About
Rhonda V. Magee is a Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco. She has spent more than twenty years exploring connections between anti-racist education, social justice, and contemplative practices. She is a student of Buddhist traditions and a Fellow of the Mind and Life Institute. She has advised mindfulness organizations including the Mind and Life Institute, the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness, and the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. She authored The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness (2019), which received recognition from the Greater Good Science Center, Psychology Today, and Mindful.org.
Teaching focus
Magee'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. Magee 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. Magee'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
Rhonda V. Magee, JD/MA, Hoshi 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 Magee has chosen to share there. Called by some the mother of the movement to integrate mindfulness and racial justice efforts, Rhonda V. Magee, M.A., J.D., is Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco, and has spent more than twenty years exploring the intersections of anti-racist education, social justice, and contemplative practices. She is an internationally sought-after public speaker, mindfulness teacher, practice innovator, storyteller, and thought leader on integrating Mindfulness into Higher Education, Law and Social Justice. A student of a range of Buddhist traditions and a Fellow of the Mind and Life Institute, she has served as an advisor to a range of leading mindfulness-based professional development organizations, including the Mind and Life Institute, the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness, and the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. Rhonda’s award-winning book, The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness (Penguin RandomHouse TarcherPerigee: 2019), was named one of the top ten books released for the year by the Greater Good Science Center, and received similar recognition by Psychology Today and the editors of Mindful.org. That body of work places Magee 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. Magee'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. Magee contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Magee'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
Magee'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. Magee 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 Magee's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Magee at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Magee'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 Magee is teaching.
