Marc Cohen - President

Marc Cohen is the President of C.C.C. Restaurant Corporation in Honolulu, Hawaii. He has been the President of the board of Vipassana Hawaii for the past ten years, as well as having done work with the boards at The Contemporary Museum and the Academy of Art here in Honolulu.

His academic background is that of an Asian Philosophy scholar with a strong emphasis on Buddhism and Taoism, along with editorial work on numerous publications in both fields.

Steve Smith - Treasurer

President, Media for Development International (Colorado, USA); Chairman, NESsT Board of Directors; Advisor, FilmAid International; Vice President, DSR Computer Sales and Service (Maryland, USA)

Background: He has worked in both the for-profit and non-profit worlds. In the mid-1980s, he and his wife, Sally started a non-profit company to produce and distribute African social message films, and a for-profit computer sales and service business to support the film business, and cover their living costs. In the year 2000, they set up an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, which gave half the stock of the computer business to the employees, and gave them enough to semi-retire to the Rocky Mountains. He also helped set up Media for Development Trust in Zimbabwe in the 1980s and Media for Development International / Tanzania in the last couple years, which are now well established as two of Africa's premiere film and radio production houses.

Steve worked for a couple years in the early 1980s for the Population Communication Services of Johns Hopkins University, funding projects in west Africa. Before that he worked for the International Project of the Association for Voluntary Sterilization, funding clinics around Asia. In the late 1970s he worked as a volunteer for Mennonite Central Committee in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He also worked a couple years in the mid-1970s for Salisbury Dairy in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). He has a BS from the University of Michigan and an MPH from the University of Pittsburgh. As a teenager, he ran a house painting business to pay for college. He has visited 70-75 countries, lived 5 years in Bangladesh and 2-3 years in Africa. He has two grown children. He and his wife of 30+ years enjoy life in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, skiing, camping, hiking, and outdoor living. Contact Steve via the Site's Contact Form. Please Choose "Contact Steve Smith, Treasurer" from the menu of subject choices.

Steven Smith - Senior Guiding Teacher

Steven Smith is a founder of Vipassana Hawai'i (1984) and Kyaswa Valley Retreat Center in Burma (1995). Anchored in the Theravadan Buddhist Burmese lineage of Mahasi Sayadaw since 1974, he was trained by revered monk and meditation master Sayadaw U Pandita.

Steven is a founder of the MettaDana Project for educational and medical projects in Burma and is also a senior advisor on contemplative practice to the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society where he has developed programs for teaching meditation to business leaders, environmental leaders, journalists and philanthropists.

Vipassana Hawai'i is parent to the Hawai'i Insight Meditation Center (HIMC) on the Big Island of Hawai'i's remote North Kohala. A 30-year dream of Steven and Michele McDonald is giving birth in 2007 to a unique, innovative retreat center on our fragile planet. With thoughtfulness guided by simplicity, HIMC is growing a totally green, sustainable living retreat center on 200 acres of extraordinary land with lush tropical valleys and streams on a mile-long, dramatic coastline.

Steven and Michele McDonald regard this project as their opus and fruit of a three-decade dedication to the transmission of a Burmese Buddhist lineage into the modern world.

Three strong pillars of HIMC include: care of the land; trademark Fusion Dhamma retreats combining senior nun and monk Burmese masters with senior teachers of Vipassana Hawai'i; nurturing Next Generation students committed to the Hawai'i-Burma lineage to carry the legacy far into future generations.

Steven teaches Vipassana and the Divine Abodes-loving-kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity-meditation retreats in nature environments for small groups around the world.

See also Steven Smith's Writings and Photos.

See this page for more information about Steven Smith.

Michele McDonald - Senior Guiding Teacher

Michele McDonald has taught Insight meditation for twenty-six years. Beyond her commitment to the Vipassana Hawai'i Sangha in Honolulu, she has taught extensively throughout the United States, and regularly teaches in Canada, Burma, and elsewhere around the world.

Having worked with a wide range of Asian and Western teachers, Michele is most inspired by her practice with Dipa Ma and Sayadaw U Pandita and more recently in Burma with the Mya Taung Sayadaw.

She appreciates teaching at many levels of practice and has enjoyed teaching three-month retreats for experienced students as well as developing meditation retreats for youth.

Her style of teaching emphasizes helping individuals find entry points into stillness that are natural for them. She encourages an understanding the path of insight and a gentle strengthening of mindfulness and concentration so that, ultimately, people can access the peaceful depths of their experience in every moment. Michele is thrilled when students begin to love their practice.

See also Offering the Teachings and Michele's Articles.

Click here for information about Michele McDonald.

Patrick Linton, Executive Director

Pat joins the Vipassana Hawaii team as its full-time Executive Director after serving many years in senior executive positions in the non-profit fields of hospital administration and community health improvement, including the past sixteen years on the Island of Hawaii. He received his bachelor of business administration from the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh and his master of hospital administration from the University of Minnesota in the 1970's. Following graduation, he held senior administrative positions in hospitals in Buffalo, Minnesota and Pueblo, Colorado.

Four years later he was selected as the President and CEO of the Berlin Hospital Association in Berlin, Wisconsin at the age of 31. Seeking more challenge, he became the CEO of Yavapai Regional Medical Center in Prescott, Arizona in 1988 leading what eventually became a very successful and national award winning turnaround effort. It was during this time that Pat was able to finally bring together his two passions of spirituality and hospital administration blending them into what was then a very progressive model of organizational development called "Creating a Total Healing Environment."

In 1992 Pat was called to leave his work in Arizona and come to the Island of Hawaii to lead the development of the new North Hawaii Community Hospital in Waimea. Working with only two other employees in a one-room office, Pat worked closely with the Board of Directors, staff, volunteers and community to design, finance, construct and open one of the most beautiful and integrated healing hospitals in the country in 1996 which has subsequently been visited and studied by thousands of health care professionals from around the world. Although it was time to step down and turn over the reins of NHCH to his successor in 1997, he was asked to stay in the North Hawaii region of the island which had now become his home.

After working for four years for the Earl and Doris Bakken Foundation on various community health improvement projects, he was asked by its Board of Directors to become the Executive Director of Five Mountains Hawaii in 2001, a position he held for the next five years. This unique, small non-profit organization administratively facilitated and supported a number of innovative, community health improvement priority projects on the island in such areas as reducing substance abuse, increasing positive youth activities, decreasing domestic violence, reducing obesity and weight-related chronic illness, and increasing health and wellness tourism to the island.

In the summer of 2006, Pat decided to pursue a dream to take a year to live and travel abroad. He spent most of this time living and traveling around Southern India to deepen in his spiritual practice of Kriya Yoga, an integral form of yoga founded on the teachings of its Satguru Babaji Nagaraj that includes physical postures, pranayama breathing, meditation, mantras, and the all important aspect of actively living the yoga in the world every day. Pat is also highly devoted to serving the Divine Mother in all Her aspects and work in the world, and Mother Meera in particular with whom he has done darshan many times.

Pat returned to Hawaii in the summer of 2007 when he was asked to assume the Interim Executive Director position of the World Healing Institute, a non-profit organization he helped to form in 2002 with its Founder and President. Now that he has accepted our offer to be the Executive Director of Vipassana Hawaii, Pat will resume his volunteer position as a member of the Board of Directors of WHI.

Over his career, Pat has served voluntarily on numerous boards, councils and committees of government agencies, professional associations and community non-profit organizations. Often he has held the chair position on these groups. He continues to volunteer his time where he is needed and can make a difference. And in an increasingly resource challenged world, he has taken a particular interest in the rapidly emerging areas of sustainability, re-localization and turning once again towards earth community. Our project to develop the Hawaii Insight Meditation Center offers him a wonderful opportunity to learn and lead in these areas of interest.

Pat is married and has two grown daughters, one in Hawaii and one back in his old home state of Wisconsin. But he's not a grandpa quiet yet.

Mirabai Bush

Mirabai Bush is Director of the Center on Contemplative Mind in Society (http://www.contemplativemind.org), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to encourage contemplative awareness in American life in order to create a more just, compassionate, and reflective society. Mirabai formerly directed the Seva Foundation Guatemala Project, which supported sustainable agriculture and integrated community development. She is co-author, with Ram Dass, of Compassion in Action: Setting Out on the Path of Service.

Roger McManus

Roger McManus