OneSangha

I live in the Oakland, California with my wife, R, to whom I was married in 2004. I have a fourteen year old daughter from my previous marriage who lives in Seattle. I was born and raised almost entirely in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, attending the local state university and working for the local megacorp.

I’m a professional tech guy and work as a QA Engineering Lead (aka “Software Tester”) on Firefox security at the Mozilla Corporation in the Bay Area of California.

I have a Bachelor’s degree in Cultural Anthropology and an interdisciplinary Master of Art’s degree in Humanities from California State University, Dominguez Hills. My concentration in the program was Philosophy, specifically in the space of Philosophy of Religion. My thesis was within Western Esotericism, focusing on the late 19th century “Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn” and its beliefs and teachings concerning the nature and structure of the human soul.

Since receiving my MA, I have joined the Five Mountain Buddhist Seminary, which is a non-denominational Mahayana Buddhist seminary. I am a Buddhist practitioner with a background in Tibetan Vajrayana and Mahayana Buddhism with some connection to both Tendai and Zen lineages of practice. I am an ordained priest within the Five Mountain Sangha, a modern Zen order in the Korean Sŏn lineage of Zen Master Sŭngsan (Seung Sahn). My ordained name in Japanese is “Jigen, ” meaning “Eye of Compassion.” In Korean, it is “Jăan” and is written in Chinese characters as “慈眼”. In Buddhist contexts, I go by “Jigen” when functioning as a priest.