Reggie Ray
Reginald Ray met the Vidyadhara at Karmê Chöling in 1970. The Vidyadhara responded to Reggie's desire to drop out of graduate school and move to Tail of the Tiger by saying that he preferred Reggie stick with his studies, as the Vidyadhara planned to start a college one day, and Reggie's graduate training might come in handy.
Reggie eventually received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1973 and accepted a tenure track job at Indiana University that same year. He left his position to teach at the inaugural summer of Naropa Institute in 1974, and continued on as Naropa's first full-time faculty member, chair of the new Buddhist Studies department, and head of the faculty.
From the beginning, the Vidyadhara recommended a solid practice and yearly retreats as the necessary ground for teaching and scholarly work, and Reggie has tried to live under the blessing of that advice during his years at Naropa. During the years since joining the university, he has divided his time between teaching at Naropa, Ngeton School, RMSC and the University of Colorado, as well as advising, counseling, mentoring and writing. In 1996 he was made an acharya and, in 1997, moved with his family to RMSC where he is teacher in residence, commuting to Boulder during the academic year. Since 1997, he has led meditation groups of new practitioners, currently leads the winter dathun at RMSC each year, and teaches practice programs for shamatha and Vajrayana students. He also staffs seminaries and vajra assemblies at RMSC regularly.
His scholarly work, Buddhist Saints in India (Oxford University Press, 1994) which received an award from the Academy of Religion, examines the history of the "practice lineage" in India. He has recently completed two further books, Indestructible Truth (Shambhala, 2000), detailing the exoteric traditions of Tibetan Buddhism and Secret of the Vajra World (Shambhala 2001) examining the Tibetan Vajrayana. In addition to his study under the Vidyadhara, he has received teachings from many of the great contemporary teachers of the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages, including the Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, with whom he has worked closely over the past number of years.
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