About
Kevin Griffin is a meditation teacher in the Meditation tradition.
Teaching focus
Griffin's main contribution is a careful, lived integration of Buddhist insight practice with twelve-step recovery. He doesn't water either down. In his teaching, the four noble truths line up with the recognition that suffering exists, that craving drives it, that there's a way out, and that the way is a path of practice. The eightfold path becomes a recovery program in classical Buddhist clothing, and the twelve steps become a culturally Western version of the same insight. He teaches metta and mindfulness as core daily practices, with particular attention to how shame, self-hatred, and the addict's inner critic respond to lovingkindness. He's frank about the limits of meditation alone, and he tells students that for some patterns, sitting practice without community and structure won't be enough. Recovery comes first, then practice deepens it. His retreats often combine sitting practice with group sharing, recovery-style readings, and dharma talks that use addiction as a doorway into more general teachings on craving, identity, and freedom. He's also written extensively on faith, surrender, and what step-three style turning over actually feels like inside a Buddhist framework. For practitioners new to recovery, he's a clear translator. For people deep in the rooms who want a serious meditation practice, he's one of the few teachers who knows both worlds from the inside.
Background
Kevin Griffin is an American dharma teacher and author best known for bridging Buddhist practice and twelve-step recovery. He came to meditation in the early 1980s after years of his own struggles with addiction, and the intersection of those two paths has shaped most of his teaching since. He's the author of One Breath at a Time: Buddhism and the Twelve Steps, A Burning Desire: Dharma God and the Path of Recovery, and Buddhism and the Twelve Steps: A Recovery Workbook, books that have become standard references for people working both a meditation practice and a recovery program. He teaches widely at Spirit Rock and other insight centers, and he's a co-founder of the Buddhist Recovery Network. His Dharma Seed library runs to several hundred talks across decades of teaching. Griffin's voice is conversational and direct. He doesn't romanticize either Buddhism or recovery, and he's spent a lot of time helping practitioners move past the magical thinking that can show up in both communities. Outside the dharma, he's a working musician, and that creative background shows up in his pacing, his comfort with riffing on a theme, and his ear for the rhythms of group teaching. He runs ongoing online groups for practitioners with addiction histories, leads weekend retreats around the country, and continues to write about the practical territory where insight practice and recovery work meet. He lives in Berkeley.
Lineage
Griffin trained as a lay teacher in the Insight Meditation tradition, primarily through Spirit Rock Meditation Center where he completed Spirit Rock's Community Dharma Leader program. His teaching draws on the broader IMS and Spirit Rock lineage of Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, and Sharon Salzberg, with strong influence from the lineage of Burmese vipassana teachers behind that lay-teacher community. He's a co-founder of the Buddhist Recovery Network and a long-time member of the Spirit Rock teaching community. He teaches as a layperson and has not ordained.
What to expect
Retreats and groups with Griffin tend to weave together sitting practice, dharma talks, and group sharing in a recovery-meeting format. You'll likely sit through a mix of breath-based mindfulness and metta, hear talks that draw connections between Buddhist teachings and twelve-step principles, and participate in small-group discussions where people speak from their own recovery experience. Don't expect strict silence throughout. His retreats are conversational and community-oriented by design. People with addiction histories tend to feel met without being singled out, and people without addiction histories usually find the framework still applies, since the underlying patterns of craving and identification show up everywhere.