Shozan Jack Haubner

Shozan Jack Haubner is a Zen monk and author of Zen Confidential: Confessions of a Wayward Monk.

He has published essays in Tricycle, Shambhala Sun, The Sun, Utne Reader, BuddhaDharma, Spirituality & Health, the Huffington Post, and other publications. He has earned a Pushcart Prize and has been featured the anthology Best Buddhist Writing.

A former standup comic with a philosophy degree, Haubner spent a decade in Hollywood working as a script analyst and aspiring screenwriter. There, he learned the rudiments of story, character, and plot, which are essential to compelling, narrative-driven writing in any format.

Now, living as a full-time Rinzai Zen Buddhist monk for the last decade, he has learned to experience the spiritual path as a career, and he has also learned to see the pitfalls people often fall into when writing about their own spiritual journeys.

Haubner currently resides at a mountaintop monastery in Southern California, where he is the administrative abbot.