About
Wendy Dainin Lau is an emergency medicine and addiction medicine physician based at Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Originally from Hong Kong, she holds a B.S. in computer science from Yale and attended medical school at Cornell University. She completed an emergency medicine residency in Brooklyn and worked in New York City hospitals before moving to Upaya in 2019. Ordained as a Zen priest by Roshi Joan Halifax in 2020, she received Dharma Transmission in January 2025. Lau teaches Halifax's G.R.A.C.E. compassion process and offers meditation and equanimity practices for physicians. She is co-director of Upaya's Nomads Clinic, which provides medical services in remote Himalayan villages. She authored Inner Practice of Medicine.
Teaching focus
Lau'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. Lau 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. Lau'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
Wendy Dainin Lau, MD, Sensei 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 Lau has chosen to share there. Dr. Wendy Dainin Lau is an Emergency Medicine and Addiction Medicine physician. Originally from Hong Kong, Dr. Lau received a B.S. in computer science from Yale University and worked in the tech industry in the United States and in Europe. After realizing that the tech field did not fulfill her aspiration to serve the most vulnerable, she attended medical school at Cornell University. She completed a residency in Emergency Medicine in Brooklyn, New York, and continued to work in some of the busiest hospitals in New York City. She moved to Santa Fe in 2019 and now lives and works at Upaya. Sensei Dainin was ordained by Roshi Joan Halifax as a Zen priest in 2020, was given Hoshi by her in 2024, and received Dharma Transmission during the Winter Practice Period in January, 2025. She teaches Roshi Joan’s G.R.A.C.E. compassion process, as well as offering physicians methods to meditate, maintain equanimity, and thrive in the high-burnout environment of healthcare. She is also a co-director of Upaya’s Nomads Clinic, which provides indispensable treatments and services in remote, high-altitude villages of Himalayan Nepal. Her book, Inner Practice of Medicine, compiles the lessons that she has been gathering throughout her time as a doctor and teacher of doctors. That body of work places Lau 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. Lau'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. Lau contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Lau'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
Lau'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. Lau 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 Lau's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Lau at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Lau'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 Lau is teaching.
