About
Evan Thompson is a philosophy professor at the University of British Columbia who works on consciousness, the self, and the mind. His research integrates cognitive science, phenomenology, and Buddhist philosophy. He is the author of Waking, Dreaming, Being (2015) and Mind in Life (2007), and co-author of The Embodied Mind (1991). Thompson is an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and has held visiting positions at universities including UC Berkeley's Center for Buddhist Studies. He co-directed NEH summer institutes on consciousness and self-knowledge drawing on Buddhist and Western philosophical perspectives.
Teaching focus
Thompson'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. Thompson 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. Thompson'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
Evan Thompson, PhD 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 Thompson has chosen to share there. Evan Thompson is a writer and professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He works on the nature of the mind, the self, and human experience. His work combines cognitive science, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, and cross-cultural philosophy, especially Asian philosophical traditions. He is the author of Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy (Columbia University Press, 2015); Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (Harvard University Press, 2007); and Colour Vision: A Study in Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of Perception (Routledge Press, 1995). He is the co-author, with Francisco J. Varela and Eleanor Rosch, of The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (MIT Press, 1991, revised edition 2016). Evan is an Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Evan received his A.B. from Amherst College in 1983 in Asian Studies and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto in 1990. He was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto from 2005 to 2013, and held a Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Science and the Embodied Mind at York University from 2002 to 2005. In 2014, he was the Numata Invited Visiting Professor at the Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He has also held invited visiting appointments at the Faculty of Philosophy, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, the Ecole Polytechnique (Paris), the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen, and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In 2012 he co-directed, with Christian Coseru and Jay Garfield, the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on Investigating Consciousness: Buddhist and Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives, and he was co-director, with Coseru and Garfield, of the 2018 NEH Summer Institute on Self-Knowledge in Eastern and Western Philosophies. That body of work places Thompson 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. Thompson'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. Thompson contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Thompson'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
Thompson'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. Thompson 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 Thompson's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Thompson at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Thompson'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 Thompson is teaching.
