About me

I am an Associate Professor based in Auckland, working across three interconnected strands: psychology, Buddhist thought and practice, and poetry.

My academic work draws on psychological science to explore mindfulness, cognition, and lived experience. Alongside this, my engagement with Buddhist traditions informs both the questions I ask and the ways in which they are approached—through attention, inquiry, and contemplative practice.

These two strands do not run separately. Rather, they meet in an ongoing dialogue between conceptual understanding and direct experience: between what can be studied, and what can be observed in the unfolding of awareness.

Poetry forms a third strand. Writing as Rowan Taw, I use verse as a way of approaching experience differently—not to explain, but to gesture, to open, and at times to remain with what does not resolve into concepts.

These strands come together in my book, Mindfulness Through Science and Verse: Finger Pointing at the Moon and continue here in different forms: academic publications, Buddhist writings, poetry, and current projects.

Not separate paths, but different ways of tracing the same ground.

Heather

H.kempton@massey.ac.nz