Rick Archer talks with Julie A Nelson about Practising Safe Zen looking at issues that can arise when spiritual leaders lack integrity and abuse their power of influence.
Julie Seido Nelson is a transmitted teacher (Sensei) in the Maezumi Roshi Zen lineage. Her home Zen community is the Greater Boston Zen Center, a sangha which has experienced three major upheavals due to teacher arrogance and abuses of power over the last several years. She is also a teacher at the Great Plains Zen Center in Monroe, Wisconsin, and has written for Buddhist audiences in Tricycle magazine and on her blog.
Having begun Zen practice in 2004, she has found it to be of immense value. She is deeply saddened when people, either in addition to or instead of realizing the benefits, suffer great harm.
When not reflecting writing about Zen, she sometimes writes and give talks based on her pre-retirement academic work as a feminist and ecological economist. She enjoys visiting her two children and two grandchildren and enjoying the New England outdoors.
Books:
- Practicing Safe Zen: Navigating the Pitfalls on the Road to Liberation (Monkfish, 2025)
- Economics for Humans (University of Chicago Press, 2nd ed. 2018)
Website:Â julieanelson.com
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Interview recorded May 11, 2025
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