Rama
“What you focus on you become.”
-Dr. Frederick Lenz-
Dr. Frederick Lenz was an enlightened teacher also known as “Rama” among his students.
From his twenties, he taught Buddhist meditation and worked tirelessly to transmit the principles of Buddhism to the people of Western civilization so they can achieve the highest state of mind – enlightenment.
Frederick Lenz was born in San Diego, California on February 9, 1950. His parents moved to Stamford, Connecticut when he was three and he spent the rest of his childhood in the area and attended school there. His parents divorced when he was 7 years old. Even in his early teenage years, he seemed to have an interest in Buddhism and read a whole set of books ( that he found in his father’s library) on the subject.
He studied English and Psychology at the University of Connecticut where he was inducted as a member of Phi Beta Kappa and graduated Magna Cum Laude. After winning a highly competitive State of New York Graduate Council Fellowship, he received his MA and Ph.D. in English Literature from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
While pursuing the academic carrier, he also gave thousands of hours of free lectures on meditation and mindfulness workshops around the world in different schools and universities including the State University of New York, Long Island University, Harvard, U.C.L.A., Stanford, Heidelberg, and the University of Zurich.
In his 20s, he had studied with an Indian teacher. In the early 1980s, as his spiritual studies deepened he felt that he needed to start his own teaching program and formed his own school “Lakshmi” that was a start of American Buddhism. He taught Buddhist principles and meditation to thousands of people. His core teaching focused on the practice of meditation, mindfulness, the enlightenment of women.
Rama believed that with a strong meditative practice, his students could live and work in the world, practice mindfulness, advance their lives, aide others and achieve spiritual and material success.
Rama wrote numerous books on the teaching of Buddhism and many of them became popular, including Lifetimes, True Accounts of Reincarnation (1979); Total Relaxation: The Complete Program for Overcoming Worry, Stress, Tension and Fatigue (1980); Surfing the Himalayas (1995) and Snowboarding to Nirvana (1997).
As a musician and producer he was part of creating 14 albums, including Enlightenment, Cayman Blue, Ecologie and Canyons of Light with the band name Zazen. Most of the music was created to help meditation practice by capturing and transferring the energy of enlightenment.
He was also a businessman, a software designer, a certified PADI Divemaster and technical scuba diver, a world-class snowboarder and he had a black belt in Martial Arts.
Dr. Frederick Lenz was a major contributor to National Public Radio in Connecticut, supported the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Cancer Institute, the AIDS Fund, Amnesty International, the National Museum of Women and the Arts in Washington, D.C., Shotokan Karate, The Cousteau Society and the Audubon Society.
He passed away on April 12, 1998, in Long Island, New York, and willed the majority of his estate to support all forms of American Buddhism. The Foundation formed in his name is The Frederick P. Lenz Foundation for American Buddhism.
More can be found in the Award-winning book of the American Buddhist Rebel. It is a biography of Dr. Lenz that was created by conducting interviews of over 100 of his students and colleagues. It describes his early life and teachings.
