About
MH Rubin is a photographer and educator based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has worked in creative technology at Lucasfilm, Netflix, and Adobe, and authored books on filmmaking including "Droidmaker," a history of Lucas and Pixar. He holds a degree in neuroscience from Brown University. Rubin studied photography for over 40 years under Jerry Uelsmann, working in analog surrealism before shifting to digital practice. He is affiliated with Upaya Zen Center. In recent years, he developed a curriculum integrating photography with haiku and other Zen arts, which he teaches at Santa Fe Photographic Workshops and Wild Rice Retreats in Wisconsin. He co-hosts the podcast "Everyday Photography, Every Day."
Teaching focus
Rubin'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. Rubin 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. Rubin'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
MH Rubin 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 Rubin has chosen to share there. MH Rubin is a photographer and educator, currently residing in Santa Fe, NM. Rubin has had a distinguished career in disruptions and creative technology: highlights include roles at Lucasfilm, Netflix and Adobe. He’s the author of a dozen books on filmmaking, including “ Droidmaker ” the history of Lucas and Pixar. He has a degree in neuroscience from Brown. Rubin has been studying and shooting photographs for more than 40 years. A young protégé of Jerry Uelsmann, he moved from surrealism in analog photography to "pure seeing" in digital; all his work integrates authenticity, simplicity, and wabi sabi. Over the past few years, he has developed a new curriculum for photography that involves haiku and other Zen arts, which he teaches at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops and in 2023 at the Wild Rice Retreats in Wisconsin. He also co-hosts a podcast about picture taking called “ Everyday Photography, Every Day." That body of work places Rubin 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. Rubin'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. Rubin contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Rubin'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
Rubin'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. Rubin 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 Rubin's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Rubin 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.
