2024–25 Issue

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Joanna Macy teaching a group of MA in Environmental Leadership students

BY Jessie Thomas

The Legacy of Joanna Macy

The legacy of Joanna Macy is hard to go unnoticed. This interview with Joanna Macy and alumnx David DeVine shows a brief window into her impact at Naropa....
Ringu Tulku Rinpoche gives a talk at Naropa

BY Jessie Thomas

Naropa’s Heritage Practices

Since its inception, Naropa has woven innovative contemplative practices into its curriculum and culture. Here are the practices that have stood the test of time....

BY Carole Clements

Being Sex: A Contemplative Take on “Doing It”

Contemplative education is both trick and treat. So is sexuality, and needs to be further unpacked—in context and in its complexity, especially at Naropa....

BY Jordan Quaglia, PhD

Naropa’s Recent Contributions to Contemplative Science

Since the earliest days of contemplative science, insights from ancient wisdom traditions have been significantly informing investigations on mindfulness....

BY Lisa Birman

Curiosity & Compassion

As executive clinical director and founder of Embodied Mind Mental Health, Daniel Cook (MA Transpersonal Counseling Psychology, 2011) draws on his Naropa education in both his personal and professional life....
Anthony Gallucci on the swing outside of the Ginsberg library.

BY Lisa Birman

Building a Home at Naropa

As a graduate student in Religious Studies, Anthony Gallucci (MA Religious Studies, 2020) made a huge impact both academically and in the wider community of Naropa and Boulder....
Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Stephen Taylor, Amiri Baraka and Allen Ginsberg at the Summer Writing Program.

BY Steven Taylor, PhD

Re-wired for Time

It’s synchronicitous that Mark Miller called his piece “This is the Beginning of Time,” because it applies to my experience studying music at Naropa in the summer of ‘79. That...
Karen Kissel Wegela & Marvin Casper

BY Lindsey Randol, PsychD, LPC & Francis Kaklauskas, PsyD

Compassionate Service to Others

As a young monk, Naropa founder Chögyam Trungpa followed a monastic path of studying the mind through rigorous training in Buddhist philosophy, but more importantly, through contemplative practice within a...
Ram Dass and Allen Ginsberg at a table in an apartment in Boulder

BY Ben Williams, PhD

A Countercultural Institute: Ram Dass & Allen Ginsberg

The American counterculture provided an radical experiments in communal life, gatherings in an interpenetrating network of creative, messy, processes....
Bataan and Jane Faigao dpoing t'ai-chi

BY Larry Welsh

Taijiquan, A Path of Awakening Compassion at Naropa University

My Taijiquan teachers Jane and Bataan Faigao came from New York City to Naropa in 1975 to teach Professor Zheng Manqing’s Yang Style Short Form of Taijiquan....
The Dalai Lama tugs on Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi's beard at Naropa in 1997

BY Netanel Miles-Yépez, DD

The Yogi School: Bringing the World’s Wisdom to Naropa University

From its inaugural summer session in 1974, the Naropa Institute stressed experiential engagement over dispassionate observation, introducing students to the idea of the scholar-practitioner in all disciplines....
Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg, and Ken Weaver at the Peace Eye Bookstore in NYC, 1967

BY Mark Miller

This Is the Beginning of Time

The chant went on for hours, led by vibraphonist Karl Berger: “This is the beginning of time. This is the end of time. This is the beginning of time. This...
Naropa alumnx Joshua Brailler

BY Lisa Birman

Liberation Through Buddhadharma

Joshua Braillier (MDiv, 2016) took quite a leap when he left a premier law school for Naropa’s Buddhist divinity program....
Dancer Barbara Dilley

BY Cassandra Smith

Contemplative Dance Practice

Naropa University was born from the belief that blending Eastern meditative practices with Western academic disciplines would bring forth new ways of seeing and being in the world....
Judy Lief, Allen Ginsberg, and others in front of the lincoln building in the eighties

BY Cassandra Smith & Ben Williams, PhD

Letter from the Editors

This 50th anniversary commemorative edition of Naropa Magazine highlights the formative moments and passages in Naropa's history.What kind of language can capture the zeitgeist underway on the eve of Naropa’s...
Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Stephen Taylor, Amiri Baraka and Allen Ginsberg at the Summer Writing Program.

BY Andrew Schelling

Snapshot Memory: The Jack Kerouac School in the 1990s

A year after I arrived at Naropa’s Jack Kerouac School, Hakim Bey published Temporary Autonomous Zone. The book had two subtitles, “Ontological Anarchy” and “Poetic Terrorism.”...
Ellie Douglas, MDiv, 2017

BY Lisa Birman

Art of Transitions

When I arrived at Naropa, I remember feeling concerned that I’d have to leave other parts of myself behind to devote myself to a graduate program,” says Ellie Douglass (MDiv,...

BY Jessie Thomas

Student Union of Naropa

The Student Union of Naropa is giving us an inside look at their experiences in student leadership at Naropa....
Afro-futurism gathering

BY Kendall Higgins

Emergence of Beloved Community

At the core of Naropa is the belief that we must transform ourselves in order to transform the world, and MCIC serves as the institutional guardian of this heart....
Amelia Hall in front of the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya at Drala Mountain Center

BY Amelia Hall, DPhil

Naropa University: Sacred Landscape, Living Treasure

As a professor of Buddhist Studies at Naropa, I have the permission and expectation to be outrageous, which is one of the benefits of teaching at this university. As Naropa...

BY Ben Williams, PhD

Interview with Anne Waldman

There was for me with the idea of creating a poetics school the idea of performance, memorization, song, all the oral traditions—the sounding of the text. And also in spiritual...
Chuck and Judy Lief at Naropa in the '80s

BY Charles Lief

Letter from the President

In the summer of 1974, my wife Judy and I packed up our old VW micro-bus and left the residential therapeutic community in Connecticut that students of Trungpa Rinpoche founded...
Amiri Baraka reading poetry at a podium

BY Ramon S Parish

“Everything We Do Is Supposed to Be Art”

Naropa is an art school founded by radicals. Few represented the radical tradition of Naropa like Amiri Imamu Baraka....
Kristina Benson (MA Clinical Mental Health Counseling, 2023) and Callie Maron (MA Clinical Mental Health Counseling, 2023)

BY Lisa Birman

Compassionate Elder Care

A love of nature drew Kristina Benson (MA Clinical Mental Health Counseling, 2023) and Callie Maron (MA Clinical Mental Health Counseling, 2023) to study Wilderness Therapy at Naropa....
Judith Simmer-Brown teaches a class in Lincoln

BY Judith Simmer-Brown, PhD

“Relighting the Pilot Light”

Could first-person inquiry be the spark that relights the pilot light of higher education in America that Rinpoche spoke of 50 years ago?...

BY Lisa Birman

Authentic Service

If Lisa Kennemur (MA Clinical Mental Health Counseling, 2021) ever writes a book about her life, it just might be titled From the Navy to Naropa....

BY Cassandra Smith

Psychedelic Integration & Healing for the Future

In the early 1970s, psychedelic use encompassed a spectrum of motivations beyond mere recreation, including cultural, philosophical, exploratory, and sacramental purposes....
Marissa Grasmick photo

BY Lisa Birman

Healing Through Presence

Grasmick works in private practice as a transpersonal somatic psychedelic therapist, yoga and meditation teacher, and breathwork guide...
Tai Amri Spann-Ryan

BY Lisa Birman

Illuminating Injustice

“Injustice is my greatest illuminator,” says educator, biodynamic farmer, and artist, Tai Amri Spann-Ryan (BA Writing & Literature, ’05). “The war on the poor, the war in Palestine and Israel....

BY Lisa Birman

Exploring Multitudes Through Mindfulness

“As a therapist, my work encompasses all of the worlds that comprise a person: outside and inside the individual, and the multitude of dynamics in between,” says Marie Janiszewski (MA...

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Contemplative education brings together the best of Western scholarship and Eastern world wisdom traditions. Therefore, your pursuit of wisdom at Naropa means learning both about academic subjects and about your own place in the world. This innovative approach places Naropa on the cutting edge of the newest and most effective methods of teaching and learning.  

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Life at Naropa

Through its incredibly vibrant and welcoming community,  “Naropa offers a home for those who aren’t willing to conform to convention—the mystic, the healer, the prophet, the rebel, the artist, the revolutionary, the oddball—those who are incredible contributors to the evolution of society and of our planet.”—Core Associate Professor Zvi Ish-Shalom

The Naropa Difference

How is Naropa different from other universities? At Naropa, a liberal arts education balances rigorous academics with powerful interpersonal skills and self-awareness to educate the whole person. Naropa’s contemplative approach is inspired by Buddhist philosophy and the conviction that we can build a diverse, contemplative, enlightened society when we have transformed education to affirm the basic goodness of every person. 

About Naropa

Located in Boulder, Colorado, Naropa University is a Buddhist-inspired, nonsectarian liberal arts university that is recognized as the birthplace of the mindfulness movement. Naropa offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs that emphasize professional and personal growth, intellectual development, and cultivating compassion. 

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Naropa Campuses Closed on Friday, March 15, 2024

Due to adverse weather conditions, all Naropa campuses will be closed Friday, March 15, 2024.  All classes that require a physical presence on campus will be canceled. All online and low-residency programs are to meet as scheduled.

Based on the current weather forecast, the Healing with the Ancestors Talk & Breeze of Simplicity program scheduled for Friday evening, Saturday, and Sunday will be held as planned.

Staff that do not work remotely or are scheduled to work on campus, can work remotely. Staff that routinely work remotely are expected to continue to do so.

As a reminder, notifications will be sent by e-mail and the LiveSafe app.  

Regardless of Naropa University’s decision, if you ever believe the weather conditions are unsafe, please contact your supervisor and professors.  Naropa University trusts you to make thoughtful and wise decisions based on the conditions and situation in which you find yourself in.

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