Jaune Evans

Part of the Spiritual Biography Series

Leaving Home: A Spiritual Biography

Leaving home means setting aside all we know, all that is secure, authoritative, comfortable, and binding, and shoving off for parts unknown with no road map and no guarantee of finding your way. Though it can look like—and even in some cases can be—a form of running away, an act of cowardice, real home-leaving is courageous, requiring heart and force. To go forward you must leave everything behind, and even though the past may seem to be persistent, lodged as it is in our very bones, it is one thing to be bound up by the past, doomed to repeat it or to be held back by it endlessly and another to use it as a springboard for a journey that goes beyond—to where, one can never know.

—Norman Fisher, Sailing Home.

Join TNS Host Michael Lerner for the next in our Spiritual Biography series of conversations, this time with Jaune Evans—Zen priest, writer, photographer, and executive director of Tamalpais Trust.

Listen (audio only)

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Jaune Evans

Jaune Evans is executive director of Tamalpais Trust (San Rafael, California) which supports indigenous-led global organizations building alliances in the areas of human rights, traditional knowledge systems and education, indigenous rights, cultural integrity, protection of sacred lands and waters, and gender equity. She has worked in philanthropy and public service for the past 25 years. In past years, Jaune served as managing director of Tides Foundation, executive director of Lannan Foundation, and executive director of the New Mexico Community Foundation.

Ordained as a Zen priest in 1982 by Taizan Maezumi Roshi and Bernie Glassman Roshi, Jaune now practices as a priest with Norman Fischer and the Everyday Zen Sangha, and also leads the Heart of Compassion Sangha in Point Reyes Station. Jaune is a writer and reader, a photographer, hiker, and lover of animals. She holds a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, an M.A. from The Johns Hopkins University, and an M.A. from Southwestern College.