About
Lorraine A. Padden is a vipassana practitioner and student in the Zen Peacemakers Order, a two-year program based on Bernie Glassman's teachings. She participated in Upaya Zen Center's Socially Engaged Buddhist Training program in 2021. Padden designed and facilitated a mindfulness meditation program for incarcerated youth in San Diego. She is also an award-winning poet who publishes haiku and Japanese short-form poetry in journals and anthologies.
Teaching focus
Padden'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. Padden 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. Padden'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
Lorraine A. Padden, M.A. 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 Padden has chosen to share there. An award-winning poet, Lorraine A Padden, M.A., regularly publishes English-language haiku and related Japanese short-form poetry in notable journals and anthologies. Her recent honors include awards from the Haiku Society of America, The Haiku Foundation, Tricycle Magazine, and the Modern Kigo Project International Competition. Upwelling, her debut collection of haiku, senryu, tanka, and haibun was published in September, 2022 by Red Moon Press. After a satisfying career as a professional classical ballet dancer, Lorraine earned two degrees in art history from Brown University and Williams College. Her endeavors were supported by awards from the Ford Foundation, a Javits Fellowship granted by the U.S. Department of Education, and the Foundation of Rotary International which supported post-graduate research in Rome, Italy. For her achievements in the performing arts, humanities, and arts administration, Lorraine received an appointment to the National Endowment for the Arts. She continues to enjoy a rewarding career advising nonprofit boards of directors on strategic planning, membership diversification, and fundraising. An experienced vipassana meditation practitioner, Ms. Padden designed and facilitated a comprehensive mindfulness meditation program for incarcerated youth in San Diego. In 2021, she participated in Upaya’s Socially Engaged Buddhist Training program, and is currently a student in the Zen Peacemakers Order, a two-year program inspired by the teachings of Bernie Glassman and the practices of Zen Peacemakers International. That body of work places Padden 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. Padden'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. Padden contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Padden'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
Padden'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. Padden 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 Padden's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Padden at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Padden'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 Padden is teaching.
