Spoken Reflections

Don Ratcliff
Don began meditating at the Broken Ridge Temple in 2012. He is now 66 and retired from his life as a mineral economist 13 years ago. He and his spouse, Mary, reside in Durango, in the mountains of Southwest Colorado.

Joan Shigemoto
Joan joined the sangha in 2000, not long after the sitting group started at the Temple in 1999. Since then, she has gone to Burma three times on long retreats. She retired in 2013 from the public school system as a speech pathologist. In retirement, she’s been pursuing her interests in painting, alternative health, and volunteering in the prison system.

Margy Hamai has studied Tibetan Buddhism for over 45 years. She studied with Lama Rinchen at Kagyu Thegchen Ling in Honolulu, Tarchan Rinpoche in Santa Cruz and Bon teacher Wangal Tenzin in ginia. She also meditated with Vipassana Hawaii, and the Broken Ridge Temple Sangha, both Theravadin schools of Buddhism. She coordinated programs for the non profit organizations, Maitreya Institute, Friends of Buddhism, Bodhi Tree Meditation Center, and the Hawaii Association of International Buddhists. She currently serves as a caregiver.

Trey Halliday Fenton started his meditation journey in 2014 and states that it has been an extraordinary, transformational, spiritual journey. Trey is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Certified Substance Abuse Counselor. He currently works in private practice and his specialties include gender, sexuality and addictions. He incorporates Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and meditation while helping others in the community. Trey considers himself to be a lifelong learner and educator. His next goals are to become a Life Coach and to publish a book.
July 2, 2022

Quynh Nguyen came to Hawaii in 1975 from Vietnam where she practiced Internal Medicine for 40 years.
She began the study of Zen under Aitken Roshi in 1983. Three years later, she took up Vipassana Meditation with Michele McDonald and Steven Smith. She has sat on long retreats in Hawaii and Myanmar with Bhante G, Sayadaw U Lakkhana, U Tejaniya, U Thuzana, and Western teachers. She joined the sittings at Broken Ridge Temple five years ago.

Quynh has led meditation sessions with inmates in Prison and Halfway Houses. She is actively involved with the Tzu Chi foundation, which provides humanitarian aid worldwide. She now leads mindfulness meditation with Tzu Chi volunteers.

At age 74, her passion is Vipassana Meditation, watercolor painting, besides doting on her grandchildren and being a full time care giver to her husband who has a debilitating neurological disease.

Harry is a semi-retired Medical Physicist who currently serves as Radiation Safety Officer at 3 hospitals. Originally from New York City he came to Hawaii in 1989 after almost 20 years in Wisconsin. Though he came to join a physics consulting group, he got deeply involved in Hawaiian culture and married into a Chinese-Hawaiian family.

His passions besides, Hawaiian culture and indigenous rights in general, are music, writing poetry, and fitness training. He is very happy to be in Hawaii particularly in these “interesting times”.

Niki grew up in Honolulu and Kailua. She encountered Buddhism at age 11, when she found a book on the family bookshelf, called Light of Asia, a noted Buddhist classic, written in 1879. It made a great impression on her. She completed her Masters Degree in European/ Latin American history at the University of California at Berkeley and was deeply involved in the anti-Vietnam war and Civil Rights struggles of the ‘60s. She began meditation practice with Zen teacher Aitken Roshi in 1970 until the birth of her son in 1976. She returned to regular practice, doing Vipassana meditation at the home of theThanh and Xuan Huynh and also practiced with Lama Rinchen of the Nu’uanu Tibetan Center. Since then, she has continued as a Vipassana practitioner, doing many retreats at the Palolo Zen Center and also participating at the Broken Ridge Temple. In 2018, she initiated a weekly Windward practice group at the Windward Buddhist Temple and they meet every Wednesday evening on Zoom.

Amanda is originally from Baltimore. Her meditation journey began in 2009 when she began classes in Vedic and Jewish meditation traditions. Her introduction to Buddhist dharma was in 2014 at a local Shambhala Center retreat. She continued to practice until 2016 when she moved to Hawaii and began graduate school at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at UH Manoa. At that point she ventured briefly into Zen Buddhism at the Diamond Sangha and the Aloha Sangha taught by Tom Davidson-Marx. She began sitting at the Mu Ryang Sa temple in 2018 when a classmate brought her to the Saturday sittings. She has since moved back to Baltimore but continues to find refuge in both the virtual sittings and dharma talks which have brought this medley of practices and traditions into a more focused spiritual path.