About
Luc Steels is Professor Emeritus in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Brussels and senior strategy advisor at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center. He has held research positions at MIT, Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris, and Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. His work spans computational linguistics, neural networks, cognitive robotics, and value-aware AI, with focus on using AI to investigate embodied mind, meaning, language, and consciousness. He received the Distinguished Service Award of the European AI Research Association in 2022 and chairs natural sciences at the Royal Flemish Academy. Steels is also a composer of operas and theatre works.
Teaching focus
Steels'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. Steels 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. Steels'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
Luc Steels, 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 Steels has chosen to share there. Luc Steels, PhD is Professor Emeritus in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Brussels (VUB) in Belgium. He studied linguistics and philosophy at the University of Antwerp and computer science and artificial intelligence at MIT (US). He founded and directed the VUB Artificial Intelligence laboratory in Brussels from 1983 and the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris from 1996. From 2011 he was research professor at the Institute for Evolutionary Biology at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. Currently he is scientific director at the Venice International University and senior strategy advisor at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center. Steels worked in many areas of AI from computational linguistics, expert systems, and knowledge representation to neural networks, cognitive robotics and value-aware AI. He is primarily interested in using AI as a tool to investigate embodied mind, meaning, language and consciousness. In 2022 Steels received the Distinguished Service award of the European AI Research Association, the highest award for AI in Europe. He is currently chair for natural sciences of the Royal Flemish Academy for science and art in Belgium. Luc Steels has also been active in the performing arts as a composer of operas and theatre. His latest opera Fausto (performed in Brussels and Paris) was about transhumanism and the limits and dangers of using AI in attempts to gain immortality. That body of work places Steels 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. Steels'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. Steels contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Steels'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
Steels'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. Steels 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 Steels's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Steels at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Steels'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 Steels is teaching.
