Rama - Dr Frederick Lenz
Rama was a spiritual teacher who taught what could loosely be called American Buddhism in the 1980’s and 1990’s. He was a fully enlightened teacher, a mahasiddha. Spiritual enlightenment means to be awakened or liberated from the bondage of samsara. A more descriptive definition is: the union of wisdom, compassion, emptiness and skillful means. Rama himself said that enlightened people have great compassion for those who are suffering and that they tend to have a good sense of humor because they don’t take our ideas of self seriously. People have many ideas about what it means to be enlightened. Respectively, holding a liberated person to ideas seems antithetical to the meaning of liberation.
So when we look at what Rama taught we need to continually ask ourselves how what he taught can be used to further our practice. Meditation, mindfulness, career success, sports, martial arts, overcoming fears, winning, energy management, music and willpower are all aspects of his teaching. He took an angle that is intended to have significance to westerners. At the same time he also had us read extensively and he discussed the Buddhist concepts that underlay the practice. And all of this was based on a foundation of Vajrayana meditation.
RamaLila
Lila means dance of life. This website is about Rama’s Lila. RamaLila.com contains tributes to Rama and lists of the books he recommended, the music that he produced and a timeline of his life.