Mushim Patricia Ikeda

Mushim Patricia Ikeda is a writer, Buddhist and mindfulness teacher, and justice activist based in Oakland, California. She is one of several core teachers at the East Bay Meditation Center, an urban Buddhist-and-justice-based community center founded to serve historically excluded communities. She has taught meditation retreats nationally for Black, Indigenous and People of Color and multiracial (BIPOC) groups; women; and justice activists. Known as one of the first Asian American poets, Mushim (aka Patricia Ikeda) has published poetry, essays, and creative nonfiction in various anthologies and journals, and she has been featured in two documentaries, Between the Lines: Asian American Women’s Poetry; and Acting on Faith: Women’s New Religious Activism in America.  Mushim is the recipient of many awards, including a Global Diversity Leadership Award; an honorary doctorate in sacred theology from the Starr King School for the Ministry; inclusion in Lion’s Roar Buddhist media’s Great Teachers 2022 issue; and ColorLines’s Inaugural Class of 20 Transformative Racial Justice Leaders in 2018. She began her Buddhist training in 1982 at the Zen Buddhist Temple-Ann Arbor in Michigan in the US, and has practiced as both a monastic renunciant as well as a householder and mother.

More info: www.mushimikeda.com