Visiting Teachers
Geshe Ngawang Dakpa
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Ven. René Feusi
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Tubten Pende
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Jon Landaw
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Ven. Tenzin Chogkyi
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Ven. Robina Courtin
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Karuna Cayton
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Rob Preece
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Ven. Losang Gendun
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Ven. Amy Miller
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Glen Svensson
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Don Handrick
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Ven. Angie Muir
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Ven. Thubten Chodron
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Don Isaacson
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Guy Newland
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Geshe Ngawang Dakpa serves as resident teacher at Tse Chen Ling Center in San Francisco. He was born in Nangchu, northeast of Lhasa, Tibet. He became a monk at the age of ten. At the monastery he studied both Dharma and secular subjects extensively before entering Sera Je Monastery eleven years later. He fled Tibet in 1959. Upon his arrival in India, Geshe-la not only continued his monastic studies, but also spent three years at the Sanskrit University in Benares, earning an MA with honors. Invited by the Queen of Sikkim, he taught at the University of Sikkim for nearly 20 years before returning to Sera monastery in South India and obtaining his Geshe degree.
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Ordained by the Dalai Lama more than thirty years ago, Swiss monk René Feusi has studied with some of the greatest scholars and inspiring lamas in the Tibetan diaspora. He has also performed numerous extensive retreats, including a two-and-a-half-year seclusion focused on developing mental stability. He has led large Buddhist events in Europe, Asia, and North America, and he has students worldwide. The resident teacher at Vajrapani Institute in the Santa Cruz mountains from 2001 to 2007, he now splits his time equally between teaching and retreat. He lives in Tonasket, WA. He has recently published The Beautiful Way of Life: A Meditation on Shantideva's Bodhisattva Path.
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Ven. Tenzin Chogkyi first became interested in meditation after reading "Be Here Now" and "Autobiography of a Yogi" in the early ’70’s. For the next 20 years, her spiritual path was meandering and haphazard, and included several dead ends, until she bought a one-way ticket to India in early 1991 with the intention of meeting His Holiness the Dalai Lama. She then became a student not only of His Holiness, but also of Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche and Lama Zopa Rinpoche during the year she spent studying at Tushita Meditation Centre in Dharamsala and Kopan Monastery in Kathmandu.
After returning to the US, Tenzin Chogkyi worked at various positions within Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s organization, the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition – director of Vajrapani Institute, co-director of FPMT International Office, FPMT Center Services Coordinator – and also completed several long meditation retreats. She took novice ordination in 2004 with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and since 2006 she has been teaching at various FPMT centers around the globe. She is a regular teacher at centers in North and South America, India, Nepal, Australia, and New Zealand, and a visiting teacher for the Liberation Prison Project, having taught in prisons in the US, Colombia, Australia, and New Zealand. She is authorized by the FPMT to teach at both the Foundational and In-Depth level, and to lead long retreats. She is also a certified teacher of Cultivating Emotional Balance, a secular program in dealing with emotions developed by Alan Wallace and Paul Ekman at His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s request. In December of 2015 she returned to Vajrapani Institute in California as resident teacher. In addition to her spiritual practice, she is passionate about prison reform, animal rights, bringing an end to human trafficking and other modern forms of slavery, and equal rights for all human beings and all species. |
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Since ordaining as a nun in 1978 Ven. Robina Courtin has worked full time for Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and their Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition.
Over the years she has served as editorial director of Wisdom Publications, editor of Mandala Magazine, executive director of Liberation Prison Project, and as a touring teacher of Buddhism. In 2001, Courtin created Chasing Buddha Pilgrimage, which lead pilgrimages to Buddhist holy sites in India, Nepal, and Tibet to raise money for the Liberation Prison Project, an association engaged for the Tibetan cause. Known for her extraordinary energy and fiery compassion, Ven. Robina's life and work have been the subject of documentary films Chasing Buddha and Key to Freedom. |
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Ven. Losang Gendun is a Buddhist monk of Dutch descent and has been residing the past ten years at Nalanda Monastery in France. He was previously employed in the refugee sector and practiced Theravada Buddhism for nearly thirty years. After having studied Buddhist philosophy for eight years at Nalanda, he is now engaged in long term meditative retreats.
Gendun is deeply involved in various interfaith dialogues in France, and cooperates with a Mevlana Sufi organisation in Turkey. He teaches in centers in France, The Netherlands and Monaco and leads retreats internationally. |
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Amy J. Miller (Ven. Lobsang Chodren) first encountered Tibetan Buddhism in the spring of 1987 during a course at Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Since then, she has spent a great deal of time engaged in meditation retreats, study, teaching, and Buddhist center management throughout the world. Prior to meeting the Dharma, Amy was a political fundraiser in Washington, DC and also worked for Mother Jones Magazine in San Francisco, California.
From 1992-1995, Amy managed Tse Chen Ling Center in San Francisco, California. She then served as Director of Vajrapani Institute, also in California, from 1995–2004. From 1998–2002, she was also the Manager of the Lawudo Retreat Fund (which supports the center in which the sacred cave of Kyabje Zopa Rinpoche is located) in the Mt. Everest region of Nepal. In 2004, after resigning as Director, Amy completed a seven-month solitary retreat at Vajrapani. For most of 2005 and 2006, she organized international teaching tours for and traveled with the esteemed Tibetan Buddhist master, Ven. Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche until Rinpoche’s death in 2006. Amy then became a touring teacher for the FPMT. From 2008–2014, Amy was Director of Milarepa Center in Barnet, Vermont. Amy was ordained as a Buddhist nun in June 2000 by the great Tibetan master, Ven. Choden Rinpoche, and has been teaching extensively since 1992. Her teaching style emphasizes a practical approach to integrating Buddhist philosophy into everyday life. She is happy to help people connect with meditation and mindfulness in an effort to gain a refreshing perspective on normally stressful living. Amy’s courses and retreats focus on establishing and maintaining a meditation and mindfulness practice, death and dying, overcoming anxiety and depression, battling addiction, dealing with self-esteem issues, and cultivating compassion and loving kindness. She is also often involved in leading a variety of retreats. Amy is the co-author of Buddhism in a Nutshell and a contributor to Living in the Path, a series of online courses produced by FPMT. Based in the United States, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Amy teaches and leads retreats and pilgrimages around the world. Her teaching schedule and other information can be found at www.AmyMiller.com. |
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Ven. Angie Muir, a Tibetan Buddhist Nun from Scotland, has been ordained for 18 years. During this time she has studied and practiced in the East – India and Nepal – and the West, Scotland and the USA. She has also been centrally involved in serving, teaching and leading meditations at these places. She currently resides in California, serving at Lama Zopa Rinpoche's private residence.
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Venerable Thubten Chodron is an author, teacher, and the founder and abbess of Sravasti Abbey, the only Tibetan Buddhist training monastery for Western nuns and monks in the US. She graduated from UCLA, and did graduate work in education at USC. Ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun in 1977, she has studied extensively with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Tsenzhap Serkong Rinpoche, and Kyabje Zopa Rinpoche.
Ven. Chodron teaches worldwide and is known for her practical (and humorous!) explanations of how to apply Buddhist teachings in daily life. She is also involved in prison outreach and interfaith dialogue. She has published many books on Buddhist philosophy and meditation, and is the only nun who has co-authored a book with His Holiness the Dalai Lama—Buddhism: One Teacher, Many Traditions. Her latest book is Good Karma: How to Create the Causes of Happiness and Avoid the Causes of Suffering, and her Buddhism for Beginners and Open Heart, Clear Mind are widely recommended introductory books. Visit thubtenchodron.org for a media library of her teachings, and sravasti.org to learn more about the Abbey. |
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Tubten Pende is a practicing Buddhist since 1972 when he was introduced to Tibetan Buddhism in India. Pende was included in the first wave of the FPMT’s Western Buddhist teachers. He was the coordinator of the Geshe Studies Program at Manjushri Institute, England; spiritual program coordinator, director, and later resident teacher at Nalanda Monastery, France; and an FPMT International Office Education Services program developer of the Masters Program at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa, Italy. He is interested in the effective application of Buddhist theory and practice in the daily life of ordinary people.
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Jon Landaw was born in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1944. He received his A.B. degree in English Literature from Dartmouth College in 1965 and spent three years teaching English as a Second Language with the Peace Corps in Iran (1966-69).
Jon worked as English editor for the Translation Bureau of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives (1972-77) producing numerous texts under the guidance of Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey. As a student of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche since the mid-1970's, he has edited numerous works for Wisdom Publications, including “Wisdom Energy” and “Introduction to Tantra.” He is also the author of “Prince Siddhartha,” a biography of Buddha for children, “Images of Enlightenment,” published by Snow Lion in 1993 and “Buddhism for Dummies”. As an instructor of Buddhist meditation, he has taught in numerous Dharma centers throughout the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. Jon is known for his ability to present traditional Buddhist ideas in ways that are accessible and relevant for everyday life. He and his wife currently live in Capitola. |
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Karuna Cayton has been a student of Buddhist psychology and philosophy for over 40 years. A long time student of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, he worked for the lamas at Kopan Monastery from 1975-1988. During that time he created and taught the secular studies program for the resident Tibetan and Nepali monks. He also assisted in running the Buddhist programs for foreign visitors and was the co-founder and director of the city center in Kathmandu, Himalayan Yogic Institute.
After returning to the US in 1988 he received his MA in Clinical Psychology from JFK University in 1992. He has worked at the Children's Health Council at Stanford University and trained interns in Narrative Therapy at Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto. Presently, he is the director of The Karuna Group a coaching and counseling project. The Karuna Group works with individuals, couples and families as well as assists business leaders in transforming their organizations into preeminent enterprises based upon the Buddhist principles of Wisdom, Compassion, and Ethics. Karuna also teaches workshops and classes in the integration of western and Buddhist psychology. |
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Rob Preece has been a practicing Tibetan Buddhist for the past 40 years. He was a founding member of Manjushri Institute in the UK and lived there until 1980 when he went into retreat above Dharamsala on the guidance of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
Returning to the west in 1985 he began to train as a Psychotherapist at the Centre for Transpersonal Psychology in London, a Jungian based psychotherapy. Since that time he has had a busy psychotherapy practice and has taught many workshops on comparative Jungian and Buddhist Psychology. More recently his work has shifted from psychotherapy to spiritual mentoring. Over the past 25 years Rob has also lead many meditation retreats introducing the practices of the Tantric tradition with a wish to honor Lama Yeshe’s profound and creative approach to practice. Rob is an experienced thangka painter and keen gardener and is the father of two boys. He is the author of "The Psychology of Buddhist Tantra", "The Wisdom of Imperfection", "The Courage to Feel", "Preparing for Tantra" and "Feeling Wisdom". |
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Glen Svensson (originally from Queensland, Australia) has been a student and practitioner of Buddhism since 1995 and graduated from the seven-year Masters Program in Advanced Buddhist Studies of Sutra and Tantra at the Lama Tzong Khapa Institute in Italy in 2004.
Since 2005, with a teaching style emphasizing clarity, he has taught extensively in Australia, Europe and also India where he frequently leads both introductory and intermediate level courses in Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and meditation at Tushita Meditation Centre in the town of McLeod Ganj (Dharamsala), home-in-exile of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. |
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Don Handrick is the resident teacher at Thubten Norbu Ling Buddhist Center in Santa Fe, NM, and he teaches for the FPMT at the Ksitigarbha Tibetan Buddhist Center in Taos, NM. Don also serves as a Buddhist teacher for Liberation Prison Project, which includes teaching Buddhism at a local prison in New Mexico. Don's study and practice of Buddhism began in 1993 when he read The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche. Over the next two years he practiced with Rigpa, Sogyal Rinpoche's organization, until he began attending classes with Venerable Robina Courtin at Tse Chen Ling, the FPMT center in San Francisco.
At the beginning of 1998, Don left the Bay Area to attend the FPMT's Masters Program of Buddhist Studies in Sutra and Tantra, a full-time seven-year residential study program in Tuscany, Italy, taught by the incomparable scholar and kind Spiritual Friend, Geshe Jampa Gyatso. By 2004, he successfully completed all five subjects of the program and received an FPMT final certificate with high honors. Soon after, Don moved to Santa Fe and served as the Spiritual Program Coordinator for Thubten Norbu Ling, and in 2006 he was appointed Resident Teacher. |
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Don Isaacson is an advanced Dharma student having followed the FPMT Basic Program courses in person for many years, and the FPMT Masters Program online, 2008 to 2013. Don currently serves on the Board of Directors at Land of Medicine Buddha in Soquel.
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Guy Newland is Professor of Religion of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Central Michigan University, where he has taught since 1988. He holds a Ph.D. in the history of religions from the University of Virginia, where he studied Tibetan Buddhism with Jeffrey Hopkins. Newland has also studied with many Tibetan scholars in the U.S. and India.
He is a translator and co-editor of the three-volume translation The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, and is the author of several books on Tibetan Buddhism, including The Two Truths, Appearance and Reality, and Introduction to Emptiness. More recently he has translated and edited From Here to Enlightenment by the Dalai Lama and founded the Central Michigan Sangha. |