Dzogchen Center Cambridge

Who We Are

Teachers

Lama Surya Das, Lama John Makransky, Lama Choying Palmo

Lama Surya Das

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 more than thirty years studying Zen, vipassana, yoga, and Tibetan Buddhism with many of the great old masters of Asia.

Today, Lama Surya Das teaches and lectures around the world, conducting dozens of meditation retreats and workshops each year. Based on his relationship with His Holiness 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.

Lama Surya is the author of the "Awakening Trilogy" -- Awakening the Buddha within: Eight Steps to Enlightenment (Broadway Books, 1997), which appeared on Publishers Weekly Religion Bestseller list, and on lists at the Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, and Christian Science Monitor; Awakening To the Sacred: Building a Spiritual Life from Scratch (Broadway Books, 1999); and Awakening the Buddhist Heart: Integrating Love, Meaning and Connection into Every Part of Your Life (Broadway Books, 2000). His book Letting Go of the Person You Used To Be: Lessons on Change, Loss and Spiritual Transformation was released in August, 2003. With his latest offering, Natural Radiance (Sounds True; Aug 2005), through the unique format of a book with a CD, Lama Surya teaches for the first time a complete daily Dzogchen practice in the oral tradition as it was originally transmitted, including guided meditations and chants.

A regular contributor to Tricycle magazine, New Age, and Yoga Journal, he is also the author of The Snow Lion's Turquoise Mane: 155 Wisdom Tales from Tibet (1992), and coauthor of Natural Great Perfection: Vajra Songs and Dzogchen Teachings (1995).

Lama John Makransky

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Lama John Makransky has practiced Buddhism since 1978 under the guidance of revered Nyingma, Gelug, and Kagyu teachers of the Tibetan tradition. He is a Lama in the lineage of the Dzogchen Master Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche and his western dharma heir Lama Surya Das. He is also a professor of Buddhism and Comparative Theology at Boston College, and senior faculty advisor for Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche's Center for Buddhist Studies in Nepal, where he often lectures.

Lama John teaches regularly at Dzogchen Center retreats where he has become renowned for his ability to help participants discover compassion for self and others as the natural outflow of their own inmost being. Drawing from his training in Kadampa teachings of compassion and Dzogchen teachings of innate wisdom, using plain, simple instruction, he helps participants uncover the unity of love and wisdom in the very nature of their minds, the heart of spiritual refuge and enlightenment.

Lama Choying Palmo

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Lama Choying Palmo (Willa Baker) has studied and practiced in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition for the last twenty years, and is an authorized lama in the Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Her teachers include the late Venerable Kalu Rinpoche, Venerable Dilgo Khentse Rinpoche, Lama Norlha Rinpoche, Khenpo Tsultrim Gyatso Rinpoche, Bokar Rinpoche, and other teachers from all schools of Tibetan Buddhism.

She completed two three-year retreats at Kagyu Thubten Choling Monastery in Wappingers Falls, NY, serving as assistant teacher, retreat master (drupon), and translator for her second retreat. Before and after her retreats, she spent time in Nepal, Tibet, and India, studying Buddhism and engaging in service work.

She has an M.A. in Buddhist Studies from the University of Virginia, and is working towards a PhD at Harvard University. She currently teaches Tibetan Buddhist practice and meditation at Dharma centers in the Northeast.