Karen Maezen Miller is a mother, wife, writer and Zen Buddhist priest. She began her Zen training in 1993 as a student of Taizan Maezumi Roshi, the founding abbot of the Zen Center of Los Angeles, one of the first Japanese masters to bring Zen to the West and a seminal figure in 20th century Zen. Following Maezumi Roshi’s death in 1995, the author continued her study under Nyogen Yeo Roshi, the last successor of Maezumi Roshi and the abbot of Hazy Moon Zen Center of Los Angeles where she is now a dharmaholder and meditation instructor.
A journalist by training, Ms. Miller had a 20-year career in marketing and public relations before devoting herself to marriage and motherhood. She and her husband have the good fortune to live amid Southern California’s oldest private Japanese garden, a 90-year-old treasure in the backyard of their Sierra Madre home.
Their daughter, Georgia, was born in 1999.
In 2003 while writing Momma Zen, she took her own advice, confronted her fears and resistance, and took the next step in her Zen training by ordaining as a priest, thus integrating her roles as practitioner, wife, mother and gardener into a seamless life of service.
Click here for a video interview in Karen’s backyard garden. Or visit her right now on her blog, Cheerio Road.
Her other publications include the following articles and anthologies:
Not a Fan of the Undergarments
Parents, Leave Your Home
A Cypress Tree, A Kiss Goodnight
Looking Under the Bed
The Maternal is Political
Best Buddhist Writing 2007
The Dharma of Barbie
What to Tell the Children
Photo credit: Denise Andrade