A dyed-in-the-wool East Coast guy, Lama Surya Das — Tibetan Buddhist teacher; founder of the Dzogchen Center in Cambridge, MA; and author of such bestselling books as Awakening the Buddha Within and Buddha Standard Time – will be making the trek way out west next month for a special mini-workshop at InsightLA in Santa Monica, CA.

1. LAMA SURYA DAS ON HUMOR, CONTEMPLATIVE EDUCATION,
TECHNOLOGY, AND THE SECRETS OF TIBETAN MINDFULNESS
Keep Your Eyes Peeled
Lama Surya Das

2. A dyed-in-the-wool East Coast guy, Lama Surya Das — Tibetan Buddhist teacher;
founder of the Dzogchen Center in Cambridge, MA; and author of such bestselling
books as Awakening the Buddha Within and Buddha Standard Time – will be
making the trek way out west next month for a special mini-workshop at InsightLA
in Santa Monica, CA. “The Secrets of Tibetan Mindfulness: Remembering to
Remember,” to be held March 17 (tickets are still available and can be purchased
here), will explore the ways in which innate awareness offers “indispensable aids to
boost enlightened living and authenticity, freedom and well-being.” In advance of
his visit, Lama Surya Das made time to be interviewed by Danny Fisher about the
program, as well as some of the other things he’s been up to…
What can you tell us about your upcoming mini-workshop at InsightLA, “The
Secrets of Tibetan Mindfulness”?
Mindful awareness and lucid presence of mind are at the heart of any
contemplative practice, especially within the context of Buddhism. Among its many
and varied skillful means – tools and techniques for the inner science of
transformative awakening and enlightenment – Tibetan Buddhism too has its
secrets and tips, based on what lamas call “The Four Close Contemplations”
(known in the Theravada tradition as “The Four Foundations of Mindfulness”). My
Dzogchen teacher also laid out “Six Kinds of Mindfulness,” based on Nagarjuna’s
teaching about this.

3. In general there are said to be two kinds of mindfulness, according to Buddhist
pioneer Joseph Goldstein: directed and undirected. I have gradually developed,
over the years of teaching meditation, a new schema of the Six Kinds of
Mindfulness for my students to understand and better guide and focus their own
integrated moment-to-moment nowness-awareness practice and meditative
progress, both on and off the cushion.
In ascending order, I have noticed an arc of deepening and sharpening
development beginning with the natural mindfulness of interest, which stabilizes
attention; and on to intentionally generated or cultivated, effortful mindfulness;
then on thru intermittent mindfulness, on to stable mindfulness, global
mindfulness, and Dharmakaya (rigpa) cosmic mindfulness.
Your bio now notes that you have “turned [your] efforts toward youth and
contemplative education initiatives.” Would you say something more about this
decision to focus your efforts. Why have you made young people and
contemplative education initiatives your first priorities?
These are not necessarily my first priories, and my mission remains the same as
always: teaching and transmitting Buddhist wisdom and practice — and particularly
the Dzogchen Dharma lineage tradition — to people today and contributing to
global spirituality and a saner, safer and more beautiful and peaceful world.

4. I believe now is the time for awakening together — a collective arising and joining — and
not just for self-help and self-growth; the new generations are crucial for this. Moreover,
it’s time for those of who are old and savvy enough to aspire to be service oriented
leaders and producers — rather than mere consumer — to pass on what wisdom and
experience we’ve gathered to those to follow, and co-create with them a better world now
as well as stewarding and guarding a better future, include all beings and the entire
environment.
On the other hand, I’m increasingly interested in furthering true Higher Education,
contemplative education and self-realization, and co-creating a sacred-minded learning
community among ourselves here in this country right now. By this kind of genuine Higher
Ed, I mean a genuine wisdom-for-integrated-life-education: edifying and instructive,
including all the various kinds of intelligences — not just I.Q. — and conducive to
producing happy people. This is how we can learn to live harmoniously, flourish, and find
happiness and well being together in this ephemeral, gritty and marvelous world.
What would a truly “Higher Education” involve today? What is life wisdom? What is needed
and wanted spiritually, on all levels today — outer, inner and subtlest, both individually
and collectively? Any wise system of spiritual awakening and self-realization must, I
believe, include practical moral and mystical elements, contemplation and action,
emotional transformation and attitude refining techniques.

5. Any higher wisdom training must, I believe, include redirecting motivation; mindfully cultivating emotional
intelligence; utilizing concentration, attention and present-awareness practices; and living ethically, including
altruistic compassion in action through generosity and service. Five boosters to wisdom development,
according to transpersonal psychologist and meditation teacher Dr. Roger Walsh, are: being in nature;
silence and solitude; spending time with the already “wise”; self-knowledge; reflections on life, death and
mortality.
I am wondering if you would say something about humor and teaching Dharma. You’re a funny guy, your
emails to me in the past have been clever and made me chuckle. In addition, you’ve been on The Colbert
Report twice now. How does humor serve you in your role as a teacher? Conversely, when is it not helpful?
Religion has become way too grim in recent centuries, and philosophy too. I was Serious Das once, as my
girlfriend used to call me in the early Seventies, but am much younger and lighter now. “Don’t just gimme
that ole time religion…” is what I hear everywhere I go today (except, notably, in the Middle East).
Personally, I’d like to help transform the atmosphere of spirituality around here, without limits. Lightening up
as well as enlightening up, and making spirit and profound seeking and finding more friendly, accessible and
doable. A smile or joke is the shortest distance between two people, as has been said; this is exactly why
public speakers and teachers of all kinds often start with a joke or story, rather than with mere “seriousity.”
Wavy Gravy said, “Life ain’t much fun when we take ourselves too seriously.” Steve Colbert got it right:
Truthiness! I think it’s time to highlight and appreciate the joy of awakening and the buoyancy of the
spiritual path and enlightenment project, and express a Positive Buddhism rather than such a sometimes
negative-seeming, sufferingful, dukkha-and-anatta emptiness perspective. Any takers?

6. I’m also wondering if you would say something about the internet and social networking.
You’re a blogger, you’re on Twitter, you write for The Huffington Post. Does the internet
allow you to teach in ways you wouldn’t be able to otherwise, or is it just simply another
way of broadcasting teachings to a wider audience?
Some of both, and more too. The prana is extremely thin in cyberspace, as John Perry-
Barlow said in the Nineties, but I find that the Internet is like Indra’s web interconnecting
us all, and that even mere virtual contact, distance learning, webinars and social media
provides room for opening dharma gates for people to make contact and enter in more
deeply, and even for personal face time. I’m not that technical, but these various upaya
(skilful means) and innovations, as has occurred throughout history, are definitely
unfolding. We shall see how it all sorts and settles out, perhaps in a few hundred years.
You and I did an interview this past summer about the Maha Teachers Council for The
Buddhist Channel. This gathering was one of many that have taken place in the past
several years. Based on your experiences last year, what steps do you think should come
next? What do you think or hope will be discussed at the next such gathering?
There are plenty of interesting and worthwhile things I’d like to hear more discussion
about, and which have been coming up over the years among our teacher sangha in the
West and East too, such as the good ole koan of “preservation and adaptation/innovation”
as well as some new things brought up by younger teachers which have proved
meaningful, including diversity and related issues. We often talk about bringing
buddhadharma into the mainstream society and providing tools for ordinary people’s
daily lives.

7. What are the ways to encompass both the broad and deep dimensions of dharma teaching
and practice? Another question I’d like to and hope to hear more about, which came up at
Garrison Institute in June: Are we intent upon a Mindful Society, as Jon Kabat-Zinn tells
us? Or a more awakened and Enlightened Society, as I like to think? A Peaceful Society, a
Green Society, a Compassionate Society, a Classless Egalitarian Society… or what?
Who and what are and can be the sources of our guidance and inspiration, encouragement
and edification, blessing and empowerment today, in our secular and egalitarian society?
What is the future of Buddhism and of enlightenment in this tumultuous world, and what
part shall we play as spiritual activists, leaders, altruists and aspiring bodhisattvas? As
stewards and guardians of our world, the environment, and society? How is Buddhism
meeting modernity and adapting as well as maintaining its liberating essence?
How to awaken and enlighten up together, opening our hearts and minds while nurturing
and nourishing body and soul, energy, spirit, and the collective? What are the key
questions and candid public conversations we need to initiate and further facilitate about
the nature of genuine spirituality, beyond isms and their schisms—something relevant to
and effective for our time, place, and zeitgeist?
In a post-modern world of increasingly exponential change, many of my co-religionists
seem still to be struggling mightily — and not always knowingly — with the pressures
from both within and without the fold for mere incremental change.

8. In other words, we’re still caught up in fighting the battles of the Sixties, Seventies and
Eighties — with preservation and adaptation, gender equality and gay issues,
democratization and hierarchy, commercialization, hybridization and the global melting
pot; the value of new media, social activism and engagement; the relevance of practices
including monasticism, initiations and secret teachings, esoteric cosmology and rituals;
and significant resistance to adopting modern technology — all matters which history will
and has already for the most part decided. Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh says that eighty
per cent of everything we think is wrong; I think he’s being quite generous in this
assessment!
As I get older I certainly am joined by many in wishing to be there, behind the new
teachers, and to continue the genuine study and practice of buddhadharma in our time
and place as well as a significant part of Buddhism and enlightenment around the world.
Therefore I would like to see more of the Asian-born teachers active in the Western
countries woven into these collegial conversations and dialogues, as they were in the
Nineties. I’m also interested in trying to help further the general group sentiment among
the 80 or so Vajrayanist and so-called Tibetan Buddhists to have some Vajrayana teacher
conferences, to discuss various things which aren’t usually included in nor particularly
relevant to the entire transectarian teacher collective, including tulkus and lineage,
empowerments, samaya, tantra, secret teachings, the six yogas, guru yoga, lineage
authorization, dharmapala practice, translation, and so forth. Several of us intend to help
organize such gatherings in the near future.

9. Finally, you write at your website, “We are all Buddhas by nature: we only have to awaken to and what
we truly are.” In your view, what’s one simple thing each of us can do every day to move closer to that?
Keep your eyes peeled! Wake up and stay awake, by paying attention moment to moment. This is no
small thing. Beware of dullness, haziness, and self-deception. Questioning is very helpful.
Awakefulness is the Way. Remember to remember the Diamond Rule: recognize the Buddhaness, the
divine, the light in everyone and everything.
Lama Surya Das – Surya.org