Carl Erik Fisher

meditation group leader and instructor

Carl is a Zen Buddhist practitioner.  Before coming to CUMC he lived in Seoul, Korea, where he trained extensively in the Kwan Um School of Chogye Zen Buddhism and was accepted as a personal student of Ven. Hyon Gak Su Nim.  He has participated in many long-term retreats with the monks of Hwa Gye temple.  He is currently a second-year medical student at Columbia, where he works with psychiatrists and other medical practitioners at the Center for Integrative Medicine.  He views meditation as exercise for the brain: an entirely secular, non-mystical process of awakening.