American Buddhist Rebel

Winner of the Eric Hoffer and Benjamin Franklin literary awards, this biography tells the story of Rama, Dr. Frederick P. Lenz, (1950-1998), an enlightened spiritual teacher who taught a brilliant, boundary-breaking form of American Buddhism to tens of thousands of people.
Rama could heal people whom he never met. He naturally filled large auditoriums with sparkling rays of golden light—the essence of his being. He made huge audiences shake with laughter, as he filled them with luminosity and joy. Omens of an unusual, not special, life began in 1953, when, as a toddler, he slipped into samadhi—a timeless state of immersion in infinite light—in his mother's garden. His journey continued after high school, when he flew from Connecticut to Kathmandu, Nepal, with a homemade snowboard, seeking to snow-surf the highest mountains he could find. On his first downhill run, he plowed into an aged Buddhist monk, who told the incredulous teen their meeting was destined, that his past life enlightenment would return, and he would help millions of people. Upon his return to the US, he earned his PhD and began to teach on his own, and implemented new ways of placing independent and skeptical Westerners on the path to enlightenment, beginning with higher and happier states of mind. As his own realization deepened, the energy he emanated was like a huge timeless force of pure love.
This biography includes interviews and stories from over 100 students and colleagues, each with a different perspective. Rama did not just speak about enlightenment; he modeled it. Compassionate, controversial, wise, honest, prescient, reverent, irreverent, he was always teaching and still is.