About
David Addiss is a physician and epidemiologist who worked for 20 years at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, focusing on neglected tropical diseases. He directed the Fetzer Institute's science and spirituality program from 2006 to 2010, then completed chaplaincy training at Upaya Zen Center in 2014, where his thesis examined the role of Buddhist chaplains in global health. He currently directs the Focus Area for Compassion and Ethics at the Task Force for Global Health, where his work centers on the intersection of compassion, ethics, and global health.
Teaching focus
Addiss'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. Addiss 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. Addiss'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
David Addiss 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 Addiss has chosen to share there. David Addiss is a public health physician whose work has focused on the prevention and treatment of neglected tropical diseases - causes of immense suffering and disability worldwide. He has worked as a general medical practitioner in migrant health and, for 20 years, was an epidemiologist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From 2006 to 2010, David directed the Fetzer Institute’s program in science and spirituality. He completed the chaplaincy training program at Upaya Zen Center in 2014, where his thesis was on the role of the Buddhist chaplain in global health. David’s experience at Fetzer and Upaya sparked a deep interest in the fundamental role of compassion in global health. Since 2011, he has been at the Task Force for Global Health, where he now directs the Focus Area for Compassion and Ethics (FACE). His interests include prevention of neglected tropical diseases, global health ethics, the epidemiology of love and compassion, and the role of compassion in global health. That body of work places Addiss 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. Addiss'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. Addiss contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Addiss'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
Addiss'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. Addiss 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 Addiss's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Addiss at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Addiss'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 Addiss is teaching.
