Teachers


Amy Cayton

Amy has been a student of Lama Zopa Rinpoche since 1996, and a practicing mental health professional since 1987. She has been working with the FPMT Service Seminars as co-creator and developer since 2001.  She has served as FPMT North America Regional Coordinator.  Additionally, Amy rescues and rehabilitates cats as a form of Dharma practice (and because it is fun).

Venerable Lozang Yönten

Bhikshuni Lozang Yönten

Bhikshuni Lozang Yönten is currently the Chaplain and Lecturer of a Buddhist Studies at Maitripa College in Portland, Oregon. Ven. Yönten has been a nun since 2003.  Buddhist since her teenage years, Ven. Yönten moved to Australia and studied extensively under Gyurmé Khensur Rinpoche Geshe Tashi Tsering (at Chenrezig Institute, AU) from 2002-2009 before moving to India to study at Thosamling Institute 2010-2011. In 2012, she became an accredited In-Depth Registered Teacher with FPMT and was requested to become the Resident Teacher at Kunsang Yeshe Retreat Centre in New South Wales, Australia where she remained for three years and frequently…

Bob Stahl

Bob Stahl

Bob Stahl is a co-author of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, Living With Your Heart Wide Open, Calming the Rush of Panic, and A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook for Anxiety. Bob is the Guiding teacher at Insight Santa Cruz and visiting teacher at Spirit Rock and Insight Meditation. He also founded and directs mindfulness-based stress reduction programs at Dominican Hospital and El Camino Hospital and serves as a Senior Teacher for Oasis, the institute for mindfulness-based professional education and innovation of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Dave Smith - CEB

Dave Smith

Dave is an internationally recognized Buddhist meditation teacher, addiction treatment specialist, and published author. His background is rooted in the Insight Meditation tradition and he was empowered to teach through the Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society. He has extensive experience bringing meditative interventions into jails, prisons, youth detention centers and addiction treatment facilities. Dave teaches residential meditation retreats and classes, provides training and consulting in both secular and Buddhist contexts, and works with students through his meditation mentoring program. He recently founded the Secular Dharma Foundation and lives in Paonia, Colorado. Dave is an active student in the Cultivating…

Don Handrick

Don Handrick is a touring teacher for the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), sharing the Dharma with centers and study groups in North America and other parts of the world, both in-person and online. Don’s study of Buddhism began in 1993 after reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche. Over the next two years he practiced with Sogyal Rinpoche’s organization, until he began attending classes in 1996 with Venerable Robina Courtin at Tse Chen Ling in San Francisco. Don left the Bay Area in 1998 to attend the FPMT’s Masters Program of Buddhist Studies in Sutra…

Elaine Jackson

Elaine Jackson is a founding member of Vajrapani Institute and has been a student of Tibetan Buddhism since 1977. She has studied with many of the greatest Buddhist teachers of our time including His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Lama Thubten Yeshe, Kyabje Zong Rinpoche, Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche and many others too numerous to list. Elaine is known for the warmth and humor with which she teaches. In particular, she loves sharing the wealth of practical insights she has gained from her years of retreat and service within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Elaine served as Executive Director of Vajrapani Institute…

Emily Hsu

Emily Hsu completed FPMT’s seven-year Masters Program of Sutra and Tantra at Istituto Lama Tsong Khapa in Italy, a program based on the geshe studies curriculum, graduating in 2004 with high honors. Upon completion, Emily engaged in a ten-month solitary retreat in Spain to integrate the material. She subsequently taught at the San Francisco Bay Area centers for ten years, serving as the resident teacher of Ocean of Compassion Buddhist center before departing in 2016 to focus more on retreat. Emily currently divides her time between doing retreat and teaching in the United States and abroad. She emphasizes meditation, emptiness,…

Eve Ekman

Eve Ekman is the Director of Training at the University of California Berkeley Greater Good Science Center. Ekman’s research interests were inspired by her experience as a medical social worker in the emergency department of San Francisco General Hospital coupled with her training in the applied emotion regulation and mindfulness intervention: Cultivating Emotional Balance, CEB.  Eve lives in her beloved hometown of San Francisco. When she is not writing, she is surfing, cooking and getting lost in nature.

François Lecointre

François has been studying and practicing Buddhism in FPMT centres since 1994 after meeting the Dharma during the Kopan course. He was the director of Kalachakra Centre in Paris (France) from 1997 to 1999. He then became Spiritual Programme Coordinator in Institut Vajra Yogini in 2001. From 2002 to 2020, he has been directing Institut Vajra Yogini (IVY), managing this busy residential center in southwest France and hosting a CPMT meeting and three one-month retreats with Lama Zopa Rinpoche. In June 2020, François joined the International Office as Teacher Services and Communications director. In March 2021, he also took on…

Geshe Gelek Chodha

Geshe Gelek Chodha

Geshe Gelek Chodha was born in Sikkim, the oldest of five children. At the age of seven, Geshe-la went south to live at Sera Jey monastery and become a monk. He achieved the degree of Geshe Lharampa in 1997, continuing on to the Gyumé Tantric College to learn the intricacies of tantric rituals. Kyabje Zopa Rinpoche—at the suggestion of Geshe-la’s classmate Yangsi Rinpoche—requested Geshe-la to come to Kadampa Center in Raleigh, NC as resident teacher in 1999. Since then, the members of Kadampa Center have been privileged to have Geshe-la as their spiritual friend while he teaches the Buddha Dharma…

Geshe Tenzin Legtsok

Geshe Tenzin Legtsok has recently graduated with his Geshe degree from Sera Jey Monastic University in South India where he completed his full course of studies in classic Indian Buddhist treatise and their Tibetan commentaries in the tradition of ancient Nalanda University. He has been ordained as a Buddhist monk since 2001. Born in Virginia, USA in 1973, he obtained a Bachelor of Arts from Kenyon College in 1995.  The question, “What makes for the most happy and meaningful life,” which compelled him to major in philosophy during college gradually led to his study of meditation and philosophy with teachers…

Geshe Tenzin Zopa

Geshela possesses vast scriptural knowledge, holds many rare transmissions and initiations lineages, has completed many retreats, extensive teaching experience and is skilled in rituals and astrology. Geshela has also undertaken many meaningful projects for many years. Geshe Tenzin Zopa holds the honoured Geshe (Doctorate) degree from Sera Jey Monastic University, South India. He was born in the remote Himalayan region of Tsum valley in Nepal and was ordained at the age of 9 in Kopan Monastery by the late Great Mahasiddha Geshe Lama Konchog. He received novice ordination from H.E. Geshe Lundrup Sopa Rinpoche and full ordination from H.H. the…

Geshe Thubten Sherab

Geshe Sherab was born in Manang, Nepal in 1967 as the second of five sons. He attended Kopan monastery at the age of 9 around 1976 and was ordained by Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche. After 10 years of study in Kopan, he went to Sera Je Monastery for further studies in 1987, and graduated as a Geshe at the end of 1999. After that, he joined Gyumé Tantric College for a year and went on to teach young monks at Kopan for a year. In 2001 he was sent by Lama Zopa Rinpoche to New Mexico–to serve and help at…

Glen Svensson

Glen Svensson

Originally from Australia, Glen attained a BSc in IT at the University of Queensland. After four years working in Brisbane, he spent the next eight years working and traveling around the world. Having ‘bumped’ into Buddhism during his travels (“I read a book about Buddhism and it seemed so logical and many things resonated extremely well with my innate beliefs”), he attended his first Dharma teaching in Dharamsala, India in 1995. He completed the two following Kopan November courses in Kathmandu, Nepal and joined the seven-year Masters Program in Advanced Buddhist Studies of Sutra and Tantra at the Lama Tzong…

Guy Newland

Guy Newland is Professor of Religion and Chair 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 an editor of the three-volume translation Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment and Changing Minds. He is the author of three other books on Tibetan Buddhism, including The Two Truths and Appearance and Reality.

Gyumed Khensur Rinpoche Lobsang Jampa

Gyumed Khensur Rinpoche Lobsang Jampa

Gyumed Khensur Rinpoche Lobsang Jampa is one of the last generation of Tibetan Buddhist scholars to begin their educational careers in Tibet prior to the Chinese invasion. He has played an instrumental role in the reestablishment and preservation of Tibetan Buddhist traditions in exile, and in the spread of Tibetan Buddhism to the Western world. Highly regarded for his scholarship and depth of religious practice, Rinpoche teaches frequently in New York, Washington D.C., and at Do Ngak Kunphen Ling (DNKL), a Tibetan Buddhist center in Connecticut, where he hosted a visit from H.H. the Dalai Lama in 2012. He is…

His Eminence the 7th Kyabje Yongzin Ling Rinpoche

His Eminence the 7th Kyabje Yongzin Ling Rinpoche was born in McLeod Ganj, Dharamsala, in 1985. In 1987, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama recognized him as the reincarnation of His Holiness the 6th Kyabje Yongzin Ling Rinpoche (1903 – 1983), who was the most Senior Tutor of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. The 6th Kyabje Yongzin Ling Rinpoche was His Holiness’ main teacher and spiritual advisor throughout his lifetime and accompanied His Holiness when he fled into exile from Tibet in 1959. His Holiness refers to him as “my Root Guru”.  He was also the 97th Gaden Throne…

Jan Landry

Jan Landry

Jan Landry has worked in the field of hospice care both as a nurse and as a chaplain, for over 30 years. Her work in the field of death and dying, serves as an ongoing reminder of how precious each and every moment of life is, and informs her meditation practice which has developed and deepened over many years. She is a yoga practitioner, a student of the Ridhwan School and of life. As a teacher of mindfulness meditation, she hopes to support others in cultivating a practice of mindfulness that fosters awareness and deep listening to the inner wisdom…

Jan Willis

Jan Willis is one of the earliest American scholar-practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism, having studied Buddhism with Tibetan teachers for fifty years.  She was one of the first western students of Lama Thubten Yeshe. Jan discovered the Dharma as a path to healing the trauma of racism she experienced growing up in the segregated south and has forged paths for the integration of Buddhism and social and political justice. Dr. Willis is a Professor Emerita of Religion at Wesleyan University and a Visiting Professor of Religious Studies at Agnes Scott College in Decatur Georgia. She has studied with Tibetan Buddhists in…

Jon Landaw

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 Kyabje Zopa Rinpoche since the mid-1970’s, he has edited numerous works for Wisdom Publications, including “Wisdom Energy”…

Lani Potts

Lani Potts

Lani Potts is a long-term Buddhist practitioner as well as a certified Cultivating Emotional Balance (CEB) teacher. She is part of the teaching team for the year-long CEB Teacher Training in North America and serves as the CEB Program Administrator. Lani has a background in teaching yoga and meditation and is a mindfulness instructor in an ongoing UCSF study. After 38 years of service as an elementary teacher, administrator coach, school principal, and district administrator, she recently retired from the education sector. She has a Master’s degree in Educational Leadership and is well versed in curriculum development and professional development…

Monica Hanson

Monica Hanson is a Senior Teacher at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE), Stanford University. She has taught the Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT) program for the public at Stanford School of Medicine since 2011 and with Stanford students since 2010. Monica is also a member of the leadership team at CCARE that co-developed and launched the Compassion Cultivation Teacher Training Certification program in 2011. In 2013, Monica was the lead teacher in a research study for Stanford Medicine Neuroscience and Pain Lab, examining the effects of compassion training, chronic pain and the impact on significant others.…

Paula Chichester

Paula Chichester is known for her friendly, experiential teaching style that evolved from 4 decades of full-time training in Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and meditation as well as diverse psycho-somatic healing arts from Asia and the West. Her ability to distill and impart the essence of these disciplines is inspired by her main teachers, Lama Thubten Yeshe and Kyabje Zopa Rinpoche. Paula is dedicated to help create a world culture of health, compassion, wisdom and joy.

Rick Hanson, Ph.D

Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a psychologist, Senior Fellow of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, and New York Times best-selling author. His books have been published in 29 languages and include Neurodharma, Resilient, Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha’s Brain, Just One Thing, and Mother Nurture – with 900,000 copies in English alone. Founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, he’s lectured at NASA, Google, Oxford, and Harvard, and taught in meditation centers worldwide. His work has been featured on the BBC, CBS, and NPR, and 150,000 subscribers receive his free Just One Thing newsletter every week. He has a variety of popular online programs in positive neuroplasticity – with scholarships available for those with financial…

Rob Preece

Rob Preece

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. He remained there for the next five years primarily in retreat but with the opportunity to study with a number of eminent lamas including Song Rinpoche, Lati Rinpoche, Gomo Rinpoche and H.H. Dalai Lama.Returning to the west in 1985 he began to train as a psychotherapist at the Centre for Transpersonal Psychology in London,…

Robert Cusick

Trained at Stanford University in the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE). He is a Certified Stanford Compassion Cultivation Training instructor and teaches CCT at Stanford University School of Medicine and in multiple other venues. He studied in the Soto Zen tradition while in residence at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, in the Ridhwan School’s Diamond approach with A. H. Almaas (Hameed Ali), and at Spirit Rock Meditation Center with Jack Kornfield, Gil Fronsdal and others. As a long time meditator and former monk, Robert ordained in Burma under the renowned meditation master, Venerable Pa Auk Sayadaw, and…

Ryan Redman

Ryan Redman developed an interest in contemplative-based practices at an early age and eventually traveled to India at the age of twenty to pursue his interests in meditation. Upon his return, Ryan began teaching and studying contemplative-based practices while studying at the University of California in Santa Barbara. After completing his undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies, Ryan traveled back to India several times to further his understanding of awareness based practices. As a result of these early experiences, Ryan has dedicated his life to exploring the interrelationship between personal transformation and benevolent social action. Ryan has been teaching in the…

Scott Snibbe

Scott Snibbe is the founder and host of the meditation podcast ‘A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment’. Snibbe is a twenty-year student of Tibetan Buddhism whose teachers include Geshe Ngawang Dakpa, Choden Rinpoche, Ven. Rene Feusi, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Gyumed Khensur Rinpoche Lobsang Jampa, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Inspired by his teachers, he leads meditations that infuse the pure lineage of the great Buddhist masters with science, humor, and the realities of the modern world. Over the course of a career as a digital artist and entrepreneur, Snibbe has created bestselling art, music, and social apps, and collaborated with…

Tenzin Ösel Hita

Tenzin Ösel Hita is a radical free-thinker, former monk, filmmaker, and musician. Tenzin Ösel was born in 1985, in the village of Bubión at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, southeast of Granada, Spain. When he was 14 months old he was recognized by His Holiness the Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of Lama Thubten Yeshe, the founder of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT). He is one of only a handful of non-Tibetans formally recognized as the reincarnation of a Tibetan master. He was educated in the traditional Tibetan Buddhist monastic university system at Sera…

Tubten Pende

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.

Venerable Amy Miller

Venerable 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. Amy also trained as an emotional support hospice counselor during the peak of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco and offers courses and retreats on death and dying and…

Venerable Angie Muir

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.

Venerable Charles

After being a resident at VajraYogini Institute, Venerable Charles was ordained in 1989. Then he spent many years in solitary retreat in the Pyrenees and in California. He has been guiding every year the 108 Nyoung-Nés retreats for several years now. He is a fully ordained monk guiding Nyoung Naes 9 months a year and doing solitary retreat the rest of the year.

Venerable Chimé

Venerable Gyalten Chimé

Venerable Gyalten Chimé (Lisa DuPont, M.S.), is an American Buddhist monastic in the Tibetan, Gelug tradition with over 25 years of  experience in study and retreat in Tibetan Buddhism with numerous Tibetan Masters. Ven. Chimé also brings her many years of training & experience in psychology/neuroscience as a school psychologist and is a certified instructor of Emory University’s Cognitively Based Compassion Training (CBCT).

Venerable Jampa Sangmo

Venerable Jampa Sangmo is a Tibetan Buddhist Nun. She was born in Hermosa Beach, California. Her practice began with Vipassana Meditation where she did numerous long retreats. She came to Tibetan Buddhism in 1993 and began her studies with several Buddhist Masters including Lama Zopa Rinpoche, H.E. Choden Rinpoche, Ribur Rinpoche and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. She took robes with her teacher Khensur Jampa Tegchok Rinpoche in 2008. She has lectured and led meditation groups and retreats for Chevron International, Facebook Menlo Park Campus, Road Scholar (formally Elder Hostel), Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Ocean of Compassion, Land of Medicine…

Venerable René Feusi

Venerable René Feusi has been trained in the Gelugpa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism in the experiential lineage of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. He has been sharing this experiential approach for over 25 years. He helps students get an intuition of their own inner potential and inspires them to become mediators themselves. For the past 7 years Ven. René has spent the majority of his time in partial retreat. Venerable René’s fascination for how the mind works and how it can be positively transformed is infectious,”Life is exciting. The spiritual journey is about becoming a better human being and giving…

Venerable Namjong

Venerable Tenzin Namjong

Born and raised in Hawaii, Venerable Tenzin Namjong studied philosophy at Princeton. His plan was to do a Ph.D. in philosophy, but he became disillusioned with academic philosophy because “it seemed to have lost the big picture, meaning how we should live our lives.”  In Buddhism, he found  a rich philosophical tradition that was still very much connected to how we ought to live. Venerable Namjong studied and trained in Zen and Theravada traditions before embracing the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, due mainly to the kindness of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. He is currently studying in…

Venerable Yarphel

Venerable Yarphel is an American monk who was a carpenter by trade and a meditator at heart. He first met Buddhism and Tibetan lamas in the 1970s in USA and has combined his two passions as a builder and meditator ever since-helping to establish three important retreat centers on the West Coast of America that have benefited tens of thousands of people over the years, whilst always maintaining a rigorous daily meditation practice. In 2002 he left family life to ordain as a monk and has since spent years in isolated meditation retreat. In 2018, he was requested to teach…

Yangsi Rinpoche

  Yangsi Rinpoche was recognized as the reincarnation of Geshe Ngawang Gendun, a renowned scholar and practitioner from Western Tibet, at the age of six. Rinpoche trained in the traditional monastic system for over 25 years, and practiced as a monk until the age of 35.   In 1995 he graduated with the highest degree of Geshe Lharampa from Sera Je Monastery in South India. He then completed his studies at Gyume Tantric College, and, in 1998, having the particular wish to benefit Western students of the Buddhadharma, Rinpoche came to the West to teach and travel extensively throughout America and Europe.…