About
Haiwen Meng began studying Zen Buddhism and meditation in 2000. In 2006, he became a student of Mingyur Rinpoche and has practiced within that lineage since. He is affiliated with Tergar. Before retiring, Meng worked as a mechanical engineer in the aerospace industry. He is based in Phoenix, Arizona.
Teaching focus
Meng's core teaching draws on shikantaza (just sitting), breath-counting, koan introspection. The frame is the Zen tradition of seated meditation and direct pointing, but the language stays plain. Meng doesn't lecture from height. The talks tend to think alongside whatever's actually present in the room. Recurring themes include zazen, samu, and sangha. None of those get presented as abstract ideas. They're worked into the body, into ethics, into how a practitioner shows up in family life or at work, so that the dharma stops feeling like a separate compartment. There's a steady invitation in the talks to keep practice human-sized. Sit when you can, return when you've drifted, and trust that small consistent attention does more over the years than dramatic breakthroughs. Format-wise, Meng teaches in a mix of in-person and online settings, and the tone moves easily between guided sittings, dharma talks, and Q&A. Questions tend to get answered the way they were asked, without being reframed into something cleaner. That alone tells you a lot about how the room feels.
Background
Haiwen Meng began studying Zen Buddhism and meditation in 2000. In 2006, he became a student of Mingyur Rinpoche and has practiced within that lineage since. He is affiliated with Tergar. Before retiring, Meng worked as a mechanical engineer in the aerospace industry. He is based in Phoenix, Arizona. Haiwen Meng began studying and practicing Zen Buddhism and meditation in 2000. In 2006, he became a student of Mingyur Rinpoche and started to follow and practice Rinpoche’s teachings. Before his retirement, Haiwen worked as a mechanical engineer in the aerospace industry. He currently resides in Phoenix, Arizona, and enjoys outdoor activities such as hiking and backpacking. Meng's teaching home is Tergar, where the practice community shapes the rhythm of retreats, sittings, and dharma talks. That work sits within the Zen tradition of seated meditation and direct pointing, and the recurring concerns of Meng's teaching, ethical foundation, steady attention, and the slow softening of habitual reactivity, echo the older texts without sounding distant from a 21st-century practitioner's life. What stands out across Meng's talks isn't a single technique but a steadying tone. Practice is treated as something built slowly, in ordinary life, with care. There's room for the difficulties practitioners actually bring into the room, grief, restlessness, the body's complaints, family obligations, and the encouragement is consistent without being pushy. Across the recorded talks there's a clear preference for plain speech over technical vocabulary, which lowers the barrier for new listeners while still rewarding longer-term practitioners who catch the lineage references underneath. The teaching also tends to come back, again and again, to how practice survives outside the cushion. Family, work, illness, and the slow shifts of midlife all show up in the talks as fair territory rather than distractions from the real practice.
Lineage
Meng teaches within the Zen tradition of seated meditation and direct pointing. Current affiliations include Tergar. The lineage shows up less in titles than in the way Meng talks about practice, with steady reference to the older Buddhist vocabulary while keeping the door open for people who've never read a sutra. Whether that framing lands as monastic or lay depends on the specific talk, but the consistent thread is care for the form without letting the form become the point.
What to expect
Sitting with Meng, you can expect grounded instruction in shikantaza (just sitting), with space to ask questions and bring whatever's actually showing up in your practice. The teaching voice is steady. Meng won't push you past your edge, and there's a clear preference for slow, sustainable practice over breakthrough chasing. Bring a notebook if you like, or don't. Either way, you'll be met where you are.
