Keren Arbel has been immersed in Buddhist practice since 1997, practicing with variety of teachers in Asia and the West. Keren also holds a PhD in Buddhist Studies.
Keren has a deep commitment to exploring the mind’s natural freedom. She has been teaching in the Insight (vipassana) tradition, guiding practitioners in both short and long retreats and she is a co-founder and a teacher at “Nalanda”: year long programs dedicated to contemplative study of the Buddhist path.
Since 2010, she dedicates two months each year to silent, solitary practice. This rhythm—immersing herself in extended, silent retreat and then returning to daily life, relationships, and teaching—enables the insights that arise from deep silence to take root and become liberating within everyday experience. Throughout the years, she has also practiced and studied in other Buddhist traditions, which serve as a great source of inspiration and guide her in both practice and teaching. Her extensive experience brings a profound understanding of the subtleties of Buddhist meditation, enriched by a deep knowledge of early Buddhist texts.
Her approach emphasizes the potential in every moment to awaken from what obscures clarity and freedom. Her teachings foster deep well-being through the body, the cultivation of kindness, openness, and a playful inquiry of experience. This deeply embodied and open exploration allows liberating wisdom to arise, revealing a freedom that is not bound to any particular experience.
Books
Early Buddhist Meditation
The Four Jhānas as the
Actualization of Insight
Routledge · 2019
To the book
Sayings of the Buddha
Translations from the
Early Buddhist Texts
Tel Aviv University Press · 2017
To the book
The Four Jhānas
Spaces of Wisdom
and Freedom
Bodhisafra · 2024
To the book
Traces of Freedom
A Chronicle of Awakening
Bodhisafra · 2026
To the book