Bill Weber is a senior Vipassana practitioner and a graduate of Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leaders program. He has twenty-five years of extensive retreat practice and currently practices at home with his husband or sits with a small group of gay men. He is also a documentary filmmaker and video editor, whose latest projects are “To Be Takei,”...

Melvin Escobar is a bilingual/bicultural Dharma teacher, licensed psychotherapist, and certified yoga instructor. He is a graduate of EBMC’s Commit to Dharma, and for more than a decade has served EBMC in a variety of roles, including on the development team for Resilience, Refuge and (R)evolution, a six-month leadership program for people of color. He has devoted 25 years to...

Group discussions are a perennial favorite at GBF, allowing us to get to know each other in a way that speaker-led dharma talks do not always allow. We will meditate, followed by discussing a topic suggested by our Facilitator. We break into small groups of 4-6, both in-person at SFBC, and in Zoom ‘breakout rooms’.

Devin Berry has been practicing Insight meditation since 1999. He regularly teaches at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS). Devin has undertaken many periods of silent long-term retreat practice. He is a community teacher at East Bay Meditation center in Oakland, CA where he co-founded both the teen and men of color sanghas.

Devin recently relocated to western Massachusetts from the...

Donald Rothberg, Ph.D., a member of the Teachers Council at Spirit Rock Center, and a teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center, teaches retreats and groups on concentration and insight meditation practice, lovingkindness practice, transforming the judgmental mind, mindful communication, working skillfully with conflict, and socially engaged Buddhism.

He has practiced insight meditation since 1976, and has also received...

John Martin teaches Vipassana (Insight), Metta (Loving Kindness) and LGBTQIA+ meditation retreats. He leads an ongoing weekly Monday evening meditation group in San Francisco. He serves as Co-chair of the Guiding Teachers Council for Spirit Rock. His practice has been supported by twelve years as a hospice volunteer: including five years at Shanti Project during the AIDS crisis, and seven...