About

I am a Professor of Economics (Emeritus); a writer on gender, zen, ethics, economics, and ecology; a practitioner and Sensei (teacher) in the Zen tradition; and mother of two grown children and grandmother of two.

These might seem like wildly different activities, but I’ve found more and more interconnections between them. A major theme on this blog is “mixing it up.” In fact, one of the commonalities I’ve found is how certain habits of rigid, categorical, oppositional thinking tend to mess us up, no matter whether we are talking about spirituality or statistics. You’ll see this theme throughout most of my blog posts.

If you’re interested in my qualifications and record in economics, or in contacting me about that, you can easily find that info elsewhere on the web. I hesitated in starting this wide-ranging blog at least in part because professional economists don’t write about “squishy” things like emotions, spiritual practice, and illness. At least they don’t if they want to maintain the pretense of being detached scientists. I’ve never agreed with that image of what science is about, though. I believe that good science is open-minded investigation, and that it advances with thinking outside the box. I turned 67 recently. What people think of me just isn’t so important anymore.

If you are interested in my Zen teaching (beyond what appears on this blog), the story is a bit complicated. My home sangha, the Greater Boston Zen Center, is currently teacherless – and for good reason! We weathered three major crises due to teacher arrogance and unethical conduct in the period 2018-2023. After the most recent one, I resigned as a GBZC teacher in order to allow us to experiment with having a “sangha-led sangha.” I teach at GBZC on a visiting basis, by invitation only, offering  dokusan by zoom to those who request it.  I would like to reframe teaching as a sangha service position rather than leadership position. Meanwhile, I’ve received full teaching transmission (“denbo”) from Myoyu Andersen Roshi, and teach with her at the Great Plains Zen Center. If you wish to contact me about Zen, please write to seido (at) julieanelson.com. I continue to write and speak about abuses in Zen sanghas in spite of considerable backlash. I have drafted a book  which I will shamelessly promote on this blog when it is ready. As I wrote above: What people think of me just isn’t so important anymore.