate (PhD) in developmental psychology and a master’s degree (MA) in clinical psychology. Brenda’s research focuses on social cognition and resilience. She studies how women with cancer grapple with existential issues and struggle to voice their self-care needs in the midst of social obligations. She also studies perceptions of nature and the impact of living in fence-line communities on women’s mental health. As a clinician, Brenda has worked primarily with trauma survivors in marginalized communities. For several years, she worked as a psychotherapist supporting the needs of low-income and homeless parents and their young children. As a chaplain, Brenda leads meditation support groups for college students and clients of the Healing Garden Cancer Support Center in Harvard, MA. That body of work places Phillips inside a center known for blending Soto Zen practice with contemplative care for the dying, climate work, neuroscience dialogues, and a long-running program for clinicians and chaplains called GRACE. Upaya's roster mixes resident priests with visiting scholars, doctors, scientists, poets, and indigenous knowledge holders, and the programs reflect that blend. Phillips's appearances at Upaya situate this work inside that wider conversation between zazen and the world it sits inside. For practitioners who arrive at Upaya through a sesshin or a Being with Dying training, the common thread is a posture of upright, alert presence under whatever conditions show up. The forms are recognizably Soto Zen: zazen, kinhin, oryoki, the Bodhisattva precepts, dharma talks, and dokusan with senior teachers. The framing is wider than any single discipline, which is part of what has made Upaya a meeting ground for working clinicians, scientists, artists, and long-time Buddhist practitioners. Phillips contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Phillips's career outside Upaya can follow the linked website and external publications listed on the Upaya page itself, which is where any deeper biographical detail belongs.
Lineage
Phillips's teaching home for the work documented here is Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, founded by Roshi Joan Halifax in the 1980s and rooted in the Soto Zen lineage. Upaya's broader faculty includes resident priests, visiting senior teachers, scientists, clinicians, poets, and indigenous knowledge holders. Phillips contributes as part of Upaya's wider faculty rather than as a Zen priest. Information about specific dharma transmission lines, ordination, or external lineage roots belongs on Phillips's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Phillips at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Phillips's own area of focus. Days follow Upaya's rhythm of sittings, walking meditation, meals, talks, and time for questions. Silence is taken seriously, but so are the conversations that come out of it. The framing is wide enough for people from outside Buddhist practice to take part fully. Long-time Zen students will recognize the forms; newcomers will be supported through them. Expect to leave with a clearer sense of how practice meets the specific subject Phillips is teaching.
