About
Tsering Wangmo is a clinical nurse and public health professional based at Upaya Zen Center. She grew up in Dho Tarap, Dolpo, Nepal, at 13,500 feet elevation. She holds a Bachelor in Nursing Science from Maharajgunj Nursing Campus, Kathmandu, and an MPH from the University of Washington. She has worked with healthcare organizations in upper Dolpo and served as an intern at La Familia Medical Center's Healthcare for Homeless Clinic in Santa Fe. She is co-director of Upaya's Nomads Clinic, which provides healthcare services to remote Himalayan communities. Her professional focus is maternal and child health and access to care for underserved populations.
Teaching focus
Wangmo appears at Upaya as part of the wider faculty Roshi Joan Halifax has gathered to teach alongside the Soto Zen core. Upaya's programs regularly bring in scholars, clinicians, scientists, poets, and knowledge holders from beyond the Zen sangha to teach in dialogue with the practice. Wangmo's sessions live inside that container. The work tends to ask how a particular field of expertise meets contemplative practice and what each can learn from the other. Sessions are usually held alongside zazen and the Soto Zen forms that structure the days at Upaya, so students can expect a rhythm of formal sittings, talks or seminars from Wangmo, group conversation, and silence. The framing is open enough for non-Buddhist participants to take part fully. The depth comes from Wangmo's own field rather than from technical Zen instruction. For students with a steady practice, the value is in seeing how practice meets a specific discipline, and how that discipline reads when held inside the container Upaya provides. For people newer to Zen, Wangmo's sessions are a low-friction way into that container.
Background
Nurse Tsering Wangmo 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 Wangmo has chosen to share there. Tsering Wangmo, MPH, grew up in Dho Tarap, Dolpo, Nepal, one of the highest permanent settlements in the world (13,500 feet). With the dream of making a difference in the lives of her people, she worked with Action Dolpo, Vision Dolpo, Menri Ponlop Rinpoche, One Heart Worldwide, and Dolpo Tulku Charitable Foundation as a clinical nurse, school teacher, and healthcare trainer serving different communities of upper Dolpo. She participated in many trainings such as Skilled Birth Attendant, community-based newborn care program, family planning, rural obstetric ultrasound, and dental procedures. She received her Bachelor in Nursing Science from Maharajgunj Nursing Campus, Kathmandu, and a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Washington. She is Co-director of Upaya’s Nomads Clinic that serves people in remote areas of the Himalayas. Her interest has always been to work with underserved populations and maternal and child health. As a graduate student, she interned for the La Familia Medical Center’s Healthcare for Homeless Clinic in Santa Fe. For her thesis, she explored the influences of socio-cultural beliefs and values in childbirth decision-making among the women of Upper Dolpo, Nepal. She hopes to continue working to improve healthcare access to her beloved people in the high Himalayas. That body of work places Wangmo 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. Wangmo'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. Wangmo contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Wangmo'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
Wangmo'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. Wangmo 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 Wangmo's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Wangmo at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Wangmo'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 Wangmo is teaching.