About
Chris Goto-Jones is a Buddhist chaplain and philosopher based on Vancouver Island, Canada. He practices in the Zen tradition and received his dharma name Shunmyō in 2022 from Rōshi Joan Jiko Halifax. He has training in Shingon and Vipassana traditions as well. Goto-Jones is a professor of philosophy at the University of Victoria and formerly taught at Leiden University. His work focuses on eco-dharma and grief in the more-than-human world. He operates Dharma of Trees, a nonprofit affiliate of Zen Peacemakers International, and maintains a private therapy practice. He has taught meditation internationally for nearly a decade, including through the free online course De-Mystifying Mindfulness, which has reached approximately 250,000 participants.
Teaching focus
Goto-Jones'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. Goto-Jones 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. Goto-Jones'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
Chris Goto-Jones 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 Goto-Jones has chosen to share there. Dr. Chris Goto-Jones (he/him) is a Buddhist Chaplain living and working on the unceded territories of the Lekwungen peoples, otherwise known as southern Vancouver Island, Canada. He works particularly on issues of grief and suffering in the more-than-human world, sometimes called eco-dharma. He operates a small non-profit, dharmaoftrees.org, which is an affiliate of Zen Peacemakers International. Chris has experience and training in several Buddhist traditions, including Shingon and Vipassana, but his spiritual home is Zen. In 2022 he received the dharma name Shunmyō from Rōshi Joan Jiko Halifax. Educated in Cambridge, Keiō (Tokyo), and Oxford Universities, Chris focusses his scholarly work on Asian philosophy, with a particular emphasis on East Asian Buddhism. Formerly Professor of Comparative Philosophy at Leiden University (The Netherlands), Chris is presently Professor in Philosophy at the University of Victoria (Canada). Combining his long-term commitments to philosophy and Buddhist practice as intersecting means through which humanity has striven to understand and ameliorate suffering, Chris also serves as a therapist in a small private practice. In addition, he has taught meditation internationally for nearly a decade, including through the (free) massive open online course (MOOC), De-Mystifying Mindfulness (Leiden University & Coursera/FutureLearn, 2016-present), which has served approximately 250,000 participants to date. That body of work places Goto-Jones 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. Goto-Jones'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. Goto-Jones contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Goto-Jones'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
Goto-Jones'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. Goto-Jones 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 Goto-Jones's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Goto-Jones at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms held alongside teaching focused on contemplative care for the dying, grief, and serious illness. Many of these programs draw on Upaya's Being with Dying curriculum and the GRACE framework Roshi Joan developed for clinicians. There's room for personal experience and difficult emotion, held inside the container of practice rather than processed away. The schedule is recognizable as Zen: sittings, walking, meals, talks, and time for questions. Quiet is taken seriously. Most participants leave with both a steadier practice and a more honest relationship with mortality.
