About
Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Roshi is a Zen priest and Dharma teacher ordained in the Zen Peacemaker Order. She received transmission from Roshi Francisco Lugovina in the Soto Zen lineage and was the second Black woman to receive transmission in the Japanese Zen tradition. She is affiliated with Upaya Zen Center. Williams is the author of Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living With Fearlessness and Grace and co-author of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love and Liberation. Her teaching integrates Zen practice with social justice work, focusing on intersections of racial, economic, and climate justice. She founded Transformative Change and leads community conversations and circles addressing oppression and liberation.
Teaching focus
Rev. angel'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. Rev. angel 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. Rev. angel'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
Rev. angel Kyodo williams, 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 Rev. angel has chosen to share there. Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Roshi, is a Dharma teacher, Zen priest, author, activist, master trainer, and founder of Transformative Change. She has been bridging the worlds of transformation and justice since her critically-acclaimed book, Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living With Fearlessness and Grace was hailed as “an act of love” by Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker, and "a classic" by Buddhist pioneer Jack Kornfield. Ordained in the Zen Peacemaker Order, she received transmission from Roshi Francisco “Paco” Lugovina, a Puerto Rican in Soto Zen and was the second Black woman to receive transmission in the Japanese Zen lineage. Her teaching is influenced by her roots in Zen and deep appreciation for the vastness and variety of wisdom of the indigenous, all faiths, traditions, and paths. Rev. angel endeavors to model what practice means beyond the cushion and teaches a praxis of embodied liberation. She applies wisdom teaching to intractable social issues including the intersections of climate change, racial, and economic justice. Her time these days is devoted to advancing the work ignited by her co-authored book, Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love and Liberation, to have the conversations necessary to become more awake and aware of what hinders liberation of self and society. The Connections, Circles, and Conversations that have emerged from Radical Dharma confront head-on the most formidable and critical impediment to justice and social transformation of our time. They have initiated profound healing and deepened commitment to dismantling oppression across lines of race, class, sexual orientation, and other divides. That body of work places Rev. angel 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. Rev. angel'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. Rev. angel contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Rev. angel'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
Rev. angel'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. Rev. angel 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 Rev. angel's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Rev. angel at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Rev. angel'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 Rev. angel is teaching.
