Teachers & Guests
Daniel P. Brown, Ph.D.
(1948-2022)
Senior Teacher
Daniel Brown is the author of 15 books including Transformations of Consciousness (with Ken Wilbur & Jack Engler), a book on Mahamudra, “Pointing Out the Great Way: The Mahamudra Tradition of Tibetan Meditation-Stages” (Wisdom Publications). He is also the co-author of a forthcoming book on the Bon A Khrid lineage of Bon Great Completion Meditation. In graduate school at The University of Chicago he studied Sanskrit with Hans van Beutenen, and also studied Tibetan, Buddhist Sanskrit, and Pali languages in the Buddhist Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison WI.
Gretchen Nelson, LPT
Senior Teacher
Gretchen Nelson, M.S.P.T. began Yoga in 1983 and was certified as a teacher by Bikram in 1987, Pattabi Jois in the Ashtanga system in 1990, and B.K.S. Iyengar in 1992. While a practicing Yoga teacher in San Francisco, she graduated from University of California San Francisco Medical school with an M.S.P.T in physical therapy 1997. Gretchen Nelson relocated to Boston in 2007 when she got remarried to Dr. Brown and began teaching meditation full time along with Dr. Brown Ph.D. She teaches the Level 1 and Level 2 courses and the advanced Bon teachings under the guidance of Geshe Sonam Gurung.
Dustin DiPerna, M.A.
Senior Teacher
Dustin DiPerna holds an undergraduate degree from Cornell University and a graduate degree from Harvard University. He began the practice of Mahamudra as a student of Dr. Daniel Brown in 2006. With the supervision of Dr. Brown, Dustin completed his graduate studies with a culminating thesis that explored key distinctions between the “event perspective” and the “mind perspective” in meditative experience as originally introduced by Denma Locho Rinpoche. Dustin was recognized as a senior teacher in the Pointing Out Way lineage in 2020.
Email: dustindiperna@gmail.com
Efraim Schwadron, M.D.
Senior Teacher
Dr. Efraim Schwadron is an eye physician in a Health Care Organization and also in his own clinic in Israel. He also has an MHA degree in Healthcare Systems Management from Ben-Gurion University. For eight years he served as a Director in an HMO medical clinic, and for several years he served as a member of the Education Committee of the Israel Medical Organization. He has been studying the Pointing Out Way approach with Dan Brown, Ph.D. since 2008, and has led the Israeli Pointing Out sangha since its inception. He has carefully translated all of the technical terms of this meditation path into Hebrew. He is known for the clarity of his teaching, the care he puts into his students, and his deep respect for the tradition.
Email: shvadi@gmail.com
George Protos, M.A.
Senior Teacher
George first met Dan Brown at Esalen Institute in the mid-1990s and from the first, was deeply moved by the experience of the pointing-out-way style of meditation. A few years later, Dan invited George to teach and guide others along the Path. Now retired from a career in human resource management and hospital administration, George dedicates himself to supporting the practice of meditation through one-on-one sessions as well as leading local sanghas in Europe, California and on-line. He describes his approach as supporting others to discover through their own direct experience the nature of mind.
Linda Feldstein, M.Sc., G.D.
Gestalt Psychotherapy
Senior Consultant
Linda has been practicing Dharma since 1971– initially at the Rochester (NY) Zen Center for a period of 20 years. She then studied and practiced in the Tibetan tradition under several teachers who introduced her to both Mahamudra and Dzogchen. In 2012, after completing over 2 years in continuous retreat in Australia, Linda and her husband had the opportunity to meet Dan Brown and practice the Pointing Out style. The clarity, precision and authenticity of these teachings and translations left a profound impression on Linda, clarifying longstanding questions and enriching the field of practice. Since 2016, Linda has been teaching the Level 1 retreat with Dan and following students under his compassionate and accomplished guidance.
Margaret (Meg) St John, Ph.D.
Senior Consultant
Meg is a clinical and developmental psychologist (Stanford, U. Michigan, Harvard). She was introduced to Dan’s approach to the mind when she worked for him at Harvard ~40 years ago. In that shared venture, Meg came to know Dan’s compassionate focus on healing, his quick cuts to the pith of a subject and his skill at transforming complex subjects into relatable experience and deep understanding. They teamed well and have been respected colleagues, teacher and student, and trusted friends ever since. By now, Meg has a broad background in the study, teaching and practice of Buddhism and meditation, and especially in the Pointing Out Way. With Dan’s oversight, she follows students in this tradition, guiding them in a style that is relational and collegial, as they metabolize the path to direct realization.
Email: megsstj@gmail.com
Guests
Rahob Tulku, Thupten
Kalsang Rinpoche
(1932-2020)
Geshe (teacher) degree from Drepung Monastary in Lhasa, and in Indian Buddhism and Sanskrit from Varanasi University in India. Rinpoche has spent over 70 years mastering and integrating meditation practices from different schools of Buddhist meditations including The Great Completion (Dzogchen) and Gelugpa concentration and emptiness meditation in Tibet and India, Theravadin mindfulness meditation in Thailand, and Shingon and Zen Buddhism in Japan. He has taught at Harvard Divinity School and Tufts University. Rinpoche is considered an emanation of Padmasambhava, and is the incarnate Tulku of Rahob Monastary in old Tibet. He currently is head of the Rahob Dharma center in the Berkshires area of New York.
Geshe Tenzin
Wangyal Rinpoche
Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche is one of only a few masters of the Bön Dzogchen tradition presently living in the West. An accomplished scholar in the Bön Buddhist textual traditions of philosophy, exegesis, and debate, Tenzin Rinpoche completed a rigorous11-year course of traditional studies at the Bönpo Monastic Center (Menri Monastery) in India, where he received his Geshe, degree. In 1992 Tenzin Rinpoche founded Ligmincha Institute in order to preserve and introduce to the West the religious teachings and arts of the ancient Tibetan Bön Buddhist tradition.
Chongtul Rinpoche
Chongtul Rinpoche is a reincarnated Tibetan lama who grew up in India and studied philosophy for over 20 years. He was the director of a Bön monastery in India. Bön is the indigenous religion of Tibet and hold the oldest teachings on Great Completion Meditation (Rdzogs chen). Rinpoche now resides in America in the greater New York area, where he teaches various courses in Tibetan philosophy. In the US he founded a Bön educational fund that provides education and training for students of Tibetan philosophy around the world as well as for over 400 Tibetan orphan children living in India and Nepal.