Remembering Anna Douglas, Spirit Rock founding teacher (1939-2025)
Douglas taught classes and retreats in the Insight Meditation tradition for more than 40 years. The post Remembering Anna Douglas, Spirit Rock founding teacher (1939-2025) appeared first on Lion’s Roar.
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Anna Douglas, one of Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s founding teachers and the founder of Insight Meditation Tucson, died Wednesday, March 12, 2025 following “a steady decline, mostly due to advanced Parkinson’s.” She was 85.
Douglas taught classes and retreats in the Insight Meditation tradition for more than 40 years, as well as retreats spanning subjects of mindfulness, yoga, women’s wisdom, aging, and creativity.
“She was quite ready to die and for the next adventure, as curious about what was on the other side as she was about everything in her life,” Spirit Rock founding teacher Howard Cohn wrote in a tribute to Douglas published on the Spirit Rock website.
“She was always thinking outside the box and taking us all along with her,” Cohn continues. “Her creative spirit brought art to our retreats, along with programs for women and aging. Before it was central to our mission, she was passionate about diversity and expanding our welcoming community.”
In the mid-eighties, Douglas was one of five dharma students invited to particpate in Jack Kornfield’s first teacher training cohort. In 1988, Spirit Rock Meditation Center opened on 411 acres of undeveloped land in the San Geronimo Valley of Marin County, about forty-five minutes from San Francisco, with the cohort as founding teachers.
In a 2018 teaching titled “Riding the Waves of Change” published by Spirit Rock, Douglas reflected on the inevitabilty of aging and death, writing:
“This very life we are living is a temporary event — we will certainly die, but the time of our death and how we die is not known to us or to anyone. In the midst of such uncertainty, what is our refuge? If we have included impermanence as an object of our awareness practice, our own mind’s equanimity as we ride the waves of change will be our refuge, revealing a deeper source of true satisfaction and peace.”
“She was a skilled and beloved teacher, no doubt the fruit of her depth and breadth of practice,” Cohn writes in his tribute. “Through it all, her intelligence, quick wit, humor, and infectious laugh, right up until the end, will forever reverberate in our hearts.”
Read Howard Cohn’s full tribute to Douglas on the Spirit Rock website and explore her teachings in their Dharma Library.
