Community Dharma Leaders

We live in a complex, demanding and divisive world. As an antidote to personal, socio-political and environmental suffering, Buddhist teachings can provide a wise, loving, generous ground from which we can respond to the profound challenges of our time—climate change, immigration, animal rights, growing economic disparity, and entrenched systems of racism, misogyny, and oppression.

The Spirit Rock Community Dharma Leaders program (CDL) develops the next generation of Dharma leaders with the capacity, resilience, and needed skills to carry the Dharma forward. This training cultivates the inner resources to skillfully address these and other issues. Grounded in ancient Buddhist wisdom, graduates of CDL will learn to embody, articulate, share, and cultivate the Dharma within diverse, multi-generational, multi-ethnic, and multi-cultural communities so that it is accessible for all who seek refuge.

The foundation of the training is rooted in the Early Buddhist Theravāda tradition, and the program is designed to encourage innovative ways to live a life of Dharma and to integrate and offer these timeless teachings in and for our contemporary world.

CDL provides training for future Dharma leaders who reside both nationally and internationally. Our aim is to support the Dharma in becoming fully accessible. This includes the participation of young adults, communities of color, a more inclusive class structure, and other underrepresented communities.

This is a Spirit Rock, Theravāda-based training program to develop community leaders. Priority will be given to those supporting leadership within Theravāda and Insight Meditation communities.

About the Teaching Team

Noliwe Alexander, Kate Johnson, JD Doyle, and devon hase are the core co-leaders for the CDL7 program. Together, we bring a depth of personal practice, teaching experience, and leadership and commitment to diversity from past CDL programs.

Noliwe Alexander

Noliwe Alexander has been a student of Vipassana meditation for over 20 years. Throughout this time of deep devotion to the Dharma, Noliwe has become a dedicated practitioner, meditation teacher of various retreats and sitting groups, day-longs and class series programs. She dedicates her BuddhaDharma practice and teachings to the BiPOC, LGBTQIA+, At Risk and Elder communities. She is a graduate of Spirit Rock’s CDL4 program, EBMC’s Commit 2 Dharma program in 2010 and is a graduate of Spirit Rock Teacher Training from 2017-2020. Noliwe is the founder of Peace At Any Pace, Inc. a non-profit organization that offers a Journey to Healing from Intergenerational & Ancestral Trauma retreats and Elder & Youth programs, which are exclusively for people from the African Diaspora. Noliwe is a wisdom keeper and humbled by the presence of her ancestor’s spirit that lives within and walks beside her.

JD Doyle, MA

JD Doyle (they/them) served as Core Teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center, where they co-founded the Alphabet (LGBTQIA+) Saṅgha. They graduated from Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s Retreat Teacher Training in 2020 and teach at saṅghas across the US and in Canada. JD began studying and practicing Buddhism in 1995, at Insight Meditation Society and at Spirit Rock, and continued with extensive retreat practice in Thailand and Burma in the Theravadan lineage. For over twenty-three years, they worked as a public school teacher. JD holds a BS in Environmental Studies from Cornell University, a bilingual multicultural teaching certificate from UC Santa Cruz, and a Masters in Language and Literacy and Sociocultural Studies from the University of New Mexico. They are committed to celebrating the diversity of our human saṅgha, transforming the impacts of racism on our communities, honoring all genders, and living in ways that affirm the sacredness of the Earth.

Kate Johnson, MA

Kate Johnson is a meditation teacher, facilitator, writer and mama. She has practiced Buddhist meditation in the Insight lineage since her early 20’s, and was authorized as an independent dharma teacher through Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s four-year retreat teacher training. Kate began facilitating organizational training and retreats after co-founding the Meditation Working Group at Occupy Wall Street. She later joined the faculty of MIT’s Presencing Institute, and went on to work at Buddhist Peace Fellowship, where she designed online programs integrating spiritual and political education and practice. She is the author of the book Radical Friendship: Seven Ways to Love Yourself and Find Your People in an Unjust World.

As a consultant, Kate works with leaders and organizations committed to equity, sustainability, and the practice of wise relationships, using awareness-based and embodied practices to support communication, strategy, and culture. As a meditation teacher, she regularly offers courses and retreats integrating relational spirituality, social justice, somatics and creativity. Kate also coaches a handful of dedicated meditation practitioners in private study to clarify and deepen their practice. In her off hours, she can be found exploring Philly with her kid, sipping tea with friends, and looking for all manner of good trouble.

devon hase, MA

devon hase loves long retreats. Cumulatively, she’s spent four years in silent practice in the Insight and Vajrayana traditions. Since discovering meditation in 2000, she has put dharma and community at the center of her life: she spent a decade bringing mindfulness to high school and college classrooms and now teaches at the Insight Meditation Society, Spirit Rock, and other centers around the globe. She enjoys supporting practitioners with personal mentoring, and her friendly, conversational approach emphasizes relational practice and the natural world. Along with her life partner nico, devon co-authored How Not to Be a Hot Mess: A Buddhist Survival Guide for Modern Life. She continues to spend a good part of the time in wilderness retreat in Oregon, Massachusetts, and elsewhere.

David Cabrera

David Cabrera has been a Vipassana practitioner and instructor since 2007 and received certification through Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach’s Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program in 2021. He currently mentors for Banyan teaching and training Mentees and also teaches meditation and mindful movement with One Dharma Nashville, where he co-founded their thriving BIPOC Sangha. David is also a Mentor for the IMCW, a visiting teacher for Insight LA, and leads mindful movement retreats at Spirit Rock.

Incorporating many years of martial arts studies, David is Laoshi in Chen Taiji. He has taught mindful movement, Qi Gong ,Taiji for since 2011 and was trained by the International Tiancai Chenjiagou Federation USA under Sifu Kam Lee. David also specializes in Somatic Integration healing practices. 

Being of Afro Cuban Asian heritage, David comes from a long lineage of Afro Cuban abolitionists who have devoted their lives to equality and liberation for all people of color in Cuba.

David is also a Grammy award winning musician in the Latin music industry and a devout father and husband.

Kimi Mojica

Kimi Mojica (they/she) is a process strategist, mindfulness coach, conflict transformation and restorative practices facilitator, and community teacher of the Buddha Dharma with over twenty years of experience stewarding cultural and organizational transformation. Kimi works at the nexus of conflict literacy, leadership and organizational development, and cultural change, applying the principles of conflict transformation and Just Transitions to facilitate dynamic collaborations across a broad range of industry leaders. Kimi grounds their work in an equity lens that intentionally addresses how systems of power impact connection, relationships and quality of life. Their commitment to economic, racial, gender and healing justice is evident through their work as a compelling space holder, sangha builder, and Buddha Dharma community teacher, using their practice as a springboard for a liberatory praxis in their professional roles and everyday life.

Kimi’s introduction to mindfulness and the Dharma began in 2007 at a People of Color mindfulness retreat by way of Thich Nhat Hahn’s Plum Village tradition. Here, they were introduced to the lineage and took part in their first vows as a practitioner at the Deer Park Monastery in San Diego, CA. Since then, Kimi has established their spiritual home at East Bay Meditation Center (EBMC), previously serving as Board Chair and later co-founding the Restorative Practices for Dharma Practitioners, Deep Refuge Group. There, they continued their studies as a practitioner, graduating from the Commit to Dharma program in 2012 and the Spiritual Teacher and Leader training program in 2023. 

In addition to their coaching and consulting practice, Kimi currently serves as the Senior Director of Consulting at Justice Funders where they guide and support philanthropic institutions in aligning grantmaking practices with the political framework of Just Transitions. Prior to Justice Funders, Kimi worked as the Director of Programs at the International House at UC Berkeley; the Dean of Diversity, Education, and Support Services at the University of Oregon;  the Membership Services Manager at Asian Americans Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP); and served as a board member of the Astarea Foundation. 

Born on the unceded Ohlone lands of Yelamu (San Francisco, CA) Kimi is currently based in unceded Ohlone Territory in Huchiun (Oakland, CA). They can be found seeking refuge on the water, learning from plant allies medicine, and building ecosystems of community care with their Kajukenbo martial arts community.

About Spirit Rock & Insight Meditation

Spirit Rock is a spiritual training institution in the Insight Meditation tradition grounded in the Buddha’s teachings in the Pāli discourses. Our vision and mission is to bring people to a depth of realization of the Buddha’s path of liberation through direct experience, and to provide practitioners with teachings to manifest wisdom and compassion in all aspects of their lives, for the benefit of all beings. We welcome practitioners of all backgrounds and levels of experience to join communities of learning, support, and connection in our spiritual sanctuary and refuge.

This course is part of Spirit Rock’s new Dharma Institute, which offers in-depth study of the teachings and practices of the Buddha and the Insight Meditation lineage, along with professional trainings and continuing education. 

Spirit Rock was founded in 1986 by a group of Insight Meditation teachers, including Jack Kornfield, who, along with Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, and Jacqueline Schwartz, founded Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, MA, in 1976. These centers, along with Gaia House (Devon, UK), are among the first centers teaching Insight Meditation (vipassanā) in the West. Read more about the founding of Spirit Rock and IMS in Jack Kornfield’s article “This Fantastic, Unfolding Experiment.” 

Insight Meditation is based in Theravāda (“The Way of the Elders”) Buddhism, as practiced in Sri Lanka, Burma (Myanmar), and Thailand, though our teachers carry many different lineages within—and outside—Theravāda. Our primary practices are based in the Mahāsī lineage of Burmese vipassanā and the Thai Forest Saṅgha lineage of Ajahn Chah. Read more aboutour Buddhist Lineage and listen to talks from teachers about the roots of our practice.

Questions?

Visit Help for additional information and guidance. After visiting the Help page, if you still need support with the Online Learning Platform, email OLPsupport@spiritrock.org.

For program related, questions contact cdl7@spiritrock.org