Caitriona Reed

Caitriona Reed (born 1949) is a trans woman sensei of Thiền Zen Buddhism who also has a background in Vipassanā meditation. She co-founded Ordinary Dharma in Los Angeles, California; the rural Manzanita Village Retreat Center, located in San Diego County; and Five Changes, to mentor aspiring leaders, cultural creatives, and spiritual visionaries. Reed, a member of the American Zen Teachers Association, led retreats and workshops in Vipassana, Deep Ecology, and Buddhism 1981-2008. She received authority to teach Zen from Thich Nhat Hanh in 1992.
She is a 'woman of transsexual experience' who transitioned in 1996. She stated about her transitioning, "As a teacher encouraging others to live more honest and authentic lives, it was increasingly difficult for me to deny a basic fact—that I was a woman."
Currently, informed by her work as a Buddhist teacher, Reed focuses on public speaking; mentoring individual clients; and together with her partner Michele Benzamin-Miki conducting professional certification training in neuro-linguistic programming and hypnotherapy with an emphasis holistic approaches to life-coaching and personal and professional mentorship.

Prior to her transition Reed married her long-time partner (since 1981) artist, Aikido and Iaido Sensei Michele Benzamin-Miki. They continue living and working together.

• Dharma Gaia: A Harvest of Essays in Buddhism and Ecology (Alan Hunt Badiner, Editor)
• What Makes A Man: 22 Writers Imagine The Future (2004) (Rebecca Walker, Editor)
• The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women (2012) (Florence Caplow and Susan Moon, Editors)