About
Tenzin Kiyosaki was ordained as a Buddhist nun by the Dalai Lama in 1985 and lived in a nunnery in Dharamsala, India before returning to monastic life after 27 years. She served as Buddhist Chaplain at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado for 6 years, then worked as a Hospice Chaplain in the South Bay area of Los Angeles for 13 years. She is affiliated with Upaya Zen Center. Her teaching draws on Buddhist study of impermanence and ethics. She published "The Three Regrets: Inspiring Stories and Practical Advice for Love and Forgiveness at Life's End" based on her hospice work.
Teaching focus
Kiyosaki'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. Kiyosaki 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. Kiyosaki'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
Tenzin Kiyosaki 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 Kiyosaki has chosen to share there. Tenzin Kiyosaki has been a Hospice Chaplain in the South Bay area of Los Angeles, California for 13 years. Prior to that, Tenzin was the Buddhist Chaplain at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado for 6 years. Tenzin was born and raised in the cultural and interfaith melting pot of Hawaii. Tenzin has a daughter and two grandsons. With a deep interest in the study and practice of Buddhism, Tenzin was ordained as a Buddhist nun by HH the Dalai Lama in 1985. She lived in a nunnery in Dharamsala, India for several years, and alternately studied and taught in the US. She returned her monastic vows after 27 years to expand her life experience. Buddhist study has benefited and prepared her for work in hospice tremendously. The Buddha’s first teaching on impermanence, particularly the study of death impermanence and the importance of ethics and compassion in all relationships give her a strong foundation for assisting with life end challenges of hospice patients and their families. Tenzin recently launched her first solo book, “The Three Regrets - Inspiring Stories and Practical Advice for Love and Forgiveness at Life’s End,” based on some stories of working with hospice patients. That body of work places Kiyosaki 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. Kiyosaki'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. Kiyosaki contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Kiyosaki'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
Kiyosaki'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. Kiyosaki 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 Kiyosaki's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Kiyosaki at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms held alongside teaching focused on contemplative care for the dying, grief, and serious illness. Many of these programs draw on Upaya's Being with Dying curriculum and the GRACE framework Roshi Joan developed for clinicians. There's room for personal experience and difficult emotion, held inside the container of practice rather than processed away. The schedule is recognizable as Zen: sittings, walking, meals, talks, and time for questions. Quiet is taken seriously. Most participants leave with both a steadier practice and a more honest relationship with mortality.
