Cheri Huber

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox religious biography Cheri Huber (born c. 1944) is an American meditation teacher in the Sōtō School of Zen Buddhism tradition.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

BiographyEdit

Huber is the founder and guiding teacher of Zen Monastery Peace Center located in Murphys, California,<ref name="huber">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> which was constructed in 1993. The plot of land was purchased in 1987, with Template:Convert. She was raised in the San Francisco Bay area and claims to have studied Zen under Jay DuPont.<ref name="zenmaster">Template:Cite book</ref> Writer Anna Kaplan says that Huber had once desired to live in a cabin in the woods in isolation of the world, but was encouraged by another teacher to teach Zen.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The name of this teacher is not named. She founded her first Zen center in 1983 in Mountain View, California, which has since moved to Palo Alto under the name Palo Alto Zen Center.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In 1997, Huber founded Living Compassion, a nonprofit organization dedicated to peace and service.<ref name="huber"/> Huber's current center, Four Acre Zen Center (FAZC), is located in Sequim, WA.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

There have been some questions raised by about her authority to teach Zen from some members of the traditional, lineage-based Zen community. Author and ordained Buddhist priest James Ishmael Ford writes of her, "Perhaps the most prominent of apparently self-declared teachers is the widely read author and meditation teacher Cheri Huber. Huber may have studied briefly with Jay DuPont...but it is not clear that she was authorized to teach by him or anyone else as a Zen teacher."<ref name="zenmaster"/> However, Huber herself has never claimed to be an authorized teacher of any particular lineage, stating that she considers herself a "student" of Zen who has dedicated her life to helping others learn to live in "conscious, compassionate awareness<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>."

In addition to authoring or co-authoring a number of books based in Zen awareness practice, Huber has offered a number of interactive email courses (some of which have become the basis of books). Beginning in 2002, she has offered a free weekly podcast<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> which began as a call-in radio show. Archives of past shows are available online.