Teachers, Leaders, Hosts
Rachel Boughton (Main Teacher)
I have been meditating since I was 14 and taught meditation to whomever was interested starting in college in the 1980's. I was introduced to zen koans in 2001 and begain teaching koans in 2012. I became a senior Zen teacher (Roshi) in 2015. I have been deeply engaged with feminism and the early history and future of women in the world for as long as I can remember. It's a pleasure to be able to bring that into what I teach.
I enjoy helping people to find their calling and power in the world. There are serious challenges in which we find ourselves as humans on this planet, urgent matters to attend to. Having a practice makes it more possible to calmly and clearly step into the role we are made to play.
I love words and language and the nuances of translation and spend time with ancient Chinese characters to help understand the connections between ideas and experience. I work with images as well as embodied and wordless/formless wisdom. Meditation has always been an adventure for me and I like to hand it along in that spirit. I'm interested in what we learn from our history, from our bodies and from our dreams.
My education included a degree in philosophy and visual art (Oberlin College) and post graduate work and an MFA in music composition and theatre (Mills College and Stanford). I am also the mother of two grown children, as well as a Jungian Analyst trained at the CG Jung Institute in Küsnacht, Switzerland. My email address is
rachel [at] flowermountainzen.org.
I work with individual students and clients on koans and in Jungian Analysis. I am currently accepting new students and clients. To schedule a meeting, email me or send a message at contact us.
Jisen Coghlan
Jisen is the lead teacher of the Boise Zen Center. Her background includes degrees in music, dance, physical therapy and certification as an Alexander Technique Teacher. She was ordained at the Zen Center of Pittsburgh and received transmission In 2012, when she began City Dharma in Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh, PA. She moved to the Pacific Northwest in 2016. Jisen shares the Boise's Zen Center's meditation programs with FMZ and she also leads sometimes on Sunday mornings.
Karma Forbes
Karma Forbes has studied Zen as well as martial arts for much of her life studying for many years with Joko Beck and the Ordinary Mind school. She specializes and has directed programs in Internal Family Systems Therapy. She is a leader at Portland Zen Center and is now in private practice as a psychotherapist and IFS trainer after many years working as a faculty counselor for the Renton Technical College, serving students with disabilities and also gifted students. She has a particular interest in trauma recovery and embodiment.
D Allen
D Allen is a lifelong Zen practitioner, leader at Oaxaca Zen, teaching in both Spanish and English. He also teaches groups in Monterey CA where he lives with his partner. An early student of Phillip Kapleau, he eventually swore off koans and worked with Toni Packer in a practice of inquiry and presence for many years. In the last 5 years he has become an enthusiastic student and teacher of koans, with a particular fondness for the buffalo whose tail won't pass through the lattice window. His experience as a Radical Faerie in the 1970's and his appreciation for queer culture also inform his zen insights.
Dennis Peak
Contemporary abstract painter Dennis Peak grew up living in many places and among many cultures around the globe. He pursued art at the University of California, Santa Cruz with a focus on ceramic sculpture. In between Peak’s day jobs as a carpenter and tiler, he sculpted large, wall-mounted fired clay commissions. At one point he decided to paint these sculptures rather than glaze them. What began as an experiment with layers, colors, and lines led him to sell his kiln and clay tools and begin painting with acrylics on canvas full time. His abstract compositions are informed by his life-long interest in structure and a curiosity about what holds things together.
Amy Robinson (LEADER)
Amy is a zen koan student as well as a historian, poet, community activist and mother and dancer. She writes curriculum for the Big History Project and has been a lecturer in Colonial History and Women's History at Stanford University and Sonoma State University. Meditation has been a way for her to experience the world more fully and to see into the dream underneath. She writes about creativity, spirituality and social change and her prose and poetry have been published
in Rattle, Medium, and Uncertainty.Club. She is currently deeply engaged with the ecology of the hills of St. Helena as she and her community work to rebuild after everything burned in the Fall of 2020. She leads, with Jisen Coghlan, the Wednesday morning meditation sessions, as well as leading on Sunday mornings as well.
Michael Hofmann (leader)
Michael is a zen koan student as well as a sculptor and ink brush painter. After college during the late 1960's-early 70's, amidst a backdrop of social upheaval, he boarded the slow boat to Japan to study with a Zen master he'd met just once, a few years before. He lived in Japan for over 30 years where he became an accomplished ink brush painter and assisted his teacher on paintings in temples all over Japan. His own work has been shown in Japan and the US. He also teaches painting and sculpture in the Bay Area. He is interested in creating and supporting the community that forms around meditation practice.
Elise Turner (LEADER)
Elise Turner is a teacher of mostly grateful teenage students who are following individualized curricula. She's also a mother, grandmother, zen student and enthusiastic host for family, friends and community.