Rebecca Nie received the transmission from The Venerable Zen Master Hwawun Yangil, a patriarch of the Korean Jogye Order. She is the 24th generation lineage holder of the order. Rebecca has taught Zen in the United States, Canada, and Bhutan. She is the Professional Advisor of Stanford Zen Society, where she leads weekly meditation sessions, meet with students one-on-one, host visiting teachers, and partake in interfaith dialogues.
The root of her formal Zen practice is with the Korean Jogye Order, where she received phrase-koan, aka. hua-tou, training under one of Jogye Order's 79th generation patriarch, Zen Master Venerable Hwasun Yangil at Awakened Meditation Centre in Toronto. Zen Master Yangil acknowledged her practice with Zen Master inka in 2013. While transmission means different things in different Zen schools, Zen Master inka in the Jogye Order is more of an acknowledgment of breakthroughs in practice, know as satori and kensho in some context, and doesn't imply ceremonial or clerical duties.
She founded Stanford Zen Society(SZS) while studying at the university as a graduate student. She handed SZS to the other students after graduating in 2011 but the student leaders invited her back to Stanford in 2016 to teach, and I became the professional advisor of SZS at the beginning of 2018. The role is a part of Stanford Associated Religions and is comparable to a minister in Zen Buddhism at other institutions of higher learning. At the students' request, she is currently teaching an interactive meditation learning series once a week at Stanford. The teaching series goes in depth with meditation methods following the Mahasatipattana Sutta and Collecting the Sense Bases Meditation transmitted through the Jogye Order. I have core Buddhist teachings such as five skandhas, six sense bases, impermanence/dukkha and transcending dukkha, emptiness-sunyata, etc. interwoven with meditation in this learning series.
Besides these two major involvements, she has also studied with some monastics from the Dharma Drum Mountain with Ven. Yangil's permission. Being a native Mandarin speaker and well versed in Classical Chinese, she has been reading the originals and studying the teachings of some Classical Zen Masters in Linji (Rinzai) school such as Fenyang Shanzhao and Dahui Zongao.