About
Kristin Andrews is a philosopher and York Research Chair in Animal Minds at York University in Toronto. She holds a CIFAR Fellowship on the Future Flourishing project. Her work examines cognition, consciousness, and social behavior in nonhuman animals. She has authored several books including How To Study Animal Minds, Chimpanzee Persons, and Mindreading Animals. Andrews is affiliated with Upaya Zen Center. Her research addresses animal ethics, consciousness, and the evolution of social norms across species.
Teaching focus
Andrews'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. Andrews 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. Andrews'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
Kristin Andrews, 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 Andrews has chosen to share there. Kristin Andrews, PhD, Kristin Andrews is York Research Chair in Animal Minds and Professor of Philosophy at York University in Toronto and CIFAR Fellow on the Future Flourishing project. She is the author of several books on other animals, covering topics including social cognition, personhood, and consciousness. These include How To Study Animal Minds (Cambridge), Chimpanzee Persons: The Philosopher’s Brief (Routledge) and Mindreading Animals: Toward a New Folk Psychology (MIT). Andrews is currently writing a book about social norms in animal cultures. She is on the Board of Directors of the Borneo Orangutan Society Canada. Dr. Andrews brings empirical and theoretical expertise to questions about the similarities and differences between humans and nonhuman animals in terms of their cognitive, affective, social, and cultural capacities. She has developed novel frameworks for social and normative cognition that can be used to investigate these capacities in other animals. Professor Andrews is currently engaged in a number of projects related to social norms. She is writing a book on the evolution of social norms, and proposes that they existed before humans developed language. She is also exploring whether social norms form part of animal cultures in a range of species, and is developing the implications of these findings for animal conservation and welfare efforts. Professor Andrews also writes on animal consciousness, animal ethics, animal morality, and legal status for animals. More at: https://www.kristinandrews.org/. That body of work places Andrews 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. Andrews'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. Andrews contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Andrews'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
Andrews'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. Andrews 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 Andrews's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Andrews at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Andrews'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 Andrews is teaching.
