About
Norma Ryūkō Kawelokū Wong is a Native Hawaiian Zen teacher and abbot of Anko-in, an independent branch temple affiliated with Daihonzan Chozen-ji. She trained for over 40 years under Tanouye Tenshin Rotaishi and is an 86th generation Zen Master. Based in Hawai'i, she serves practice communities across the continental United States and in Toronto, Canada. Her practices include zazen, cooking, kado (flower arrangement), shodo (calligraphy), and tai ji. She previously served as a Hawai'i state legislator and worked on policy for Governor John Waihee. She published When No Thing Works: A Zen and Indigenous Perspective on Resilience, Shared Purpose, and Leadership in the Timeplace of Collapse (2024) and has a second book forthcoming in 2025.
Teaching focus
Wong'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. Wong 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. Wong'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
Norma Ryūkō Kawelokū Wong, Roshi 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 Wong has chosen to share there. Norma Wong (Norma Ryūkō Kawelokū Wong Roshi) is a Native Hawaiian and Hakka life-long resident of Hawai’i. She is the abbot of Anko-in, an independent branch temple of Daihonzan Chozen-ji and serves practice communities in Hawai‘i, across the continental U.S., and in Toronto, Canada. She is an 86 th generation Zen Master, having trained at Chozen-ji for over 40 years. Her teacher was Tanouye Tenshin Rotaishi, a second generation Japanese-American born and raised in Hawai‘i, who was skilled in the martial arts, and known for his embrace of aloha in civil society. Tanouye Rotaishi’s teacher was Omori Sogen Rotaishi. Norma’s practices include zazen, cooking, kado, shodo, and the 10-step tai ji form developed by Dogi Kow Roshi. When No Thing Works - a Zen and Indigenous Perspective on Resilience, Shared Purpose, and Leadership in the Timeplace of Collapse, her book on the necessity and ways to leap beyond this fraught societal moment, was published in the fall of 2024 by North Atlantic Books/Penguin Random House. Who We Are Becoming Matters - The Courage, Wisdom, and Aloha We Need in the Timeplace of Collapse will be released in February 2025. In earlier years, Norma served as a Hawai‘i state legislator, on the policy and strategy team for Governor John Waihee with federal and Native Hawaiian portfolios. She was active in electoral politics for over thirty years. That body of work places Wong 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. Wong'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. Wong contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Wong'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
Wong'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. Wong 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 Wong's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Wong at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Wong'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 Wong is teaching.
