Matt Weinstein, a reincarnated Californian, grew up in Southern Ohio and lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. An obvious extrovert and self-styled ‘itinerant speaker,’ Matt enjoys talking with large and small groups of people, and once was accused by a friend of “being able to talk to a tree.” Despite his interest and experience giving lectures on rather cerebral topics, Matt is an entertainer at heart. Through his humorous, off-the-cuff style of speaking, Matt consistently tricks his audiences into having fun and learning about themselves at the same time. 

Matt is a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School, where he studied Buddhism and Neoplatonism. Prior to moving to Massachusetts, Matt studied at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, where he was first exposed to Buddhism. Since completing a graduate degree in Buddhist studies, Matt has learned that his first cousin once removed is a professor of East Asian studies at the University of Cincinnati, and his great-grandmother was a dealer of Japanese and Korean religious antiquities. What once seemed to him as something new, exciting, and unprecedented has since revealed itself to be the family business and perhaps even a bit of a trope. Matt is looking forward to sharing with you some of the insights he has gathered over the course of his life and studies.