Strong Back, Soft Front
Roshi Joan Halifax is renowned for her social action and teachings on compassion, resilience, and courage, from her work as founder of the Nepal Nomads Clinic, Upaya Prison Project, and Being with Dying training program, to her many books, including Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death and Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet.
In the recording below, from the 2024 Wisdom 2.0 conference, Roshi Joan offers a guided meditation for meeting life with a strong back and a soft front: sensing into your physical and internal uprightness — your motivation, intentions, commitments, and vows — and the deep openness and compassion of the heart.
During the introduction, she shares how Roshi Bernie Glassman emphasized the value of developing this capacity to be upright in the world: to not separate ourselves from the truth of suffering in our lives, remaining open, curious, and grounded in our willingness to respond.
In her upcoming book, Unfinished Vow: Awakening in a Shattered World, Roshi Joan expands on this way of relating with the world through what she has called “the architecture of goodness.”
How do we care for others and ourselves as we navigate the complexity of being human? How do we live in alignment with what truly matters?
And how does this goodness, in Roshi Joan’s words, “become the very heart from which we live” in service to whatever is needed, moment to moment?
Buddhist practice asks of us
both a strong back
and a soft front;
steadfastness joined with tenderness,
equanimity joined with compassion.— Roshi Joan Halifax
Unfinished Vow: Awakening in a Shattered World (publication forthcoming)
Join Roshi Joan and Zen Peacemakers on November 18 for a live discussion on “the architecture of goodness.”
Register for free through the link below. All are welcome!
Unfinished Vow:
A Conversation with Roshi Joan Halifax
Join Roshi Joan Halifax and Zen Peacemakers for a conversation on “the architecture of goodness.” She will share perspectives on motivation, intention, commitment, atonement, and vows from her upcoming book Unfinished Vow, and how these principles can form the ground of a life oriented toward goodness.
Peacemakers Circle
Wednesday, November 18th, 2026
12:00pm - 1:30pm EST
Roshi Joan Halifax, Ph.D. is a Buddhist teacher, social activist, anthropologist, author, and Founder and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center. A successor of Bernie Glassman and Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order, she is a pioneer in the field of end-of-life care. Her work and practice for more than three decades has focused on socially engaged Buddhism. For more about Roshi Joan’s life and work, please visit her website: joanhalifax.org.
