About
Carolyn Dille is a poet and teacher who facilitates writing and creative expression workshops. She has practiced Buddhist meditation since 1990, training in both Theravada and Soto Zen traditions. She completed the Community Dharma Leaders program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in 2003. Dille is based in Santa Cruz and is writing a book on meditative and creative awareness.
Teaching focus
Dille'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. Dille 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, Dille teaches in online, 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
Carolyn Dille is a poet and teacher who facilitates writing and creative expression workshops. She has practiced Buddhist meditation since 1990, training in both Theravada and Soto Zen traditions. She completed the Community Dharma Leaders program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in 2003. Dille is based in Santa Cruz and is writing a book on meditative and creative awareness. Carolyn Dille is a poet and teacher who facilitates writing and creative expression workshops. She has been practicing Buddhist meditation since 1990, and has trained with a variety of teachers in both the Theravada and Soto Zen traditions. She completed the Community Dharma Leaders program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in 2003. Carolyn lives in Santa Cruz and is writing a book on meditative and creative awareness, working title:Insight, Intuition, and Imagination. Dille 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 Dille'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 Dille'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
Dille teaches within the Zen tradition of seated meditation and direct pointing. Current affiliations include Insight Meditation Center, Insight Retreat Center. The lineage shows up less in titles than in the way Dille 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 Dille, you can expect grounded instruction in shikantaza (just sitting), with space to ask questions and bring whatever's actually showing up in your practice. Online sessions tend to keep the same shape, shorter sits, a talk, and time for Q&A, in a format that's accessible from home. The teaching voice is steady. Dille 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.
