Teachers You Can Access from Anywhere

What I've learned on my path might help you on yours

I was 19 or 20 one summer night in the mid-1960s—the only white person in a revival at a black holiness church in North Philadelphia—when the minister finally gave up trying to save me from the pulpit and approached me in person. The teenagers I was working with that summer, who had asked me to join them at church, had prepared me for what would come next. The minister asked:

Do you know that the Lord Jesus Christ is your personal salvation?

After I replied “No,” we had a conversation of which I can remember only his final words:

You sound like a Buddhist.

I loved hearing that. Like many college students of that era, I had read books by D.T. Suzuki and other Zen masters and learned cool sayings I could use to impress my friends, like:

For those who understand, what is, is.
For those who do not understand, what is, is.

But I didn’t understand. Nevertheless, I consider that holiness preacher my first Buddhist teacher. His words helped me take Buddhism as seriously as I knew how.

Thich Nhat Hanh

In the mid-1980s, still unsure how to start a Buddhist practice, I began attending a Unitarian Universalist church in New York City, where Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh gave a talk. I bought his book The Miracle of Mindfulness, and my Buddhist journey began for real.

Over the next three decades, I read dozens of his books, attended more of his talks and days of mindfulness, and spent a week in a residential retreat he led in Vermont. I also benefited from being a Northern Virginia neighbor and student of Anh-Huong Nguyen, the seventh member of Nhat Hanh’s Order of Interbeing (Tiep Hien in Vietnamese).

Thay (teacher), as his students call him, left this life peacefully at 95 in January 2022. He and Sister Chân Không founded Plum Village Monastery near Bordeaux in Southern France in 1982, and it continues to flourish along with ten other monasteries and practice centers following Thay’s tradition.

One can’t overstate Thay’s command of English and other languages and his deep understanding of Western as well as Eastern cultures. It’s difficult to recommend a few books or videos because there are so many to choose from, but this page of the Plum Village website is a great place to browse.

Explore any Plum Village or Order of Interbeing links if you’d like to find a teacher in Thich Nhat Hanh’s tradition. Put yourself on the email list. Look for activities you can attend in person or online.

An-Huong ordained me in the Five Mindfulness Trainings and approved me as an aspirant to be ordained in the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings of the Order of Interbeing, but I drifted away from that practice. Part of the reason was a change in my life circumstances, but part was the discomfort I felt with what seemed like a cult-like atmosphere.

I am not by any means calling the Order of Interbeing a cult, but my hackles go up when any group insists on its language and resists outside influences. I never felt comfortable introducing a quote from Jack Kornfield, for example. It never felt right always to say “mindfulness trainings” and never “precepts.”

“Ethnic Temples”

During those three decades, from the mid-1980s to the mid-2010s, I felt it was essential to experience “ethnic temples,” monasteries that serve specific immigrant communities. These temples usually practice the Theravada tradition, following the early teachings of Gautama Buddha. I visited temples in Laotian, Sri Lankan, Thai, and Vietnamese neighborhoods. I attended a residential retreat at the Bhavana Society, a forest-tradition monastery founded by Bhante Gunaratana, the Sri Lankan-American monk who wrote the classic Mindfulness in Plain English.

Bhante Gunaratana arrives at the Sri Lankan Embassy in Washington for a ceremony honoring him in August 2023.

Bhante G, as he is widely known, will turn 97 on December 7. He still gives dharma talks on weekends, which are accessible via Zoom (check the society’s homepage). His most recent book is Impermanence in Plain English.

Here is some advice for visiting ethnic temples: Call first, even though no English speaker may be available. Arrive in the late afternoon with a gift of tea or other liquid refreshment. (The monks probably don’t eat food after noon.) There will usually be a meditation period you can join in the evening. They will do their best to include you.

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Lama Surya Das

Seven months after the death of my son Thomas on June 1, 2015,

Where We're Going (Afterlife-wise)

I needed a new spiritual home and attended my first retreat led by Lama Surya Das, who confirmed what I had come to believe on my own—that the Buddha within is closer than we have been led to believe.

Until then, I had avoided Vajrayana (Tibetan) Buddhism, but by the third day of the retreat, I knew I’d found my new teacher. He is part of the generation of Westerners I respect for having the chutzpah to do what didn’t even enter my mind—to spend the 1970s and ‘80s in the East, learning from spiritual masters, then bring their newfound wisdom back home.

His best-known book, Awakening the Buddha Within, is a complete introduction to Buddhism that I would recommend to anyone. Lama Surya offers a free Meditation Town Hall on Sundays from 11 a.m. to noon Eastern time.

I identify with Lama Surya’s urban, Jewish, Northeast United States cultural background, humor, and blunt and direct speech. He’s my root teacher, and I love and respect him for introducing me to Vajrayana practice, for which I’m eternally grateful. But he’s not the best teacher for everyone, partly because—consistent with his Dzogchen tradition—he doesn’t do much step-by-step guidance.

Note added September 9, 2024: Yesterday, Lama Surya announced that his Dzogchen Foundation and organization were winding down, and he would be teaching less. The free Meditation Town Hall on Sundays will continue, eventually led by his senior students. An in-person retreat scheduled for October 27 to November 1 will be the last opportunity in the foreseeable future to experience him in person.

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

A few years ago, I felt it was time to branch out from Lama Surya. Finding Mingyur Rinpoche as an additional teacher helped me realize why. I needed more step-by-step guidance than Lama Surya and Dzogchen provided. Rinpoche teaches more from the Mahamudra tradition with more coaching, and he’s damn good at it.

I’ve mentioned Rinpoche in this blog and posted his videos often, so I’ll keep this section short. You can go to the From the Pure Land website, click the search icon 🔍 at the top of the page, and enter “Mingyur” into the search field. You’ll find every post in which I’ve mentioned him.

Even though Rinpoche spends most of his time in Nepal and India, he has an enormous international following, with thousands of students in Western countries. He’s young (by my standards), fluent in English, comfortable with Western traditions, and tech-savvy enough with teleconferencing to bring more Buddhist wisdom to the Americas. I feel closer to my Buddha Nature whenever I am in his presence.

You can start here for more on Mingyur Rinpoche, and I’ll write more in future posts.

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Anam Thubten

Another ethnic Tibetan whose English is superb and who understands Western culture is Anam Thubten. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and oversees a congregation with a building in Point Richmond, California. My wife and I have attended one of his in-person retreats and a couple of them online. We watch live via Zoom when he gives a dharma talk to his congregation in Point Richmond.

If you appreciate informality and humor and don’t mind the occasional snag with an all-volunteer staff, try Anam Thubten and his Dharmata Foundation. Here’s their homepage. The right-hand column has a link that says, “Click here to subscribe.”

The best way to check out his many books is his author page on Amazon.

Andrew Holecek with the Dalai Lama

Andrew Holecek

Andrew is the most recent addition to the list of my Buddhist teachers. Like Anam, he is informal and doesn’t use titles he could use or expect people to rise for him. If you appreciate receiving my posts From the Pure Land, you can thank Andrew. After I attended his Blissful Pure Lands retreat online in May, I realized I needed to return to blogging.

I’m also grateful to Andrew for his Preparing to Die book, which did for me what its title says and helped me to know what to do as I sat alongside a dying relative. Here’s a link to a page with his books. I listen to his Edge of Mind podcast because Andrew is a great interviewer and attracts superb guests. He’s got a lot going on, so I have not yet had time to work on his Lucid Dream Yoga programs or join his Night Club. But start here for a smorgasbord of Andrew Holecek stuff.

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Lama Tsultrim Allione and Tara Mandala

I don’t have enough experience with woman teachers to call one of them my own, but finding one may be important to you. I’ve had only one in-person learning session with Lama Tsultrim Allione, but I’m impressed by her teachings and her biography. She founded the Tara Mandala, an international Buddhist community with a retreat center in Colorado, and has ordained many women teachers.

That would be an excellent place to start if you’re looking for a woman teacher.

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I have not mentioned some important Western teachers simply because I have little firsthand experience with them—for example, Pema Chödrön, Sharon Salzberg, Alan Watts, and Joseph Goldstein.

I have not mentioned Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach, with whom I have studied, because their organization has become too large, commercial, and involved in divisive issues for my taste.

Two Theravada teachers who have greatly influenced the West are Ajahn Chah, who died in 1992, and his student Ajahn Sumedho, who will turn 90 on July 27. Another one of Ajahn Chah’s students is Jack Kornfield.

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Instead of a musical bonus today, here’s a beautiful teaching from Thich Nhan Hahn on stopping. Consider stopping and turning this on in a spirit of meditation.