About
Father Greg Boyle is a Jesuit priest and founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, a gang-intervention and re-entry program. From 1986 to 1992, he served as pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights, where he witnessed the effects of gang violence during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Rather than adopt suppression-based approaches to gang violence, Boyle and community members advocated treating gang members as human beings. He is affiliated with Upaya Zen Center.
Teaching focus
Father Greg'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. Father Greg 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. Father Greg'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
Father Greg Boyle 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 Father Greg has chosen to share there. Father Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest, is th e founder of Ho meboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world. Born and raised in Los Angeles, from 1986 to 1992, Fr. Boyle served as pastor of D olores Mission Church in Boyle Heights. Dolores Mission was the poores t Catholic parish in Los Angeles, which also had the highest concentration of gang activity in the city. Fr. Boyle witnessed the devas tating impact of gang violence o n his communit y during the so- called “ decade of d eath” that began in the late 1980s and peaked at 1,000 gang-related killin gs in 1992. In the face of law enforcement tactics and criminal justice policies of suppression and mass incarceration as the means t o end gang violence, h e and parish and community members adopted what was a radical approach at the time: treat gang members as human beings. That body of work places Father Greg 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. Father Greg'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. Father Greg contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Father Greg'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
Father Greg'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. Father Greg 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 Father Greg's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Father Greg at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Father Greg'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 Father Greg is teaching.
