“All beings fear danger, life is dear to all. When a person considers this, he does not kill or cause to kill.”
B U D D H A
Who We Are
Dharma Voices for Animals (DVA) is a nonprofit organization founded in 2011 in California, United States. We are committed to advocating for animals within Buddhist communities, and we do so in line with the teachings of the Buddha (the Dharma).
What began as a group of friends concerned about the dissonance between Buddha’s teachings and the practice of consuming animals, grew into the only international animal advocacy group engaging Buddhists across the globe.
From Asia to the U.S., we work closely with local centers and communities—with a focus on Asian countries, where 98% of Buddhists live.
Our Mission
Our mission is to end animal suffering within Buddhist communities by promoting plant-based living and a cruelty-free lifestyle. We envision a future where compassion and empathy towards animals is an integral part of Buddhist practice.
To achieve this, we’re building a global community of people who care about Dharma and animals.
Our Approach
We address the issue of animal suffering through outreach to both Buddhist leaders and the general public. By partnering with temples, monks, and local communities, we promote plant-based living as an ethically-aligned, and accessible path to reduce animal suffering.
Our work includes hands-on presentations, vegan cooking classes, and public events in temples, schools, and community spaces. Through media appearances and festivals, we reach thousands, helping Buddhists of all paths align their actions with their beliefs.
Our global Project Directors, staff, and volunteers—dedicated individuals just like you—are actively building bridges within the Buddhist world. This allows DVA to shine a light on animal suffering, and close the gap between Buddhist values and compassion towards animals.
None of this would be possible without people like you.
It is people like you—people who care about animal suffering—that make this change possible. You make the world a better place for animals and inspire others to do the same.
Your financial support helps bring compassion to those whose suffering often goes unnoticed.
The great Dzogchen master and DVA member and contributor, Chatral Rinpoche, put it simply:
“If you take meat, it goes against the vows one takes in seeking refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha because when you take meat, you have to take a being’s life. So I gave it up.”
Our Team
Bob Isaacson
PRESIDENT & CO-FOUNDER
Bob Isaacson was a civil rights-human rights attorney for twenty-five years, specializing in defending people against the death penalty. He presented and won a landmark case in the Supreme Court of the United States, which limits the power of the police to arrest people without sufficient grounds, when he was 27, the second youngest attorney in history to appear before the nation’s highest court.
Bob Isaacson was drawn to the Buddha’s teachings on the path to the end of suffering 28 years ago and continues to be inspired. Since he began Buddhist practice, Bob has participated in 25 meditation retreats of one month or longer.
Bob currently teaches the Dharma (the Buddha’s teachings), leads two Sanghas (ongoing groups of practitioners), and leads day-long and weekend retreats in the San Diego area, having been trained in Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s Community Dharma Leader Program.
It did not take Bob long to realize the disconnect between the Buddha’s teachings of compassion and non-harming toward all sentient beings and the actual practice of Buddhist teachers and followers who continue to eat animals. This disconnect led Bob to join with several friends in 2011 to launch the non-profit organization, Dharma Voices for Animals (DVA).
DVA is the only international Buddhist animal rights/animal advocacy organization in the world. DVA relies on the Buddha’s teachings to engage Buddhist centers and communities around the world, especially in Asia where over 98% of Buddhists live.
Andrea Diaz
OPERATIONS DIRECTOR
Andrea Diaz is an animal rights advocate raised on a farm in South Phoenix, Arizona. She has a Master of Global Animal Law from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and a Bachelor of Criminal Justice from Arizona State University. Her interest was fueled by why so many people she grew up with got caught up in the judicial system.
She became vegan overnight after coming across chicken slaughterhouse footage online in 2016. She immediately wanted to take action to end the suffering of animals.
Andrea’s passion for justice and equality has led her to organize hundreds of campaigns, protests, and educational events for multiple animal rights organizations. She has worked as an investigator of factory farms and slaughterhouses in several countries.
Andrea Diaz has recently been drawn to the teachings of the Buddha, has a meditation practice, and has started attending Buddhist retreats.
Katie Nolan
COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR
Katie Nolan’s love for animals and the environment started when she was very young in her own backyard with amphibians and insects. Katie came to Buddhism through her undergraduate studies at Northland College, majoring in Religious Studies with an emphasis on Tibetan and Zen Buddhism.
Katie seeks to help people connect their devotion to religious practice with compassion for animals and is excited to support DVA by helping to raise awareness of the important work being done and fostering engagement with members and supporters to advance the mission of compassionate living.
Katie also has a Master’s degree in Environmental Law and Policy from Vermont Law and Graduate School, and her varied experience includes direct animal care, legislative work, and running animal advocacy campaigns.
Project Directors
Ardjani Puig – US CENTERS
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Ardjani is a passionate advocate for animals, humans and earth, as well as a life-long practicing Buddhist in the Tibetan tradition. Her work has been focused on alleviating suffering in many disguises - with a career in social work, the humanitarian field, psychotherapy and mindfulness, as well as her animal and environmental activism. Ardjani has been a vegan for over 25 years and is now honored and excited to enter the professional field of animal advocacy as US Centers Project Director for DVA, where she will be focused on raising awareness of animal suffering among American Buddhists and bringing compassionate institutional food policy changes to Dharma Centers around the United States.
Shanika Gamage – SRI LANKA
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DVA’s Sri Lanka Project Director is Shanika Gamage, who has worked for DVA since 2018 as Dhamma School Coordinator and then National Events Supervisor. She earned her bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of Colombo in 2016 and has completed substantial work on a master’s degree in sociology with an emphasis on research and psychology in Australia.
Under her supervision, DVA has made over 750 presentations at Dhamma schools and other venues all over Sri Lanka. While she was growing up Shanika experienced her country’s Dhamma School program firsthand, finishing an eleven-year course at the age of eighteen.
Shanika Gamage is vegan, a practicing Buddhist and, whenever possible, attends Dhamma meditation retreats. Shanika has a passion to share her own practice of ahimsa toward ALL beings as she leads DVA by example to advocate for a compassionate diet.
Chirra Taworntawat – THAILAND
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Dr. Chirra Taworntawat (Bank), Ph.D., Director of DVA’s Thailand Project, a Ph.D. in Public Health at Chulalongkorn University, former monk, and YouTube Channel personality with a current following of over 550,000 and has multiple videos with millions of views.
He gives health and nutrition presentations directly to the monks and teaches the cooking classes to the wat kitchen staff and manages our Thailand Project.
Bank wrote and published the book Just Eat where he dives into over 150 research journals to recommend the best foods we should eat for optimal health. He graciously donates his book, which includes nutritional benefits of different foods found in Thailand, to the monastics who attend his presentations.
Bank is currently expanding the Thailand Project to include an environmental team who will present the benefits of a plant-based diet for the environment to students around Bangkok.
Son Pham – VIETNAM
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Son Pham is DVA’s Vietnam Project Assistant Director. She is a devoted animal rights activist and a vegan. She has been part of our Vietnam Project team now for three years.
Before becoming our Assistant Director, Son Pham was DVA’s Vietnam Project Vietnamese-English translator/interpreter and Vietnam Project Coordinator. Son studied translating and interpreting at Vietnam National University in Hanoi.
She also has a Master Degree in Language Studies in the same university. Son has experience working as a translator and interpreter for 14 years for different kinds of organizations such as 100% foreign-invested enterprises, non-governmental organizations and privately-owned companies. Son Pham has been a full-time lecturer at Thang Long University.
Advisory Council
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Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo was raised in London. In 1964, aged 20, she traveled to India to pursue her spiritual path and met her guru, His Eminence the 8th Khamtrul Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist Lama. She became one of the first Westerners to ordain as a Tibetan Buddhist nun. The inspiring story of her life, including 12 years of a secluded retreat in a Himalayan cave, is the subject of the biography, Cave in the Snow. A popular Buddhist teacher, she presents the Dharma in an accessible manner to audiences across the world.
Jetsunma is Founder and Abbess of Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery in Himachel Pradesh, Northern India, where some 100 young women, from the Himalayan region receive monastic training. A select few of these nuns remain in long term retreat undergoing the rigorous yogic training of the Drukpa Kagyu tradition, thus re-instating the Togdenma lineage within this school of Buddhism. In 2008 Tenzin Palmo was given the title of Jetsunma, which means Venerable Master, by His Holiness the Twelfth Gyalwang Drukpa, Head of her lineage.
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Tara Brach is an internationally known meditation teacher and author of bestselling Radical Acceptance and True Refuge. She is founder and senior teacher of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC, offers a popular weekly podcast and teaches meditation workshops and retreats in the United States and Europe. Tara and her colleague Jack Kornfield have created a Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training Certification Program that is currently serving participants from 49 countries. Tara is also active in bringing meditation into DC area schools, prisons and to underserved populations. To learn more about Tara and her work, visit her website.
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Dawn Scott is a graduate of Insight Meditation Society’s teacher training program, a co-principal teacher of Marin Sangha, a core teacher of Spirit Rock’s Advanced Practitioner Program, and served as the Family Program Coordinator at Spirit Rock Meditation Center for eight years. She is a co-teacher of Love & Liberation, the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies and Insight Meditation’s joint year-long program, slated to start in early 2022. Dawn has a deep love of long retreat practice and the Buddha’s liberative teachings.
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Stephanie Swann, PhD, LCSW, is the Director of the Atlanta Mindfulness Institute and one of the two founding teachers of the Atlanta Insight Meditation Community. She is a certified MBSR instructor through the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine, Center for Mindfulness.
Stephanie has been a dedicated Vipassana practitioner since 2008 and was a member of the Community Dharma Leaders program (CDL6) at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. As a consultant, Stephanie trains mental health professionals in the practice of mindfulness-based psychotherapy.
Currently Stephanie holds an adjunct faculty appointment with the Georgia State University School of Social Work where she works on an NIH grant using mindfulness to support smoking cessation. She has been a vegetarian since her early 20s and is fully committed to a vegan way of life now.
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Thanissara is Anglo-Irish and from London. She became Vegetarian at 14 years old, and Vegan in 2017. Thanissara started Buddhist practice in the U Ba Khin Burmese school in 1975. She was inspired to ordain after meeting Ajahn Chah and spent 12 years as a Buddhist nun in the Thai Forest School where she was a founding member of Chithurst Monastery and Amaravati Buddhist Monastery in the UK.
She has facilitated meditation retreats internationally the last 30 years and has an MA in Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy Practice from Middlesex University & the Karuna Institute in the UK.In 1994, with Kittisaro, her husband and teaching partner, they accepted an invitation to teach Dharma in South Africa where they became legal residents in 1995.
In 2000 they co-founded Dharmagiri Sacred Mountain Retreat and helped initiate and support a number of HIV/Aids response and community development projects in South Africa. They continue to be deeply involved in the work of supporting Dharma and Community Outreach in Southern Africa.
Since 2017 they have been resident in California where together they founded Sacred Mountain Sangha Non Profit and more recently Sacred Sangha Online, which runs trainings, classes and events.
Thanissara has written several books, including two poetry books. Her latest book is Time To Stand Up, An Engaged Buddhist Manifesto for Our Earth. Thanissara is a member of the Spirit Rock Teacher Council, CA., and a core teacher at Insight Meditation Society MA.
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Venerable Geshe Thupten Phelgye was born in 1956 and escaped the invasion and occupation of his homeland, Tibet, by the Chinese army in 1961. He became a monk in 1973 at Seraje College of Sera Monastic University and finished his Geshe degree (Ph.D.) in 1991. He meditated in the Himalayan mountains for a period of five years. In 2001 he was elected as a member of the Tibetan Parliament in Exile to represent the Gelug tradition of Buddhism and served in the Parliament for ten years.
His teacher and mentor has been his Holiness the Dalai Lama who blessed Geshe-la’s Universal Compassion Foundation organization. In 2012, 2013, and 2015, Geshe-la has given teachings throughout California and the USA on practicing the Dharma as a vegetarian. His teaching tour, sponsored in large part by DVA, is called, “Compassion for all Beings.” Geshe-la currently works as a professor at Eastern Washington University.
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is an English Monk resident in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Thailand since 1987. He was fully ordained in the Theravāda tradition in Sri Lanka in 1996 and is currently advisor to the International Buddhist College in south Thailand. Since ordination he has been involved in many Dharma works and teachings, working both as a writer, teacher and photographer, and as webmaster on various sites for his own and others’ works. Bhante has been vegetarian since early childhood and is now vegan. He also does whatever he can to promote human rights, animal rights, and a better understanding of our shared lives on this planet.
He has received a Ph.D. in both Buddhist studies in Taiwan and philosophy in Vietnam. Venerable Thich Thanh Huan is the abbot of the famous 1,000-year-old Pháp Vân Pagoda in Hanoi, Vietnam. The Venerable is also a member of the influential Standing Committee of the Vietnamese Buddhist Sangha (VBS), which is the home to 50,000 monastics, 15,000 Buddhist temples, and tens of millions of followers. The Venerable practices non-harming and compassion by not eating or otherwise using animal products, teaches numerous classes on vegetarianism and promotes a plant-based diet, and, as a member of the Advisory Council of DVA, helps connect DVA with Vietnam.
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Patti Breitman has been meditating since 1973 and practicing Vipassana since 1991. She completed the first Mindfulness Yoga training offered at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and participated in the Dedicated Practitioner Program there, where she has been a member of the Friday morning Sangha for well over 20 years. She also is a long time member of the Sunday night Marin Sangha, started by Spirit Rock teacher Phillip Moffitt. Patti is the co-author of How to Eat Like a Vegetarian, Even If You Never Want To Be One and of Never Too Late to Go Vegan. She is the co-founder and director of The Marin Vegetarian Education Group. Patti is a DVA co-founder and past secretary.
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Dr. Will Tuttle, a Dharma Master in the Korean Zen tradition and former Zen monk, has been practicing Zen for over 35 years, and has also studied in the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. Author of the acclaimed best-seller, The World Peace Diet, he is a recipient of the Courage of Conscience Award, and has created eight CD albums of uplifting original piano music. His Ph.D. from U.C., Berkeley, focused on educating intuition and altruism and was nominated for the best dissertation award. A vegan since 1980, he presents 150 lectures, workshops, and concerts annually throughout North America and Europe.
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Albert Mah is a former vice-president of the Buddhist Society of Western Australia and a former treasurer of Hayagriva Buddhist Centre in Perth, Australia. He is currently a dharma teacher at the Buddhist Society of Western Australia giving lessons to the senior school class. He is a vegan, plays an active role in animal advocacy, the vegan way of living and social justice. He lives with a greyhound who was discarded by the racing industry after his racing career ended. Albert believes that when one contemplates suffering deeply one realizes that a life of minimum harm has to incorporate abstention from eating animal flesh and consuming animal products. He is the Chapter Leader of DVA’s Perth, Australia Chapter.
Endorsements & Contributors
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Kyabje Chatral Sangye Dorje Rinpoche* (1913-2015) was widely regarded as one of the most highly realized Dzogchen Masters. Chatral Rinpoche was married to Sangyum Kamala Rinpoche and had two daughters. When Father Thomas Merton first met him in 1968, he famously remarked that Chatral Rinpoche was “the greatest man I ever met.” Rinpoche was one of the most vocal opponents of meat-eating in Tibetan Buddhism. During the traditional long retreat and at all of Rinpoche’s monasteries, temples, and retreat centers, only vegetarian food was served. Chatral Rinpoche was renowned for releasing large numbers of fishes from the Calcutta fish markets every year, as well as saving many birds and land animals from slaughter. We are very honored that Chatral Rinpoche endorsed DVA “for speaking out on behalf of animals in the worldwide Buddhist Community.” DVA was the only organization in the West that he ever endorsed. We are deeply saddened that Chatral Rinpoche passed away in December, 2015.
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Sangyum Kamala Lama is a lineage holder of the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism and heart disciple of His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche. She was also a disciple and sangyum (wife) of another Dharma Voices for Animals Contributor, His Holiness Kyabje Chatral Rinpoche, who passed away in December, 2015 and was considered the greatest living Dzogchen master. They had been married for over 50 years. Kamala Lama is widely regarded as an outstanding practitioner and Dharma teacher. DVA hopes to sponsor Rinpoche for a teaching tour, “Compassion for all Beings,” in the near future.
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Norm Phelps* (1939-2014) was a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner in the Sakya tradition for 30 years. He was a member of the North American Committee of the Institute for Critical Animal Studies, and author of The Great Compassion: Buddhism and Animal Rights and The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA, both published by Lantern Books. We are deeply saddened that Norm passed away on December 31, 2014.
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Vee Cangiano is a valuable DVA volunteer. He redesigned the current DVA website improving its appearance and making it more mobile friendly. Upon starting to study Buddhist psychology and Insight meditation in 2000, Vee became vegetarian, and later vegan, out of compassion for animals. Through guest speakers, film screenings, and digital media efforts, Vee advocates for plant-based eating as a means to end animal suffering. In addition to facilitating groups to support mindful eating among spiritual vegans, Vee has led mindfulness meditation sitting groups and trainings, and incorporated mindfulness practices in clinical mental health as a Licensed Professional Counselor.
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Greg Schmidt has been a Buddhist practitioner and student of the Dhamma for over 30 years. He adopted veganism in 2015 while working on his Master’s degree in Buddhist Studies at the International Buddhist College, Songkhla Thailand. Greg’s thesis work on Buddhism and vegetarianism brought him into contact with DVA in 2018. Since joining DVA as a contributor, Greg has helped develop materials for social media outreach, local chapter support, and online learning. Greg is an active supporter of the Dhamma in the online community, leading several Facebook groups on Buddhism, vegetarianism, and mindfulness, as well as serving as a mentor for the online course Buddhism and Modern Psychology.
Greg has recently created DVA’s Buddhist FAQ page where we provide answers to the most asked questions regarding Buddhism and plant-based living.
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Mary Wilder has been a graphic designer for over twenty-five years and is an avid supporter and friend of DVA. Mary is very honored for the opportunity to support the DVA cause by developing the Dharma Voices for Animals logo and original website.
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A lifelong animal advocate and videography enthusiast, Harriet has spent years traveling around the world immersing herself in diverse cultures and perspectives. Now, convinced that farmed animals are enduring the greatest suffering in modern society, she is driven by a deep commitment to ending factory farming and is working as an intern and volunteer for DVA - specializing in supporting our Communications Director with social media content creation and education campaigns.
Dharma Teachers & Members
DVA has thousands of members worldwide. By becoming a member, you’ll support efforts to raise awareness within Dharma communities about practices that lead to animal suffering. Our community of Dharma teachers and members is growing every day.
Work with DVA
Passionate about helping animals?
Want to dedicate more time to the cause?
Wish you could inspire Buddhsit communities to do the same?
Help animals within Buddhist communities by working with DVA. If you’re unsure if you qualify, we encourage you to apply anyway—many people underestimate their own abilities when they are more than capable!
We are committed to building a diverse staff and offer equal opportunity to all applicants regardless of race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, and age.
