Archives: Authors

Rosalie Dores

Rosalie Dores is an Insight Dialogue retreat teacher. She also teaches courses and workshops dedicated to raising awareness about climate and social justice.

Gregory Kramer

Gregory Kramer is the founding teacher of the Insight Dialogue community and the author of Insight Dialogue: The Interpersonal Path to Freedom.

<a href="https://ronnabloom.com/">Ronna Bloom</a> is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently A Possible Trust: The Poetry of Ronna Bloom selected with an introduction by Phil Hall. A new book of poems, In a Riptide will be out with Brick Books in 2025. She is now working on a collection of essays.

Dawn Haney

Dawn Haney (they/she) braids together wisdom from Buddhism and social justice traditions, understanding identity, power, and change through their own experiences as a white, fat, queer, nonbinary femme. A former co-director with the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, she teaches with the East Bay Meditation Center and the global Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program. You can find Dawn online at <a href="http://dawnhaney.net/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">dawnhaney.net</a>

Tsunma Sherab Khandro

Tsunma Sherab Khandro is a nun in the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism, though her profound root lamas are both Kagyu and Nyingma. A long time practitioner, the sudden deaths of her husband, mother, father, and two dogs – all within a few months –propelled her to take monastic ordination to make the best use of her precious human birth for the benefit of beings. Formerly a lobbyist for international human rights, a slam poet, and glass artist, Sherab Khandro now offers counsel to those experiencing grief and loss. She leads practices for both Nyingma and Kagyu Dharma centers, works for the welfare of non-Himalayan Nuns as a volunteer with the ANHN, and is currently writing a book on the luminosity of grief.

John H. Negru (Karma Yönten Gyatso)

John H. Negru (Karma Yönten Gyatso) is founder and CEO at Sumeru Books, Canada’s leading indie Buddhist book publisher since 2009. He has been involved in many Buddhist community development projects in his more than 50 years of Dharma practice.

Ching Pan

A Taiwanese immigrant, Ching Pan has immersed herself in Buddhism through Fo Guang Shan Hsi Lai Temple, and strives to practice mindfulness and compassion daily. Her interests also include psychology, philosophy, and social engagement, all of which she explores through writing.

Rev. Jon Turner

Rev. Jon Turner is the lead minister at EverydayBuddhist.org, which shares authentic and contemporary Shin Buddhist teachings and practices for everyday life, and a Resident Minister at Orange County Buddhist Church in Anaheim, California. Formerly a high school athlete, math major at UCLA, and computer programmer, Rev. Turner discovered Buddhism mid-life which changed the course of his life. He earned a master’s degree in Buddhist Studies from the Institute of Buddhist Studies in 2010 and was ordained as a Shin Buddhist Minister at the Nishi Hongwanji in Kyoto, Japan, in 2012. His free time is spent doing yoga with his wife, Linda, and enjoying their children, grandchildren, and dogs.

Roy Vongtama

Roy Vongtama has been both a professional actor and physician for over twenty years. Acting wise, he’s had more than a hundred film, TV, and stage roles, working with stars such as Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. He’s directed several projects as well as written a bestselling book called Healing Before You’re Cured, and he produced the award-winning film After the Rain.

Jonathan Relucio

A senior trainer for Niroga Institute, Jonathan Relucio teaches yoga and meditation in schools, health clinics, juvenile detention facilities, homeless shelters, and community-based organizations. With over twenty years of professional experience in social service delivery, nonviolence training, leadership development, and community organizing, Relucio values yoga as a healing practice of liberation that dismantles tools and systems of oppression while strengthening communities and social justice movements.

Karuna Training

Karuna is a community of Contemplative Psychology practitioners who aspire to remain open-hearted in the face of pain and paradox. We train in methodologies combining ancient Tibetan Buddhism with Western psychological processes. We provide learning communities that aspire to integrate the trauma of the world by turning our allegiance to basic sanity.

Scott Tusa

Scott Tusa is a Buddhist meditation teacher and practitioner with over two decades of experience in the exploration and embodiment of the Buddhist path. Ordained by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama at twenty-eight, Scott spent nine years as a Buddhist monk. Since 2008, he has been sharing his knowledge and guidance, teaching Buddhism and meditation worldwide, in person and online.

Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo

Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo (1907–1961) was one of the foremost teachers in the Thai Forest Tradition founded by Ajaan Sao Kantasilo and Ajaan Mun Bhuridatto. Known for his skill as a teacher and his mastery of supranatural powers, he was the first to bring the teachings of the Forest tradition out of the wilderness of northeastern Thailand and into the mainstream of the central part of the country.

Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche

Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche is a teacher in the Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism and the founder of over twenty organizations preserving and promoting Buddhist wisdom in Asia and the West. He has authored over two dozen books including Gesture of Balance, Time, Space, and Knowledge, Kum Nye Tibetan Yoga, and more.

Taryn Stickrath-Hutt

Taryn Stickrath-Hutt is a writer, painter, filmmaker, queer woman, and joyfully exhausted mother. Her top priorities are smashing the patriarchy, eating great pizza, and writing about topics ranging from spiritual epiphanies to haunted houses to hardboiled detectives (sometimes all at once). An Angeleno at heart and former Disney Imagineer, she now lives in Chicago with a focus on independent projects in fiction, film, and personal essay. She is a member of Midwest Buddhist Temple where she heads Niji Dharma, a program developing LGBTQ+ community initiatives rooted in Buddhist principles. She offers her deepest gratitude for the opportunity to publish her work with Lion’s Roar.

Rafal K. Stepien

Rafal K. Stepien is Research Associate and European Research Council Principal Investigator within the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He also serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Buddhist Philosophy, and his publications include Buddhist Literature as Philosophy, Buddhist Philosophy as Literature. He has held the inaugural Berggruen Research Fellowship in Indian Philosophy at Oxford, the inaugural Cihui Foundation Faculty Fellowship in Chinese Buddhism at Columbia, an Exchange Scholarship in the Study of Religion at Harvard, and a Humboldt Research Fellowship in Buddhist Studies at Heidelberg University.

Helen Tworkov

Helen Tworkov is the founding editor of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, the first and only independent Buddhist magazine; the author of Zen in America: Profiles of Five Teachers; and the co-author, with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, of In Love with the World: A Monk’s Journey through the Bardos of Living and Dying. She first encountered Buddhism in Japan and Nepal during the 1960s, and has studied in both the Zen and Tibetan traditions. She began studying with Mingyur Rinpoche in 2006 and currently divides most of her time between New York and Nova Scotia.

Sera Khandro

Sera Khandro (1892–1940) was one of the most prolific Tibetan female authors of the past several centuries. At the age of fifteen, she left her home in Lhasa for eastern Tibet, embarking on a lifetime devoted to her spiritual path. She became a spiritual master, a revealer of ancient hidden teachings, a mystic, a visionary, a writer, a mother, and a vagabond. Her written works and spiritual lineage have been preserved and are now cherished worldwide.

Christina Lee Monson

Christina Monson (1969–2023) was a Buddhist teacher and Tibetan language translator who studied Buddhism for over thirty years, beginning at Brown University and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Monson journeyed to Nepal in 1989 where she met her root guru, Chatral Sangye Dorje Rinpoche, under whose guidance she studied and practiced for the next twenty-seven years. Chatral Rinpoche first introduced her to Sera Khandro’s teachings, and Monson spent the last several years of her life translating Sera Khandro’s instructions into English.

John Dunne

John D. Dunne serves on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he holds the Distinguished Chair in Contemplative Humanities at the Center for Healthy Minds. He is also chair of the Department of Asian Languages & Cultures. His work focuses on Buddhist philosophy and contemplative practice, especially in dialog with Cognitive Science and Psychology. His more than fifty publications appear in venues ranging across both the Humanities and the Sciences, including Foundations of Dharmakīrti’s Philosophy (2004) and Science and Philosophy in the Indian Buddhist Classics: The Mind (2020). John Dunne speaks in both academic and public contexts, and he occasionally teaches for Buddhist communities. His broader engagements include being a Fellow of the Mind and Life Institute, where he was previously a member of the board of directors, and serving as an academic advisor to the Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Kathmandu, Nepal.