About
Laura Candiotto is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pardubice in the Czech Republic. She practices Tibetan Buddhism and focuses on the transformation of negative emotions through contemplative practice, with particular attention to embodiment and desire. Her academic work bridges Socratic inquiry, enactive philosophy, and Buddhist ethics, with research centered on emotions, environmental ethics, and dialogical communities of inquiry. She has published on epistemic emotions, compassion, wonder, and shame.
Teaching focus
Candiotto appears at Upaya as part of the wider faculty Roshi Joan Halifax has gathered to teach alongside the Soto Zen core. Upaya's programs regularly bring in scholars, clinicians, scientists, poets, and knowledge holders from beyond the Zen sangha to teach in dialogue with the practice. Candiotto's sessions live inside that container. The work tends to ask how a particular field of expertise meets contemplative practice and what each can learn from the other. Sessions are usually held alongside zazen and the Soto Zen forms that structure the days at Upaya, so students can expect a rhythm of formal sittings, talks or seminars from Candiotto, group conversation, and silence. The framing is open enough for non-Buddhist participants to take part fully. The depth comes from Candiotto's own field rather than from technical Zen instruction. For students with a steady practice, the value is in seeing how practice meets a specific discipline, and how that discipline reads when held inside the container Upaya provides. For people newer to Zen, Candiotto's sessions are a low-friction way into that container.
Background
Laura Candiotto, 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 Candiotto has chosen to share there. Dr. Laura Candiotto is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies of the University of Pardubice, Czech Republic. She is a member of the Center for Ethics where she is leading a project on the ethics of knowledge with a specific focus on climate change denialism. She is also a team member of the project “Beyond security” working on environmental emotions in the Anthropocene - especially in the intertwining of love, grief and hope in inhabiting a place that is dying. She has worked on love, compassion, wonder, and shame, bridging her expertise in the Socratic method of inquiry and the enactive approach to participatory sense-making. She also contributed to the epistemology of emotions research by carving out a model of epistemic emotions as embedded in dialogical interactions and communities of inquiry. She is now contributing to the development of an enactive ethics grounded on affects as what reveal existential concerns and values, especially regarding environmental issues. She is very much interested in the potential transformative power of the affective experience, also under the weight of oppression. As a Tibetan Buddhism practitioner, she has a longstanding interest in the transformation of negative emotions and habits through contemplative practices with a focus on embodiment and desire. Websites: www.emotionsfirst.org; https://upce.academia.edu/LauraCandiotto; https://centreforethics.upce.cz/en/doc-laura-candiotto-phd That body of work places Candiotto 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. Candiotto'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. Candiotto contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Candiotto'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
Candiotto'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. Candiotto 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 Candiotto's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Candiotto at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms held alongside teaching focused on contemplative care for the dying, grief, and serious illness. Many of these programs draw on Upaya's Being with Dying curriculum and the GRACE framework Roshi Joan developed for clinicians. There's room for personal experience and difficult emotion, held inside the container of practice rather than processed away. The schedule is recognizable as Zen: sittings, walking, meals, talks, and time for questions. Quiet is taken seriously. Most participants leave with both a steadier practice and a more honest relationship with mortality.
