Rev. Jean Ashland

Jean Ashland is an interfaith chaplain and is ordained as a lay Buddhist minister by Roshi Joan Halifax. She completed a 2 year Buddhist chaplaincy program at the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe NM in 2015.  Lama Willa served as her spiritual director during this training program.  Jean is engaged in hospice and hospital based chaplaincy in Belfast, Maine where she lives with her husband Hank.  One of her interests is caring for the caregiver and she has offered compassionate care training to both nurses and hospice volunteers. Jean has been engaged with Buddhism since 2002 and she became a student of Lama Willa’s in 2009.  She has been a mitra for the NDF Margha program since 2015. Other training has included diamond approach workshops, Vipassana retreats, and retreats with Thich Nhat Hanh, Lama John Makransky, and Anam Thubten.  Jean has also been a healthcare provider for almost 30 years with a doctorate in the field of speech language pathology.  In this capacity she has provided care to medically fragile children in acute care hospital settings that has informed her spiritual practice and contemplative care for individuals who are seriously ill or dying.