Michael Santi Keezing

Santi

I offer one-on-one life counseling and coaching sessions centered on meaning, healing, and purpose. In addition to this work, I lead meditation gatherings, offer talks and public dialogue, and write on the intersections of Buddhism and post-Buddhism, modernity, personal and political life, conscious use of technology, and other themes. You’ll find links below to my writings in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, as well as to podcast episodes and other public appearances.

My perspective is rooted in eight years as a monastic in the Thai forest tradition, a meditation-centered branch of Theravada Buddhism. I lived for eight years as a monastic, and six as a fully-ordained monk, in monasteries, as a wanderer, and in traditional and Western lay-Buddhist communities. Prior to ordination, I lived a varied adult life of writing, teaching, and plenty of miscellaneous jobs; travel and settling down; relationships, marriage, and singleness; fatherhood. Both monastic life and all of these experiences continue to inform my developing spiritual practice and understanding, which integrates early Buddhist approaches with an engaged commitment to naturalism and humanistic values.

Santi means “peace.” It was given to me as a monastic name. I’m retaining it as an encouragement to myself and others to value and foster peace—a central aspiration in both ancient Buddhist wisdom and contemporary understandings of suffering and freedom.