Teachers

Lama John Makransky

Lama John Makransky, PhD, is a professor of Buddhism and Comparative Theology at Boston College, senior advisor for Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche’s Centre of Buddhist Studies in Nepal, a fellow of the Mind and Life Institute, and developer of the Sustainable Compassion Training model for accessing innate capacities of compassion and awareness. John’s scholarly writings have focused on connections between practices of devotion, compassion and non-dual wisdom in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, on adapting Buddhist practices to meet contemporary minds, and on theoretical issues in interfaith learning.

In 2000, John was ordained as a Lama, a meditation teacher of innate compassion and wisdom, within the Nyingma Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.  As a meditation teacher, John is known for guiding participants in their discovery of underlying powers of unconditional love and wisdom. For the past twelve years, John has taught meditations of innate compassion and wisdom, adapted from Tibetan Buddhism, for modern Buddhists, those in other spiritual traditions, and for people in caring roles and professions.

Website: sustainablecompassion.org

Events with Lama John Makransky

Online Accessing the Unconditional Love and Wisdom of our Buddha Nature with Lama John Makransky
May 4 - 5, 2024

From a Tibetan Buddhist perspective, our Buddha nature is the basic space of our being undivided from vast capacities of awareness, warmth, love, compassion and wisdom. These capacities are always available below our surface consciousness, but often hidden by our habits of self-clinging thought and reaction. One way that Tibetan practitioners start to access them is by bringing to mind the Buddha as an enlightened field of refuge, and experiencing themselves and their whole world as held in the Buddha’s unconditional love, compassion, and wisdom. Other contemplative traditions follow an analogous pattern: being held in the love, compassion, and wisdom…