Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara is the co-founder and abbot emerita of the Village Zendo. The Village Zendo is a combined Soto and Rinzai Zen practice center in the White Plum tradition, located in lower Manhattan.

Founded in 1986, the Village Zendo began as an informal sitting group in the home she shared with her partner, Joshin O’Hara. The sangha soon outgrew their small Greenwich Village apartment and is currently sited in the historic American Thread Building in Tribeca.

O’Hara was born in Dallas, Texas, but spent her early years in Tijuana, Mexico, crossing the border daily to attend Catholic school. She would later draw on her experience of feeling like an outsider in developing her commitment to socially engaged forms of Zen practice.

She first studied Zen with John Daido Loori, and then began to work directly with his teacher Taizan Maezumi Roshi who had come to the United States from Japan. After Maezumi’s death, she continued her practice with Bernie Tetsugen Glassman who empowered her as a teacher. She received Inka, or confirmation, from him in 2004.

O’Hara has a doctorate in media studies from UC Berkeley, and was one of the founders of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU.

The early years of the Village Zendo coincided with the height of the AIDS crisis in New York. O’Hara co-led a meditation group for HIV positive people at the Gay Men’s Health Crisis with Robert Genjin Savage, an early leader in the sangha. She was also a co-founder of the Zen Peacemaker Order, a community that engages in social action around the world.

Today the Village Zendo sangha remains committed to social justice and activism, and its affiliate groups include a temple at Sing Sing prison.

O’Hara is the author of two books on Zen practice and philosophy, Most Intimate, A Zen Approach to LIfe’s Challenges, published by Shambhala Press and  A Little Bit of Zen, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism, published by Union Square & Co. She speaks and teaches widely and her work has been featured in Tricycle, Lion’s Roar, and other publications.

O’Hara’s dharma transmission is continued through seventeen dharma successors and multiple affiliate and associated groups in locations cluding Catskill and New Paltz, New York, Northern New Jersey, Hyanis and Jersey, Hyannis and Northampton, Massachusetts, Sedona, Arizona and La Paz, Bolivia.

In 2024, O’Hara stepped down as Abbot. She continues to practice and offers dharma talks as an ongoing leader of the sangha.