Roshi Ray
Roshi Cicetti studied with Roshi Robert Kennedy, S. J. for fifteen years in the White Plum lineage and received dharma transmission in 2004, as a lay teacher, becoming Roshi Kennedy’s sixth successor. Ray Ruzan was officially authorized as a roshi by his teacher on January 10, 2019. Roshi Cicetti is founder of the Empty Bowl Zendo, where he has been a teacher since 2004, and a Preceptor since 2011. He has 2 dharma successors and 2 dharma holders.
Roshi Ray is a psychotherapist in private practice with an emphasis on stress related problems, relationship issues, and bringing spirit back into the therapeutic relationship. Roshi is married with a grown son and two grandchildren.
Sensei Michele
Sensei Michele Keido Daniels, dharma heir to Roshi Ray Ruzan Cicetti in the White Plum lineage received dharma transmission in March 2018 and is Roshi Cicetti’s first dharma successor.
Sensei Michele is a resident lay teacher along with Roshi Ray at The Empty Bowl Zendo. She was the zendo’s practice leader for four years before becoming a Dharma Holder. She received Jukai in 2012 and served as Shuso for two Angos. Currently she serves on the EBZ Board and organizes residential retreats. She is a former public school educator who supervised the district’s English as a Second Language and Bilingual Education Programs. Sensei Daniels now enjoys retirement with her husband.
Sensei Henry
Sensei Henry Fersko-Weiss began his Zen practice under Eido Shimano Roshi of the Zen Studies Society. In the mid-1970s he spent two years at Dai Bosatsu Zendo monastery in upstate New York. Later he studied with Bernie Glassman and his wife and successor, Jishu Sandra Holmes, of the White Plum Asanga, taking Jukai in 1998. In the early 2000s Henry sat at Heart Circle Sangha, where he started Koan study with Joan Hogetsu Hoeberichts Roshi. In 2017 Henry began sitting at Empty Bowl Zendo, intensifying his Koan study with Roshi Ray Cicetti.
A Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Henry has worked in hospice and created the first U.S. end-of-life doula program at a hospice in New York City in 2003. He has worked actively as a death doula and trained a great many other people to serve the dying. He co-founded the International End Of Life Doula Association and served as Executive Director until semi-retiring at the end of 2021. Henry wrote the book Finding Peace at the End of Life. He continues to teach about end of life, has a small private therapy practice, and does bereavement counseling for Orange and Sullivan hospice. Henry is a husband, father, and grandfather.
Sensei Alice
Sensei Alice Denkō Potz, a dharma heir to Roshi Robert Kennedy and dharma sister to Roshi Ray Cicetti, is a German-American Catholic theologian, social pedagogue and journalist, born in Hungary; her family fled to Germany during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. Her first Zen master was Brigitte Koun-An D’Ortschy in Munich, Germany in the 1980s. She went on to study with Zen master and Maryknoll Sister Kathleen Reiley, and Roshi Niklaus Brantschen, S.J., of Switzerland. She has worked for the Catholic News Agency KNA in Germany, and in Switzerland in different positions at Lassalle-Haus Bad Schönbrunn, a spiritual and educational center of the Jesuit Order.
In the United States Alice Potz became a Zen student of Robert Kennedy Roshi in the1990s. She has taught theology and sociology as an adjunct instructor at St. Peter’s University in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Alice is also a certified doctor’s assistant and has worked in Germany in a doctor’s office for a few years. Feeling at home in both traditions, she is interested in the connection of Zen and Christian spirituality in terms of daily practice and the healing effects of meditation on our hearts and minds.
Alice is married and lives in Jersey City and some time every year in Germany.
Dharma Holder
Jacky Fernandez
Jacky is a Dharma Holder in the White Plum lineage under her teacher, Roshi Ray Ruzan Cicetti. She received Jukai at Empty Bowl in 2019.
Jacky started practicing Zen meditation in 1999 as a student of Roshi Kurt Kankan Spellmeyer of Cold Mountain Zen in New Jersey, and subsequently became a lay student at Zen Mountain Monastery under Shugen Roshi. She has studied Zen, Vipassana, and Tibetan Buddhism. Jacky is a psychotherapist in private practice, with an emphasis on mindfulness, addictions, grief, anxiety, life transitions, and Buddhist psychology. A Certified Mindfulness Teacher with the International Mindfulness Teachers Association, Jacky is married and has two canine companions.