A meditation community for all people who seek to manifest the values and principles of the Buddha in their daily lives.
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A Letter from SFI on the Conflict in Gaza
Friends in the Dharma,
As the conflict in Gaza continues, we wanted to be in touch to recognize the ways in which this devastating conflict, as well as other unrest across the country and the world, may be rippling through your lives. Whether you are Jewish, Muslim, Palestinian or Israeli, or have ancestral ties to the region, whether you have relatives who are directly impacted by the violence, or you are simply a sensitive human deeply affected by the hatred and cruelty we hear about in the news every day, we want to name and acknowledge the difficulty people are feeling.
You may be feeling a lot. You may be feeling a little. Maybe you are angry, enraged, depressed, helpless, confused, perplexed, in deep grief, numb or checked out. The Dharma is wide enough and deep enough to hold it all. SFI humbly aspires to be a place of refuge where all of us can connect with our direct, immediate experience—whatever emotions, thoughts or sensations are arising—within a warm, welcoming community.
Because our practice is never just about ourselves, we also send our deepest compassion to the many beings affected by the devastating violence in the Middle East, the ongoing war in Ukraine, conflicts in Myanmar, Yemen, across Africa and Mexico, and in many other places.
May we cultivate the wisdom and compassion needed to support action that creates peace—within ourselves, within our communities, and across the world.
With love,
The SFI teaching team–
Eugene, Syra, Victoria & Pamela
Mission
San Francisco Insight aspires to be a welcoming spiritual home for all people who seek to manifest the values and principles of the Buddha in their daily lives; a place of refuge, to come completely as you are.
Commitment to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Appreciating your age, race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, and mental and physical abilities, we welcome you. Acknowledging your income, religion, nationality, education, geographic location, economic background, work experience, family status, and political views, we welcome you. We also look beyond demographics and acknowledge the gifts of our differing perspectives, life experiences, and personalities as an invaluable support of a vibrant sangha.
At SFI, we believe that a commitment to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion is more than a statement. It requires a shift in culture. It takes time to make a meaningful impact and ultimately should be embedded in the DNA of our community. We are a work in progress, and we recognize this is an ever-evolving long-term commitment.
In support of our commitment to foster a community where all feel welcome, SFI
Centers BIPOC voices by inviting teachers from diverse backgrounds, as well as Buddhist teachers from diverse lineages, to share their wisdom in our weekly and monthly meetings.
Intentionally increased the diversity of our board of directors with the addition of two new board members who self-identify as BIPOC and LGBTQIA++, respectively.
Normalizes conversations about race and systemic racism by bringing these issues into our space regularly and with compassion. Please see this link for the 2022 curriculum, Investigating White Identity through the Dharma.
Provides an annual program that invites those who identify as white to engage in the internal work of investigating how their white identity may perpetuate racial suffering, and by doing so commit to breaking down systemic barriers to equity.
Invites students from underrepresented communities to lean in and add their voices into the sangha, while asking those from dominant communities to step back and hold noble space.
Offers audio recordings of most Sunday dharma talks for those who are unable or do not prefer to attend in-person gatherings. To access the recordings, please go to Dharma Seed and search for the date or the name of the dharma teacher that spoke to our SFI community.
Guiding Teachers
Eugene Cash
Eugene is the founding teacher of the San Francisco Insight Meditation Community of San Francisco. He teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and leads intensive meditation retreats internationally. His teaching is influenced by both Burmese and Thai streams of the Theravada tradition as well as Zen and Tibetan Buddhist practice. He is also a teacher of the Diamond Approach, a school of spiritual investigation and self-realization developed by A. H. Almaas.
Teachers
Pamela Weiss
Pamela Weiss is a dual-lineage Buddhist teacher in both Theravada and Soto Zen. She has been practicing since 1987, including several years as a Zen monastic and retreat teacher training through Spirit Rock. Pamela is the author of “A Bigger Sky: Awakening a Fierce Feminine Buddhism,” and is passionate about weaving the stories of voices of Buddhist women into the fabric of Buddhist practice. She is also a pioneer in bringing mindfulness and Dharma principles to human development and organizational transformation.
Dawn Neal
Dawn Neal has devoted over two years to silent retreat since 2005. Her intensive practice in Asia includes temporarily ordaining in Burma in 2009. Dawn has an MA from the Institute of Buddhist Studies at the GTU. She serves the community as a teacher, professional chaplain, and certified coach. She is currently in Dharma teacher training with Gil Fronsdal and Andrea Fella. See www.liberatingdharma.org for her full teaching schedule.
Dawn Scott
Dawn Scott is a graduate of Insight Meditation Society’s teacher training program, a co-principal teacher of Marin Sangha, a core teacher of Spirit Rock’s Advanced Practitioner Program, and served as the Family Program Coordinator at Spirit Rock Meditation Center for eight years. She is a co-teacher of Love & Liberation, the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies and Insight Meditation’s joint year-long program, slated to start in early 2022. Dawn has a deep love of long retreat practice and the Buddha’s liberative teachings.
Eileen Spillane
Eileen Spillane has practiced Insight Meditation since 2001 and is a graduate of Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leader Program. She has practiced as a Nurse for over thirty years, working with patients in the birthing process as well as many years with critically ill cancer patients. She enjoys teaching meditation in a supportive environment to help participants ease stress in their lives and she is passionate about normalizing conversations around death and dying at Befriending Death
Felix Tsai
Felix Tsai has been practicing Insight Meditation since 2001 and is a graduate of Spirit Rock’s Dedicated Practitioner program. He is currently a software engineer but has also worked in law training and development and in youth development. He has been active in community organizations in SF for many years particularly in the queer API community, and has been leading meditation classes in the SF County jails. Felix co-leads the weekly Monday sangha at SFI.
Juliana Sloane
Juliana Sloane first encountered the Dharma as a teenager and felt a deep resonance with the practice. Over the years, she participated in Buddhist Chaplaincy training with the Sati Center, spent many years teaching classes and staffing retreats for teens through Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s Family Program, and co-founded a meditation group for women in the fall of 2016. Juliana participated in the sixth iteration of Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leader Program in 2019 and completed this training with an 11-month Dharma Mentoring Program with Erin Treat and Pamela Weiss. Today, Juliana works one-on-one with individuals as a hypnotherapist and spiritual counselor, and teaches with SF Insight, Spirit Rock, and the Durango Dharma Center. She is thrilled to be a part of the SF Insight community!
Kitty Costello
Kitty Costello began practicing Insight Meditation in 2000, and she is a graduate of Spirit Rock's Community Dharma Leaders Program (2017). She is a psychotherapist, a chi gung teacher, and a writer, and has volunteered for 30 years with Freedom Voices Publications, whose mission is "to publish works that speak to and from communities on the margins.
Nina Gold
Nina Gold (she/her) has been practicing Insight meditation since 2007. She is a graduate of the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training program, with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach, and was a member of Spirit Rock's CDL6 cohort. She has taught Mindfulness, co-facilitated SF Insight’s 9 month Investigating White Identity and has been a yoga teacher since 1998.
She is most energized and inspired by her current work with the GRIP Training Institute’s restorative justice program, where she works with and learns from the incarcerated people at San Quentin. She loves truth and opening to the whole of life as practice. Dharma practice has profoundly transformed her and she shares these teachings with gratitude and joy.
Paul Irving
Paul Irving has practiced in Eastern and Western contemplative traditions for over 40 years. He completed Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leader Program in 2012. Paul is a member of the teaching team for Transforming Depression and Anxiety, a series of workshops created by Dr. Lee Lipp and offered regularly at San Francisco Zen Center. Paul also is one of the facilitators of SF Insight’s Investigating White Identity course. He currently works in healthcare administration within the allied health field at UCSF, and is engaged in moment-to-moment family practice with a husband and step-daughter in San Francisco.
Syra Smith
Syra Smith is an artist, organizer and mindfulness educator interested in deep ecology and manifesting a culture where we can turn toward fearless abundance and generosity. She is a Community Teacher with the East Bay Meditation Center where she is co-creating space with one of the most diverse communities of dharma practitioners in the US and she proudly serves as Core Teacher with the SF LGBT Sangha. Syra began practicing in the Theravada Buddhist tradition in 2009. She graduated EBMC’s Commit to Dharma program in 2011 and became a Spirit Rock Community Dharma Leader in 2017. Syra is a current participant in the MMTC Program under the guidance of Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach.
Sarwang Parikh
Sarwang Parikh (he/they) was born into the Dharma within a devotional Hindu Indian lineage from an immigrant, working-class, caste-privileged family. Alongside this rich spiritual upbringing, they have been steeped in the contemplative practice and study of Vedic Yoga and Buddhism for over 20 years.
Sarwang’s dedication to the Buddhadharma deepened within the Theravada Insight lineage at Spirit Rock where he was a part of the Dedicated Practitioners Program and Community Dharma Leader program. Sarwang is also a regular sangha member and community teacher at East Bay Meditation Center, a recent graduate from their first 2-year Spiritual Teacher Leadership cohort. He is excited to join the SF Insight community!
He is grateful for the grace to work in right livelihood as an integrative psychotherapist on unceded Ohlone land in the East Bay. He also serves the dharma as a co-director ofBuddhist Peace Fellowship and teacher with Inward Bound Mindfulness Education.
Victoria Cary
Victoria Cary has been practicing Insight Meditation and studying the Dharma since 2006. Victoria graduated from Spirit Rock Retreat Teacher Training in September of 2020. She has served as a Community Dharma Leader since her graduation from Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leaders (CDL) program in 2016. Victoria enjoys both teaching large groups and mentoring students one on one. In 2016 she co-founded the San Francisco People of Color Insight Sangha and continues as one of the core teachers. Victoria is particularly interested in the integration of the Mindfulness in everyday life.
“Only From the heart can you touch the sky.”
Board Members
The SF Insight Board of Directors exists to nurture the development of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha within the practice of lay life by:
Overseeing the practical functioning of SF Insight.
Facilitating the implementation of practice and learning opportunities throughout the year.
Supporting our teachers in their efforts to bring the Dharma to our community.
Serving the community by listening to the practical and spiritual concerns of Sangha members and supporting efforts of the community to address those concerns.
Cultivating opportunities to connect our individual practice with the needs of the broader community, including other practice groups, through service.
Eugene Cash, Founder
Eugene is the founding teacher of San Francisco Insight. He is a member of the Spirit Rock teacher council, where he co-leads the Community Dharma Leader training and teaches intensive meditation retreats. Eugene’s teaching is influenced by many streams of Buddhism–– Theravadan, Zen and Tibetan. He is also a Diamond Heart teacher. He’s passionate about practicing 24/7, weaving awareness, investigation and realization into our life.
Fahad Ghani, President
Fahad has been practicing mindfulness meditation since 2012, sparked after a visit to Dharamshala, the town in India where the Dalai Lama lives. He has been part of the SF Insight meditation community since 2013, contributing as a volunteer since then. He joined the Board in 2016 and serves as Co-Chair of the Communications Committee. In professional life, Fahad works as a software engineer in the the city, and is interested in learning how to bring the every day life in software industry into the Dharma.
Aimee Cavenecia
Aimee Cavenecia received Yoga Acharya (Master of Yoga) title in India through the lineage of Swami Sivananda in 2000, holding RYT 500 certification. Other certifications include MBSR, Mindful Leadership, and Laughter Yoga. She's wafted through spiritual communities since the late 1990s, with a focus on Vedanta and Vipassana. Her focus now is on Maranasati. Aimee is also a lifelong artist, working professionally for individual artists and global corporations. Past clients and collaborators include Disney, Spike Lee, MTV, Sony, Tom Sachs, HBO, and Jim Henson.
Jon Phillips
Jon is originally from the UK but moved to the States 8 years ago looking for an adventure and some more sunshine. While he found those both things, San Francisco is also where he discovered the Dharma. Despite meditating for a number of years, it was only through SFI and Spirit Rock that his understanding of, and love for the teachings deepend. Today, Jon is motivated by moment to moment practice and service to others. He also helps organize SFI's Community Giving Program.
Miroo Kim, Secretary
Miroo Kim has practiced yoga and meditation since 2009. has been working in the fast-paced and highly competitive companies such as Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook, and directly experienced and observed suffering from disconnection and burnout. As a certified teacher for yoga (200 hours), Search Inside Yourself Leadership Training, and Compassion Cultivation Training, she’s offering the classes on mindfulness and compassion and co-leading the Mindfulness employee group at Facebook. Miroo is on a mission to help people unlock their intrinsic motivations within their work and to create a culture of compassion and resilience at workplaces.
Nina Gold
Nina has been a member of the SFI community since 2007 and joined the board in 2016. She finds the practice of insight meditation a profound gift, the resonance of which touches and informs her whole life experience. She has been a yoga teacher since 1998 and loves how the two practices intersect and support each other. Nina has served as a volunteer in many capacities over the years and now is Chair of the Volunteer Committee.
Pamela Weiss
Pamela Weiss has been practicing in the Zen and Theravada traditions since 1987. She spent several years in a Zen monastery, is trained by Jack Kornfield through Spirit Rock, and co-leads the Wednesday evening sangha for SF Insight. Pamela is also an executive coach, and pioneer in bringing the principles and practices of Buddhist teaching into leadership development inside organizations. Her passion is in bringing the richness and depth of Buddhist teachings to the world of work and relationships, as well as articulating a feminine expression of the dharma.
Paul Irving, Treasurer
Paul Irving has practiced in Eastern and Western contemplative traditions for over 40 years. He completed Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leader Program in 2012. Paul is a member of the teaching team for Transforming Depression and Anxiety, a series of workshops created by Dr. Lee Lipp and offered regularly at San Francisco Zen Center. Paul also is one of the facilitators of SF Insight’s Investigating White Identity course. He currently works in healthcare administration within the allied health field at UCSF, and is engaged in moment-to-moment family practice with a husband and step-daughter in San Francisco.
Syra Smith
Syra Smith is an artist, organizer and mindfulness educator interested in deep ecology and manifesting a culture where we can turn toward fearless abundance and generosity. She is a Community Teacher with the East Bay Meditation Center where she is co-creating space with one of the most diverse communities of dharma practitioners in the US and she proudly serves as Core Teacher with the SF LGBT Sangha. Syra began practicing in the Theravada Buddhist tradition in 2009. She graduated EBMC’s Commit to Dharma program in 2011 and became a Spirit Rock Community Dharma Leader in 2017. Syra is a current participant in the MMTC Program under the guidance of Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach.
History
San Francisco Insight Meditation Community (SFI) offers the teachings of the Buddha as they are developing in the West, including classes, retreats, and other events, as a community devoted to the embodiment of awakening in daily life. SFI began in 1992 as a group of 8-12 practitioners meeting weekly to meditate in the living room of one of the original members. SFI’s founding teacher, Eugene Cash, was an early student of Jack Kornfield, one of the first Americans to be ordained as a Buddhist monk in Burma in the 1970’s and who co-founded Sprit Rock Meditation Center, a widely recognized Buddhist retreat center in Woodacre, California.
By 1996 the group had grown too large to meet in a home and sought space to accommodate greater attendance. Through friendships with the leadership of the Unitarian Universalist Church of San Francisco (UUSF), the group was able to rent space for a regular weekly meeting. As the years have gone by, attendance at the weekly Sunday meeting has grown, often reaching 175 or more each night. An additional Wednesday night meeting, taught by Pam Weiss, was added in 2007, and now attracts 15-30 members each week. To address the interests of this growing community, a number of retreats and class series have been added. These also allow a growing number of teachers associated with the group to offer instruction in meditation, teachings related to topics that expand students’ knowledge and understanding of the historical teachings of the Buddha, and other opportunities for deepening their practice. The growing needs and potential of the community sparked the intention for finding our own space and creating an urban Insight center where sits, classes, and retreats can be offered 7 days a week.
SFI maintains a strong orientation to the Theravadan tradition of Buddhism as well as the American tradition associated with Theravadan Buddhism known as Insight Meditation, which has spawned communities or centers in most major American cities. Because this tradition emphasizes the individual development of insight through meditation and other traditional Buddhist practices, SFI has attempted to continue developing more diverse program offerings that address the desire of its students to expand their knowledge and practice in the midst of urban life.
In addition, sangha members with a desire to put their Buddhist values into action through more engaged practice have initiated various community-support efforts. Some, such as the Caring Committee, benefit the SFI community directly, by offering support to sangha members in need. Other projects have raised funds or offered service in a variety of settings: serving the homeless through the city’s Project Homeless Connect program, tutoring children through the UUSF’s Up-on-Top after school program, and raising funds for victims of natural disasters in New Orleans, Sri Lanka, and Haiti.
The most notable efforts have been in conjunction with our Sister Sangha, Dharmagiri, in South Africa, founded by our friends and longtime practitioners Thanisara and Kittisaro. Since 2000, San Francisco Insight has helped fund and support the launch of both Woza Moya and Khuphuka Projects, which serve thousands of people affected by AIDS in rural KwaZulu-Natal. Currently Dharmagiri is supporting Kulungile Project, an initiative of Sister Abegail Ntleko, which provides a loving home for vulnerable children. Sister Abe has spoken twice at SFI and was hosted by SFI during her receipt of the Unsung Hero Award which was presented to her by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 2009.
SFI operated as a non-profit under the fiscal sponsorship of UUSF for many years until incorporating as its own independent religious non-profit on December 15, 2010. SFI is also a member of the Buddhist Insight Network, an emerging consortium of Insight Communities in North America and beyond.Dharmagiri.