Cheri Huber

Website, Twitter

“You've been taught that there is something wrong with you and that you are imperfect, but there isn't and you're not.” --Cheri Huber, from her book There Is Nothing Wrong With You

Cheri Huber, author of 20 books, has been a student and teacher of Zen for over 35 years. In 1983, Cheri founded the Mountain View Zen Center, and in 1987 she founded the Zen Monastery Peace Center near Murphys, California. She and the monks at the Monastery conduct workshops and retreats at these centers, other places around the U.S., and internationally. In 1997, Cheri founded Living Compassion, a nonprofit organization whose primary work is the Africa Vulnerable Children Project, based in Zambia, where the project team has been helping the people of Kantolomba turn a slum of 11,000 people into a self-sustaining community. And Cheri also hosts a weekly podcast, the Open Air Radio show. Links to all this work and more are available on Cheri's website.

“At some point, now or later, you're going to have to risk being you in order to find out who that really is. Not the conditioned you, not the you you've been taught to believe you are, who you 'really' are. And this perhaps will be the scariest, the most loving, the most rewarding thing you have every done." --Cheri Huber

What's been helpful: At a time when I was first fully realizing just how intractable egoic conditioning can seem, serendipity handed me Cheri's book, There Is Nothing Wrong With You. After I zoomed through the book - which is all I know so far of her teachings - Cheri became one of what I call my 'comfort teachers', those whose words are especially good at helping me find my inner kindness. Her books are published in a style she calls 'loose organization'; short chapters printed in various large-text fonts and illustrated with simple line drawings, almost more of a note format at times. This makes her book both easy to read (it's like binging on compassion!) and good as a quick reference full of short lessons. There Is Nothing Wrong With You is 230+ pages of positive affirmation delivered with a sense of certainty that I found pulling me along and I'd recommend it to anyone in need of a boost during their spiritual journey.