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How can one take delight in the world unless one flees to it for refuge? Franz Kafka |
Lama Surya Das (born 1950) is an American-born lama in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. He is a poet, chantmaster, spiritual activist and author of many popular works on Buddhism; a teacher and spokesperson for Buddhism in the West. He has long been involved in charitable relief projects in the Third World and in interfaith dialogue. Surya Das is a Dharma heir of Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche, a Nyingma master of the non-sectarian Rime movement. His name, which means "Servant of the Sun" in a combination of Sanskrit (sūrya) and Hindi (das, from the Sanskrit dāsa), was given to him by the Hindu guru Neem Karoli Baba.
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Lama Surya Das was born Jeffrey Miller and raised in Valley Steam, Long Island, New York. He attended the State University of New York at Buffalo, graduating in 1971, with a degree in Creative Education.
After his best friend's girlfriend, Allison Krause was killed during the Kent State shootings, Surya Das began his spiritual journey.
From 1971 to 1976 he traveled in India and Nepal, and studied with spiritual teachers of various traditions: Hindu teacher, Maharaj-ji (Neem Karoli Baba), Tibetan Buddhist Lamas Thubten Yeshe, Kalu Rinpoche and His Holiness the 16thGyalwa Karmapa. In 1973 and 1974, he lived in Kyoto, Japan, where he taught English and studied Zen Buddhism under Uchiyama Roshi. He resided at the newly established Karma Triyana Dharmachakra monastery in Woodstock, New York from 1977–80. He also studied Vipassana in the 1970s, with S. N. Goenka and Anagarika Munindra, of the Theravadin tradition.
Surya Das attended the first Nyingmapa retreat center in Dordogne, France in 1980. At the center he completed two three and a half year retreats under the guidance of Dudjom Rinpoche and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. He was ordained a lama in the Non-Sectarian Rime movement of Tibetan Buddhism.
Surya Das travels, teaches and leads meditation retreats throughout the world. He is often called upon as a Buddhist spokesman by the media and has appeared frequently on TV and radio. One episode of the popular ABC TV sitcom Dharma and Greg, called "Leonard's Return," was loosely based on his life and return to America. In 1977 he helped establish Gyalwa Karmapa's KTD Monastery on a mountaintop overlooking Woodstock, New York. In the 1990s Lama Surya Das organized several weeklong International Buddhist Teachers Conferences with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, and America.
He has appeared as a special guest on Bill Maher's TV program, Politically Incorrect and on the Comedy Central television show, The Colbert Report. His most recent best selling book is Buddha Is as Buddha Does: The Ten Original Practices for Enlightened Living. Das is based in Cambridge, MA.
In 1991 Lama Surya Das returned from his two decades in Tibetan monasteries and retreats to establish the Dzogchen Foundation and Centers to help further the spread of Tibetan Buddhism in the West.
Surya Das has described Dzogchen the following way:
He brought many Tibetan lamas to teach and reside in the United States and continues to do so. At the request of the late Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche, Surya Das founded Dzogchen Osel Ling Retreat Center as a nature sanctuary, group hermitage and lineage seat outside Austin, Texas, where he conducts annually an intensive, cloistered 100-day autumn retreat for experienced students as well as other shorter retreats during the year.
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