About
Lama Sonam Rinchen is a physician and medical administrator based in Nepal. He received his MD from Kathmandu University School of Medical Sciences in 2011 and is the first Western-trained doctor from the Humla region of Nepal. He holds certifications in trauma response, disaster management, ultrasound, and pediatric neurology. Rinchen serves as Co-director of Upaya's Nomads Clinic, a medical service he has worked with since 2011, and heads the Medical Department for Asia within the Karmapa's Healthcare Project. He has volunteered with One Heart World-Wide and other organizations, organizing free medical camps throughout Nepal.
Teaching focus
Lama Sonam'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. Lama Sonam 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. Lama Sonam'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
Lama Sonam Rinchen, MD 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 Lama Sonam has chosen to share there. Sonam Rinchen Lama, MD, is the first Western trained physician from the area of Humla, Nepal. He received his MD degree from Kathmandu University School of Medical Sciences, Dhulikhel, Nepal in 2011. He is a member of the Nepal Medical Council and International Society of Travel Medicine. He is Head of the Medical Department ASIA for the Karmapa’s Healthcare Project; on the Rapids Response Team, Department of Community Program, Dhulikhel Hospital Kathmandu Uinversity Hospital. He has many certfications, including in trauma and disaster team response training, ultrsound, CT and MRI, pediatric neurology, and mass casualty management. He has volunteered for many organizations, including One Heart World-Wide and Upaya’s Nomads Clinic and offered free medical camps in many parts of Nepal. He has served in Upaya’s Nomads Clinic since 2011, and is now Co-director. That body of work places Lama Sonam 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. Lama Sonam'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. Lama Sonam contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Lama Sonam'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
Lama Sonam'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. Lama Sonam 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 Lama Sonam's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Lama Sonam at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Lama Sonam'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 Lama Sonam is teaching.
