About
Chris Senko Perez is a Zen priest at Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he has lived as a resident since entering the program. He received Jukai from Roshi Joan Halifax, was ordained as a novice priest in 2023, and received Hoshi in January 2025. He served as Shuso in 2024. Since August 2023, Perez has worked as Resident Coordinator, overseeing the residency program alongside Roshi Joan and the Guiding Teachers. He previously held roles as Work Leader, Kitchen Steward, and Temple Steward. Before moving to Upaya, Perez worked for thirteen years as a strategy and business consultant for nonprofit organizations, primarily in the arts sector. He holds a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania.
Teaching focus
Perez'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. Perez 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. Perez'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 Senko Perez 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 Perez has chosen to share there. Chris Senko Perez first came to Upaya to participate in sesshin. He returned for a second sesshin and decided at the end of the retreat that “one day” he would return as a resident. Senko continued to practice as a Cloud Sangha member, entered residency, and received Jukai from Roshi Joan Halifax. Senko was then ordained as a novice priest in 2023, served as Shuso in 2024, and received Hoshi in January 2025. Senko continues to live at Upaya and, since August 2023, has served as Resident Coordinator, stewarding the residency program alongside Roshi Joan and the Guiding Teachers. He has also served as Work Leader, Kitchen Steward, and Temple Steward. Prior to residency, Senko spent 13 years as a strategy and business consultant for nonprofit organizations, working most deeply with arts organizations. He has a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania. That body of work places Perez 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. Perez'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. Perez contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Perez'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
Perez'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. Perez teaches in the Soto Zen lineage as a priest within that container. Information about specific dharma transmission lines, ordination, or external lineage roots belongs on Perez's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Perez at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Perez'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 Perez is teaching.
