About
Jisho Sara Siebert is a Soto Zen Buddhist priest and International Zen Teacher (Kokusaifukyoshi) recognized by the Soto Shu. She trained under Gengo Akiba Roshi in Los Angeles and studied at monasteries in Japan. Her practice developed in response to work on domestic and sexual violence prevention. Siebert has worked in multiple countries including Papua New Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Haiti. She currently works for Beyond Borders, an organization addressing violence against girls and women and child slavery in Haiti. She teaches at Zen Fields in Ames, Iowa.
Teaching focus
Siebert'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. Siebert 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. Siebert'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
Jisho Sara Siebert 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 Siebert has chosen to share there. Jisho Sara Siebert is a Soto Zen Buddhist priest who was led to Buddhism by the suffering around her and in her work to prevent domestic and sexual violence. Her path to understand suffering and joy led her to Los Angeles - where she first met her teacher, Gengo Akiba Roshi, then to Papua New Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, monasteries in Japan, and Haiti. At present, she works for Beyond Borders, an organization working in Haiti, committed to preventing violence against girls and women and ending child slavery. She is recognized as an International Zen Teacher (Kokusaifukyoshi) by the Soto Shu and teaches at Zen Fields in Ames, Iowa. That body of work places Siebert 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. Siebert'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. Siebert contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Siebert'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
Siebert'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. Siebert 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 Siebert's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Siebert at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Siebert'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 Siebert is teaching.
