About
Steven Heine is Professor of Religion and History and Director of Asian Studies at Florida International University. He specializes in East Asian religions, Japanese Buddhism, and Buddhist studies. Heine holds a PhD from Temple University and has taught at Pennsylvania State University before joining FIU. His research focuses on medieval East Asian religious studies, particularly the transmission of Zen Buddhism from China to Japan. He has published over two dozen books, many through Oxford University Press and academic presses, including works on Zen koans, Dōgen, and Japanese religious history. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Zen Buddhism, Japanese culture and religion, and Asian studies methodology. Heine is affiliated with Upaya Zen Center.
Teaching focus
Heine'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. Heine 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. Heine'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
Steven Heine, PhD 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 Heine has chosen to share there. Dr. Steven Heine is Professor of Religion and History as well as Director of Asian Studies at Florida International University. He specializes in East Asian and comparative religions, Japanese Buddhism and intellectual history, Buddhist studies, and religion and social sciences. Dr. Heine earned his B.A. at the University of Pennsylvania and MA and PhD at Temple University. Before coming to FIU, he taught at Pennsylvania State University and directed the East Asian Studies center there. Professor Heine teaches a variety of courses including Modern Asia and Methods in Asian Studies at graduate and undergraduate levels as well as Japanese culture and religion, Zen Buddhism, Ghosts, spirits and folk religions, religions of the Silk Road, and other aspects of Asian society. Dr. Heine’s research specialty is medieval East Asian religious studies, especially the transition of Zen Buddhism from China to Japan. In addition to hundreds of peer-reviewed journals and outstanding edited volumes, he has published over two dozen books. Over a dozen of his books have been reviewed or noted in such publications as CHOICE, Chronicle of Higher Education, Booklist, Library Journal, and Times Literary Supplement, in addition to multiple reviews in various academic journals or professional outlets. The books include Zen Koans (Hawaii); Like Cats and Dogs: Contesting the Mu Kōan in Zen Buddhism (Oxford); Dōgen and Sōtō Zen: New Perspectives (Oxford); Dōgen: Textual and Historical Studies (Oxford); Sacred High City, Sacred Low City: A Tale of Sacred Sites in Two Tokyo Neighborhoods (Oxford); Zen Skin, Zen Marrow: Will the Real Zen Buddhism Please Stand Up? (Oxford); Did Dōgen Go to China? What He Wrote and When He Wrote It (Oxford); Opening a Mountain: Kōans of Zen Masters (Oxford); Shifting Shape, Shaping Text: Philosophy and Folklore in the Fox Kōan (Hawaii); The Zen Poetry of Dōgen: Verses From the Mountain of Eternal Peace (Tuttle); Dōgen and the Kōan Tradition: A Tale of Two Shōbōgenzō Texts (SUNY); Existential and Ontological Dimensions of Time in Heidegger and Dōgen (SUNY); and The Zen Canon: Studies of Classic Zen Texts (Oxford). His book White Collar Zen: Using Zen Principles to Overcome Obstacles and Achieve Your Career Goals (Oxford) was by the Harvard Business School, USA Today, and the Washington Post. Dr. Heine was a Fulbright Senior Researcher in Japan and twice won National Endowment for Humanities Fellowships plus funding from the AAR and AAS. He has conducted research on East Asian religion and society primarily at Tokyo University and Komazawa University in Tokyo. Heine has lectured at these institutions in addition to Brown, Cambridge Columbia, Emory, Florida, Free University, Harvard, Hawaii, London, North Carolina, McGill, Ohio State, Princeton, Pennsylvania, Stanford, Oslo, UCLA, Yale and others. He was chair of the national Japanese Religions Group (1994-2000) and is editor of Japan Studies Review and a book review editor for Japan for Phil That body of work places Heine 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. Heine'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. Heine contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Heine'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
Heine'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. Heine 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 Heine's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Heine at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Heine'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 Heine is teaching.
