LAMA SURYA DAS

BIOGRAPHY

Lama Surya Das is one of the foremost Western Buddhist meditation teachers and scholars. Born Jeffrey Miller, he was raised in Valley Stream on New York's Long Island, where he celebrated his bar mitzvah and earned letters in basketball, baseball, and soccer at Valley Stream Central High School (class of 1968). While a student at the State University of New York at Buffalo, he attended antiwar protests, marched on Washington, and attended Woodstock. After graduating with honors from college, he traveled throughout Europe and the East, and he has spent nearly thirty years studying Zen, vipassana, yoga, and Tibetan Buddhism with the great old masters of Asia.

Surya lived for fifteen years in the Himalayas, studied and practiced meditation and yoga under the great enlightened master of Tibet and India. He was a Buddhist monk and has twice completed the traditional three year, three month Tibetan Buddhist meditation retreat and lama training at his teacher's monastery cloister. He is the author of many top-selling books and had published numerous articles in various publications. Surya is a featured columnist in Beliefnet, the Internet’s number one site for religion. He is the Founder of the Western Buddhist Teachers Network and introduced its week-long conferences with the Dalai Lama.

Today, Lama Surya Das teaches and lectures around the world, conducting dozens of meditation retreats and workshops in ten different countries each year. Based on his relationship with the Dalai Lama, Surya Das founded the Western Buddhist Teachers Network and has organized three week-long conferences of Western Buddhist Meditation Teachers with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India. He also teaches regularly at Esalen, Open Center, Omega Institute, Interface, at universities in the United States and abroad, and at spiritual centers of all kinds.

When he's not meditating, teaching, or attending a retreat, Surya Das enjoys music, dogs, swimming, bicycling, hiking, and haiku poetry. He resides in Concord, Massachusetts, outside of Boston.

For more information about Lama Surya Das, visit:

• www.dzogchen.org/surya/index.htm
• www.dzogchen.org
• www.surya.org
• www.Surya.org/blogger.html (his blog)

SCHEDULE

Visit http://www.surya.org/tour_dates.html for Lama Das' updated schedule, or view more detailed information, scheduled teachers (including associate teachers) at http://www.dzogchen.org/teachings .

BOOKS

• Awakening the Buddha Within
  
• Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be
  
• Meditation (Compiled teachings, various teachers)
  
• Natural Great Perfection (trans. & ed.)
  
• Natural Radiance
  
• Nixon under the Bodhi Tree
  
• Tibetan Dream Yoga
  
• Tibetan Energy Yoga