Lama Surya Das

1950 CE · Modern · Brooklyn (NY)

b. 1950 (living)

Lama Surya Das (b. Jeffrey Miller, 1950) is an American teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist Nyingma/Dzogchen tradition. After traveling to Asia in the early 1970s and completing traditional Tibetan retreats, he became a dharma heir of the Nyingma master Nyoshul Khenpo and in 1991 founded the Dzogchen Center near Boston. He is known as an author and popularizer of Tibetan Buddhism for Western lay practitioners, including the 'Awakening' book series. He continues to teach.

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Stop 1 of 2Born

Brooklyn (NY)ברוקליןNew York, USA

What they did here

Born Jeffrey Miller in 1950; traveled to Asia in the early 1970s in search of meditation teachers.

About Brooklyn (NY)

Brooklyn, coextensive with Kings County, is one of the five boroughs of New York City. It began as the Dutch village of Breuckelen, chartered in 1646, remained an independent city until it was consolidated into New York in 1898, and is today the most populous borough. Roughly a fifth of its residents are Jewish, and since the mid-twentieth century it has been a world centre of Orthodox and Hasidic life: Chabad-Lubavitch has had its headquarters in Crown Heights since 1940, Satmar is centred in Williamsburg and Bobov in Borough Park, alongside many yeshivas and Modern Orthodox congregations. Several American Buddhist teachers, among them Bernie Glassman and Bhikkhu Bodhi, were born in Brooklyn.

In Brooklyn (NY) at the same time

Sylvia Boorstein, Bernie Glassman, Bhikkhu Bodhi

Across the traditions, in Brooklyn (NY) at the same time

See other sages who lived in Brooklyn (NY)→

In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Lama Surya Das’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

Across the traditions

In the same tradition

Sylvia Boorstein, Bernie Glassman, Bhikkhu Bodhi

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Lama Surya Das’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.