Biography

Dr. Reginald (Reggie) Ray brings four decades of study and intensive meditation practice within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition as well as a special gift for applying it to the unique problems, inspirations, and spiritual imperatives of modern people.

Dr. Ray received his PhD from the Divinity School of the University of Chicago in 1973. After spending a year in India on a Fulbright-Hays fellowship, studying Tibetan and completing his dissertation, he took up a tenure track position at Indiana University. In the spring of 1974, at the invitation of Tibetan Buddhist meditation master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, he moved to Boulder, Colorado where he became the first full-time faculty member and chair of the Buddhist Studies Department at Naropa University, where he continues to teach. In subsequent years,

Reggie, as he prefers to be called, received two of the prestigious year-long National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Research Fellowships in support of his scholarly writing. In 1997, Reggie became the first teacher in residence at the Shambhala Mountain Center and, over his seven-year tenure there, became well known for his intensive Winter Dathün retreats. During the course of his exploration of Buddhism, Reggie has studied with many accomplished masters of the Nyingma and Kagyu schools of Tibetan and Zen Buddhism, as well as indigenous teachers from North and South America and Africa.

Reggie's intensely experiential and deeply transformative Meditating with the Body® teachings steer the modern practitioner away from meditation simply as a mental exercise, which often yields little personal transformation due to its disembodied nature, toward meditation that is directed somatically inward. Using practices based mostly on the ancient teachings of Tibetan yoga, developed and perfected over generations by yogis and yoginis in life-long solitary retreat, the tradition taught by Dr. Ray upholds that the body is the gateway to enlightenment — to discover the body is to discover awareness, and eventually, the awakened state.

In an inspiration to share these teachings more broadly to the modern world, Reggie now tours North America regularly and the Dalai Lama Center has been pleased to welcome him as a participant of the Speakers Series.