About
Noah Kodo Roen is a Zen teacher and Director of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He began formal practice in 2009 and spent approximately four years in solitary retreat at Prajna Mountain Forest Refuge. He received Dharma Transmission from Roshi Joan Halifax in 2022. At Upaya, Roen oversees more than 40 annual retreats and programs, conducts practice interviews, and offers dharma talks. He serves as President of the Board of the Prajna Mountain Buddhist Order and has worked with Upaya's Nomads Clinic in the Himalayas. He holds a degree from St. John's College in Santa Fe.
Teaching focus
Roen'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. Roen 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. Roen'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
Noah Kodo Roen, Sensei 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 Roen has chosen to share there. Sensei Noah Kodo Roen began exploring a life dedicated to meditation practice in 2009. He joined Upaya’s 2010 Winter Practice Period, and later in the year, attended an intensive retreat at the Prajna Mountain Forest Refuge, following which he spent most of the next four years in solitary retreat there. Kodo received Jukai from Roshi Joan Halifax in 2014, was ordained as a novice priest in 2015, served as Shuso in 2019, received Hoshi in January 2020, and received Dharma Transmission from Roshi Joan on September 22, 2022. Kodo began working as Roshi Joan’s jisha (attendant) in 2014 and has been serving as a staff member of Upaya Zen Center in various capacities since that time. He is currently the Director of Upaya Zen Center, where he helps produce over 40 retreats and programs a year, as well as organizing ceremonies and offering dharma talks and practice interviews to residents and members of the global sangha. As Director, he guides Upaya’s staff, and is deeply involved with the Upaya resident community. As well, Kodo is the President of the Board of the Prajna Mountain Buddhist Order and has organized and served for many years with Upaya’s Nomads Clinic in the Himalayas. Sensei Kodo is married to Nicolle Roen and is the father of a beautiful child, Skyla Jade. He graduated from St. John’s College in Santa Fe, NM, in 2007 and continues his studies through Upaya’s dedication to Buddhist scholarship. That body of work places Roen 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. Roen'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. Roen contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Roen'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
Roen'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. Roen 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 Roen's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Roen at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Roen'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 Roen is teaching.
