Evan Britzius

Biography

At a young age Evan felt a casual and natural spiritual resonance within his loose Christian upbringing. During the summer following his high school graduation he started meditating with his Thai step-grandmother, a practicing Buddhist. This led to a deepening yearning and further exploration of Buddhist teachings.

In college he eventually embraced a haphazard universalist approach to spiritual practice. Propelled by the teachings of Ram Dass and an unexpected mentor, Evan began practicing yoga regularly and was eventually initiated into the Himalayan Yogic Tradition in 2013.

Following a move from Duluth to Minneapolis, Evan began attending Minnesota Zen Meditation Center. The center and its teachers struck Evan as refreshing contemporary examples of embodied spiritual practice. Evan also found MZMC’s emphasis on transforming suffering through compassionate awareness, combined with the student teacher relationship, to be both immensely healing and grounding.

Giving himself to practice and his aspiration, he received lay initiation in 2017 with Ben Connelly and was ordained as a priest in training with Ted O’Toole in the backyard of MZMC in November of 2020.