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Who is Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz?
An evolving essay by contributing writers

Dr. Frederick Lenz was born on February 9th, 1950 in San Diego, California. He moved with his family to Connecticut as a child. By 19, he had begun teaching meditation. After studying many traditions and steadily advancing through his own practice, he began to realize many past lives and wrote the book "Lifetimes: A True Account of Reincarnation" detailing the experience of past lives. In time, when Rama reached a very high and substantial state of enlightenment, he celebrated the event at the now famous "Self-Realization Party" in 1980. Rama loved to share all happy events with his students.

While it is very common for Westerners to misuse the word "Enlightenment", in this case it is defined as being in a continuous state of Sahaja Samadhi and can be best determined by a continuous gold aura and great sense of humor. To be enlightened does not mean that you know how to fix cars or have special powers. It is beyond definition, but can be thought of as complete awareness without mental modification.

Dr. Lenz, whose spiritual name is Rama, believed that you could not maintain significant advancement without the application of what you have learned. He emphasized working hard while keeping it light. It is in this application that Rama created numerous technology companies, produced several bands --notably "Zazen", over 14 albums, created nature and Rock videos, wrote several books including two best selling novels, "Snowboarding to Nirvana" and "Surfing the Himalayas", while maintaining successful career and spiritual education programs. He balanced his life with extreme sports hobbies of martial arts, 200+ feet scuba diving, and snowboarding! Learn more on FrederickLenz.com.

Rama is known best for his humor and perfect insights into life and existence. Rama shared his experience with over 250,000 seminar attendees and more continue to meet him through his spiritual novels. All of this success is not without controversy as the ideas of reincarnation, meditation, and self-realization have traditionally met with resistance from the status quo. Many historically recognized Buddhas were even physically chased from their countries. :-)

In the later years of the last decade Rama began to appear increasingly ill. Friends tell of his being in much pain; however, being the warrior at heart he always presented as strong a physical presence as possible before both his students and the general public. In December of 1997 Rama invited his entire student body to come together one last time. It was a very poignant and yet encouraging last meeting with him for many of his students. The next spring,at the age of 48, having spent 30 years of those years teaching meditation and enlightenment, Rama made a decision to quietly end his life. He did so in the early morning at his home in Long Island over the weekend of April 10-12, 1998.

We may not know what factored into Rama's decision to end his life --though his apparent illness must have been a weighty factor -- but we have borne witness to the results of his teachings within the student body. Students have reached out to each other in more ways than can be counted and have advanced in their practice -- never accepting laziness as an option. Seemingly insurmountable projects have been completed and completed well. A recent survey of students taken electronically here at RamaLila revealed that nearly every student described his or her self as very to extremely happy.

Students from all generations have begun to realize their own Dharma. Polished musicians, writers, software engineers, web (footed) folk, teachers, and more have begun to emerge as their meditations improve with each application. The tremendous power and grace that Rama demonstrated with all of his projects serves as inspiration to all those who continue to know him.

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