Jane Dobisz (Zen Master Bon Yeon) has been teaching and leading retreats worldwide since 1991. She is a Guiding Teacher of the Cambridge Zen Center in Massachusetts, one of the largest residential zen centers in the United States.

Jane Dobisz began practicing Buddhism in 1977 in Kathmandu, Nepal. She spent the first few years of her training in the Tibetan style, and then continued for several years in the Vipassana style in Los Angeles, California and Barre, Massachusetts. While in Barre, Jane was fortunate to have the opportunity to attend a three month retreat led by a host of first generation Buddhist teachers including Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, and other guest teachers, including Zen Master Seung Sahn.

After meeting Seung Sahn, she continued training as his student until the present. In 1991 she received inka from him and began teaching in Eastern and Western Europe. She received formal transmission in April of 2000. She has led several intensive retreats in the US, Europe, and South Africa.

Jane's recent book is entitled One Hundred Days of Solitude:Losing Myself and Finding Grace on a Zen Retreat (Wisdom Publications 2008). The main emphasis of her teaching is incorporating Zen into one's everyday life. She lives in the Boston area with her husband, daughter, and son.

" The Wisdom of Solitude"
by Jane Dobisz

The Wisdom of Solitude is a book about climbing wholeheartedly into the moment, and hence into the world as it truly is. It is the story of a young woman's search for her true self through the practice of Zen in a cabin in the winter woods of New England. While there, she strips away every possible distraction and devotes herself for over three months to practicing Zen eighteen hours a day. She has no electricity, no visitors, no phone, no car and... >> more

“Lovely brushstrokes of Zen heart/mind emerging out of intrepid Zen practice. Having trained under the same teacher, it was particularly delightful to feel the vitality of Seung Sahn’s teachings brought to life in such a down-to-earth and poetic way.”—Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Wherever You Go, There You Are and Coming to Our Senses