About
Zenju Earthlyn Manuel is an ordained Zen Buddhist priest and author. She teaches at Upaya Zen Center in New Mexico. Manuel has written multiple books including Opening to Darkness, The Shamanic Bones of Zen, The Way of Tenderness, and Tell Me Something About Buddhism. She compiled and edited teachings by her teacher Zenkei Blanche Hartman and contributed to collections on Buddhism and gender. Her work has appeared in Buddhadharma, Lion's Roar, and On Being. She holds an M.A. from UCLA and a Ph.D. in Transformative Learning from CIIS.
Teaching focus
Manuel'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. Manuel 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. Manuel'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
Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, Osho 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 Manuel has chosen to share there. ZENJU EARTHLYN MANUEL is an author, poet, and ordained Zen Buddhist priest. She is the author of Opening to Darkness, The Shamanic Bones of Zen, The Deepest Peace, Sanctuary, The Way of Tenderness, Tell Me Something About Buddhism, and Black Angel Cards: 36 Oracles and Messages for Divining Your Life. She compiled and edited her teacher’s work in a volume titled Seeds for a Boundless Life: Zen Teachings from the Heart by Zenkei Blanche Hartman, and is a contributing author in Dharma, Color, Culture and The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women. Her work has been featured in Buddhadharma, Lion’s Roar, On Being, and other media outlets. She holds an M.A. from U.C.L.A. and a Ph.D. in Transformative Learning from CIIS. She is a native of California and resides in New Mexico. More at zenju.org. That body of work places Manuel 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. Manuel'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. Manuel contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Manuel'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
Manuel'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. Manuel 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 Manuel's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Manuel at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Manuel'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 Manuel is teaching.
