JUDITH SIMMER-BROWN is a Buddhist teacher and scholar who has committed to joining deep inner awakening to our enlightened nature with the social path of cultivating enlightened society through compassionate and responsive networks and structures of diverse communities and peoples. Her personal and academic work have focused on the inner practices of Tibetan Buddhism that cultivate the heart and mind as well as socially transformative practices such as compassion training, anti-racism activism, and interreligious dialogue. She was a founding faculty member at Naropa University, one of the first fully accredited Buddhist-inspired universities in the U.S, and has served as an Acharya, senior dharma teacher, in Shambhala International. She is active in academic and dharmic circles in many collaborative projects, and is a popular lecturer, retreat teacher, and frequent author of books, chapters, and articles.

Naropa University

Judith Simmer-Brown is one of a small group of Founding Faculty of Naropa University.  Hired at the end of 1977 on a one-year contract, she joined a tiny contingent of faculty who were hatching a fresh approach to higher education that integrated contemplative practice into every academic discipline and classroom.  Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, the Founder, declared that he intended to “relight the pilot light” of American higher education. Her colleagues were poets and dancers, psychologists, scientists, environmentalists, martial artists, and religious studies scholars, all yoked to contemplative practices in their own lives.  Through their collaboration, Naropa began to identify as a “contemplative college of the liberal arts”, and eventually developed both graduate and undergraduate programs committed to contemplative pedagogy.

Over the more than 40 years of Judith’s teaching at Naropa, she has been a leader in propagating contemplative education, the first-person disciplines indispensable for enlivening the educational journeys of the students.  Her home department, Religious Studies, included focus on heritage Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, training students for careers as Buddhist scholars and translators of Tibetan and Sanskrit.  It also developed Contemplative Religions, a comparative religions program highlighting the contemplative aspects of the world’s religious traditions.  The Engaged Buddhism degree morphed into the Masters’ of Divinity program in 2000, one of the first accredited Buddhist chaplain training programs in the country.

In the final decade of Judith’s Naropa career, she established the Center for the Advancement of Contemplative Education that brought together the University’s initiatives for contemplative teaching and learning and promoted faculty in-service trainings, resources, and interfaces with the University’s initiatives in inclusivity and environmental sustainability.  She co-founded Naropa’s Compassion Initiative that fosters research and training in altruism, and continues as senior trainer and advisor.  She retired as a full-time faculty member in June 2020, but continues on special contract with selected projects and teaching opportunities.

Shambhala

In 2000, Judith was empowered an Acharya in Shambhala International by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, the dharma heir of Judith’s root teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.  As an acharya, she serves the Shambhala community with foundational and advanced programs on meditation and study.  She has been trained in Kagyu, Nyingma, and Shambhala teachings and inner practices, and has served as Dean of the Shambhala Teachers’ Academy from 2008-2017.  Previously she directed the Ngedon School of Higher Studies, the shedra studies program founded by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche in 1981 that served the Shambhala International community until 2009.  Within Shambhala, Judith’s activities have been focused on support of Shambhala chaplains, called Upadhyayas, as well as both practitioners relatively new to the community as well as senior practitioners on the Scorpion Seal path.  She loves teaching programs on compassion meditation, White Tara, dakini teachings, Buddhist three yanas, and the Shambhala terma.