Dennis Philip Edward Lingwood, known more commonly as Sangharakshita, was a British spiritual teacher and writer. In 1967, he founded the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO), which was renamed the Triratna Buddhist Community in 2010.
The Triratna Buddhist Community (formerly the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO)) is an international fellowship of Buddhists and others who aspire to its path of mindfulness. It was founded in the UK in 1967 by Sangharakshita (born Dennis Philip Edward Lingwood) and describes itself as "an international network dedicated to communicating Buddhist truths in ways appropriate to the modern world". In keeping with Buddhist traditions, it also pays attention to contemporary ideas, particularly drawn from Western philosophy, psychotherapy, and art.
Ajahn Chah was a Thai Buddhist monk. He was an influential teacher of the Buddhadhamma and a founder of two major monasteries in the Thai Forest Tradition.
The term American Buddhism can be used to describe all Buddhist groups within the United States, including Asian-American Buddhists born into the faith, who comprise the largest percentage of Buddhists in the country.
A Jewish Buddhist is a person with a Jewish background who believes in the tenets of a form of Buddhism.
The Vipassanā movement, also called the Insight Meditation Movement and American Vipassana movement, refers to a branch of modern Burmese Theravāda Buddhism that promotes "bare insight" (sukha-Vipassana) to attain stream entry and preserve the Buddhist teachings, which gained widespread popularity since the 1950s, and to its western derivatives which have been popularised since the 1970s, giving rise to the more dhyana-oriented mindfulness movement.
Nani Bala Barua, better known as Dipa Ma, was an Indian meditation teacher of Theravada Buddhism and was of Barua descent. She was a prominent Buddhist master in Asia and also taught in the United States where she influenced the American branch of the Vipassana movement.
Jack Kornfield is an American writer and teacher in the Vipassana movement in American Theravada Buddhism. He trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma and India, first as a student of the Thai forest master Ajahn Chah and Mahasi Sayadaw of Burma. He has taught mindfulness meditation worldwide since 1974. In 1975, he co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, with Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein, and subsequently in 1987, Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California. Kornfield has worked as a peacemaker and activist, organized teacher training, and led international gatherings of Buddhist teachers including the Dalai Lama.
Sogyal Rinpoche was a Tibetan Dzogchen lama. He was recognized as the incarnation of a Tibetan master and visionary saint of the 19th century, Tertön Sogyal Lerab Lingpa. Sogyal Rinpoche was the founder and former spiritual director of Rigpa — an international network of over 100 Buddhist centres and groups in 23 countries around the world — and the author of the best-selling book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, which has been printed in 30 languages and 56 countries. Before his retirement, in the wake of abuse allegations in 2017, he had been teaching for 40 years in Europe, America, Asia and Australia.
Drala Mountain Center is a spiritual retreat center located on 600 acres in a valley in the northern Colorado Rocky Mountains. The original center on this land was founded by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in 1971 at Red Feather Lakes, Colorado.
Sakyong Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche, Jampal Trinley Dradül is a Tibetan Buddhist lama and holder of the Sakyong Lineage of Mukpodong, a family lineage. The Sakyong was recognized in 1995 as the tulku (reincarnation) of Mipham the Great, the great Rime teacher of the late 19th century.
Sharon Salzberg is an author and teacher of Buddhist meditation practices in the West. In 1974, she co-founded the Insight Meditation Society at Barre, Massachusetts, with Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein. Her emphasis is on vipassanā (insight) and mettā (loving-kindness) methods, and has been leading meditation retreats around the world for over three decades. All of these methods have their origins in the Theravada Buddhist tradition. Her books include Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness (1995), A Heart as Wide as the World (1999), Real Happiness - The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program (2010), which was on The New York Times Best Seller list in 2011, and the follow-up Real Happiness at Work (2013). She runs a Metta Hour podcast, and contributes monthly to a column On Being.
Gil Fronsdal is a Norwegian-born, American Buddhist teacher, writer and scholar based in Redwood City, California. He has been practicing Buddhism of the Sōtō Zen and Vipassanā sects since 1975, and is currently teaching the practice of Buddhism in the San Francisco Bay Area. Having been taught by the Vipassanā practitioner Jack Kornfield, Fronsdal is part of the Vipassanā teachers' collective at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. He was ordained as a Sōtō Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1982, and was a Theravāda monk in Burma in 1985. In 1995, he received Dharma transmission from Mel Weitsman, the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center.
Joseph Goldstein is one of the first American vipassana teachers, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) with Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzberg, a contemporary author of numerous popular books on Buddhism, a resident guiding teacher at IMS, and a leader of retreats worldwide on insight (vipassana) and lovingkindness (metta) meditation.
Russ Rankin is an American musician, best known as the singer for the punk rock bands Good Riddance and Only Crime.
Stephen Levine was an American poet, author and teacher best known for his work on death and dying. He is one of a generation of pioneering teachers who, along with Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg, have made the teachings of Theravada Buddhism more widely available to students in the West. Like the writings of his colleague and close friend, Ram Dass, Stephen's work is also flavoured by the devotional practices and teachings of the Hindu Guru Neem Karoli Baba. This aspect of his teaching may be considered one way in which his work differs from that of the more purely Buddhist oriented teachers named above. Allusions in his teachings to a creator, which he variously terms God, The Beloved, The One and 'Uugghh', further distinguish his work from that of other contemporary Buddhist writers.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center, commonly called Spirit Rock, is a meditation center in Woodacre, California. It focuses on the teachings of the Buddha as presented in the vipassana, or Insight Meditation, tradition. It was founded in 1985 as Insight Meditation West, and is visited by an estimated 40,000 people a year. The San Francisco Chronicle has called it one of "the Bay Area's best-known centers for Buddhist meditation."
Xuecheng is a Chinese Buddhist monk, a former member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and a popular blogger. He was president of the Buddhist Association of China from 2015 to 2018 when he resigned after allegations that he had engaged in corruption and sexual assault surfaced. He was ordered to be punished by the National Religious Affairs Administration after they corroborated the allegations.
Sylvia Boorstein is an American author, psychotherapist, and Buddhist teacher.
Recovery Dharma is a non-profit organization founded in 2019 with the mission of supporting peer-led groups using Buddhist practices and principles for recovery from addiction. As of 2020, Recovery Dharma had an estimated 16,000 members, and was the most extensive Buddhist recovery peer-support program in the USA.
