The Dharma Friendship Foundation (DFF) is a Tibetan Buddhist community currently headquartered in Seattle, Washington, at 2109 31st Avenue South. Over its (almost) 40 years of operation, the DFF has created a rich history of establishing influential Tibetan Buddhist teachers in the United States. The Foundation has evolved immensely during its short time, considering itself to be rather charmingly amorphous. Its shape and form are determined by the volitions of its loyal community. In fact, the Dharma Friendship Foundation considers its community to be its identity.
Founding History & Spiritual Leaders
The DFF was founded by B. Alan Wallace in 1985. B. Alan Wallace is a Buddhist author and scholar who focuses on the overlaps between Buddhism and science, specifically physics.
Wallace was born in California in 1950 and enrolled in the University of California, San Diego, in 1968. He studied philosophy and ecology for two years. During his third year, he studied abroad at the University of Gottingen in West Germany where he gained an appreciation for religious philosophy. In 1971, Wallace discontinued his western university studies to pursue the study of Buddhism in Dharamsala, India. He stayed with Dr. Yeshi Dhonden, the personal physician to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Wallace became a friend to Dr. Dhonden, often functioning as his interpreter. Wallace was ordained as a novice monk in 1973 and received full bhikkhu ordination in 1975 from H.H. the Dalai Lama. For the next four years, Wallace continued to study Tibetan Buddhism and advance his monastic training across Europe, gaining experience translating Tibetan Buddhist texts into English. He then took on a series of monastic retreats across India and Sri Lanka in the early 1980s.
Wallace returned to the US in 1984, finishing his retreat series and enrolling in Amherst College to continue his western university education. This time, he studied physics and Sanskrit. While at Amherst College, Wallace continued his Buddhist practice, and he began working to expand the Tibetan Buddhist community in Seattle. He wanted to bring Tibetan Buddhist masters from Tibet to the US, and he eventually settled on welcoming the Venerable Gen Lamrimpa to lead a meditation retreat in Washington state.
The Ven. Gen Lamrimpa was a knowledgeable yogi and meditater who’s areas of expertise centered around concentration meditation (shamatha), Kalachakra tantra, and the Lam Rim teachings. Lamrimpa was born in Tibet but fled to India in 1959 at roughly the same time as the Dalai Lama, when tensions between Tibetans and the Communist Chinese government came to a dangerous head. Gen Lamrimpa settled in Dharamsala where he undertook periods of isolated meditative practice over the next several decades, inhabiting a single-room stone and mud hut in the mountains overlooking the town.
At Amherst College, B. Alan Wallace began correspondence with Buddhist temples in Dharamsala, using his connections to different masters there to request an outreach mission to Seattle. As word of Wallace’s request spread between Buddhist communities in Dharamsala, Gen Lamrimpa took interest. He wrote correspondence to Wallace, indicating that he was willing to travel to the US to lead a retreat.
In 1985, B. Alan Wallace founded the Dharma Friendship Foundation as a non-profit organization with the specific purpose of gathering volunteers and funds to coordinate the arrival of Gen Lamrimpa and plan the retreat. It took several years for Wallace and the DFF members of the time (Wallace’s classmates at Amherst and other friends) to gather the necessary money and finalize plans for the retreat. In 1988, a year after Wallace graduated from Amherst College, the DFF finally welcomed Gen Lamrimpa to the US where he led a shamatha retreat at the Cloud Mountain Retreat Center in Castle Rock, Washington. Wallace supported Lamprimpa’s leadership, and the retreat welcomed 12 other DFF members, all of whom were relatively new Buddhists of caucasian descent.
The retreat lasted for one year, after which Wallace spent an additional year helping Gen Lamrimpa write and translate several lecture series in English, including a transcript of Lamprimpa’s teachings at the Cloud Mountain Retreat. Once completed, Gen Lamrimpa returned to India and B. Alan Wallace stepped away from the DFF to pursue graduate education at Stanford University.
Other DFF members continued practicing in small groups at their own private gatherings, but they did not have any centralized spiritual or organizational leadership for roughly two years. Still, the Foundation grew over time. In 1992, Gen Lamrimpa returned for a few months to lead several teaching seminars for the DFF, this time to a larger congregation, but he returned to India after that short stint. Around that time, the DFF came into contact with the Venerable Thubten Chodron.
The Ven. Thubten Chodron began studying Buddhism in 1975 after graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles, and working as a school teacher for some years. She first attended a meditation seminar in California by Lama Thubten Yeshe and Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche. After that seminar, she followed those Lamas back to Kopan monastery in Nepal to continue enriching her Buddhist practice. She received novice ordination there in 1977 and gained her full bhiksuni ordination in Taiwan in 1986. She spent the next several years in India and Nepal studying under many Tibetan masters, including H.H. The Dalai Lama. In 1992, the DFF reached out to the Ven. Thubten Chodron, asking if she would be willing to become the DFF’s new spiritual advisor and resident teacher. She accepted the position and came back to the US, settling in Seattle.
The DFF took this opportunity to centralize, renting an apartment to house the Ven. Thubten Chodron. At this time, they also rented a space in the back of the local post office for their regular teachings and community events. Also at this time, the DFF established its new organizational leadership in the form of a Board of Directors. The Foundation continued to grow over the next decade under Thubten Chodron’s leadership. In 2003, Chodron stepped down as the DFF’s resident teacher. She put her efforts into founding the Sravasti Abbey in Newport, Washington, which is still (to this day) the only training monastery for monks and nuns in the US. She remained the DFF’s spiritual advisor until 2005, when she encouraged the organization to request that Yangsi Rinpoche take the position. The DFF’s board of directors reached out to Rinpoche, and he accepted the position.
Born in Nepal, Yangsi Rinpoche was recognized by the Buddhist community as the reincarnation of Geshe Ngawang Gendun at the age of 6. In 1995, he graduated with the degree of Geshe Lharampa from the Sera Je Monastery in South India. In 2005, he founded and became President of Maitripa College, an accredited Tibetan Buddhist college. He has remained as the DFF’s spiritual advisor to this day.
Tradition
As the history section touches on, the DFF was built on the traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, a form of Mahayana Buddhism. Each of the Foundation’s spiritual leaders have been educated in the Tibetan traditions. Each of them has kept a focus on concentration meditation and the Lam Rim teachings of Buddhism, just as Gen Lamrimpa did. The Lam Rim teachings are in the lineage of Je Tsong Khapa, one of the founders of the Geluk school of Buddhism in Tibet. Being of Geluk origin, the DFF places more focus on the sutras than it does on the tantra. The Lam Rim teachings recommend tantra practices only for developed practitioners. The DFF aims to reach as wide of a Buddhist audience as it can, even those who are entirely new to Buddhism, so the Foundation does not commonly lead tantric practice. It focuses on educating its members on the sutras and helping them develop strong concentration meditation practices. The DFF places a special focus on the Heart Sutra.
Current Leadership & Affiliations
The current Board of Directors is made up of just their president, Jordan Van Voast, and one other member, Loan Nguyen.
The organization does not have many direct affiliations with other Buddhist communities. Its strongest affiliation is with Maitripa College because of Yangsi Rinpoche’s status as spiritual advisor of the DFF. Many of the Buddhist masters who speak at the Foundation’s events are teachers employed at Maitripa College. In addition, some of the Foundation’s funding comes in the form of donations from the college. By convention, the DFF also has associations with the other schools that Yangsi Rinpoche oversees, though these associations are less direct. Through Yangsi Rinpoche, the DFF is associated with Deer Park Buddhist Center (in Madison, Wisconsin), Ganden Sherup Ling Buddhist Center (in San Juan, Puerto Rico), and Tara Buddhist Center (in Nashville, Tennessee).
The Foundation’s only other direct affiliation is with Sravasti Abbey. The DFF’s Board of Directors still keeps consistent communication with the Ven. Thubten Chodron, and some of the abbey’s monastics hold refuge events or other lessons through the DFF.
Community Constituency
The DFF is not a large organization, but its exact size is not easy to label. Their Facebook page has about 900 followers, and their YouTube channel has almost 500 subscribers. The organization’s leaders welcome anyone who comes to a DFF event, even if they just view a recording of it online, as part of their constituency. That said, the Board of Directors’ best estimate as to the size of the constituency is around 1000 individuals in total who are within the DFF’s social sphere. However, they do not know for certain because they do not strictly keep track of their constituency base through membership, registration, or any other form of documentation. They simply come to recognize the returning “members” through their repeated attendance to events.
Most events have under 100 people attend in person, but they usually garner a few hundred views on their YouTube channel. For example, their most recent event had roughly 50 people in attendance. Of those 50, roughly half were regulars. Some of the regulars had been coming to DFF events and practices for at least a few years while most had been coming for decades. The other half were first time attendees who were showing preliminary interest because of the advertisements they saw in their community. The YouTube video recording of the event has almost 250 views. According to the Board, these breakdowns are roughly representative of the common size of their constituency at any one event in particular.
The constituency’s modern demographics are also not easily labelled. As expressed in the history section, the original constituency of the DFF was made up of B. Alan Wallace and his other white American contemporaries. Throughout their history, the DFF’s Board of Directors has been majority or entirely white. Currently, a slight majority of their returning constituency is white or African American. Regardless, they have many members who are Asian immigrants from countries where Buddhism is prominent or are from Buddhist families of Asian heritage. Many of the returning members are Generation X or older and have been with the organization since the Ven. Thubten Chodron was the DFF’s spiritual leader.
Practices & Events
In the past, the DFF has held frequent retreats, refuge ceremonies, meditations, and dharma education lectures all as part of its practices and events.
For many years, the organization’s general practice consisted of a regular community meditation every Saturday from 10-11:30 am. The Foundation’s President, Jordan Van Voast, led the practices with support from volunteer instructors. The practices consisted of prayers to accumulate merit followed by guided meditation. They concluded with a community discussion of the meditation. Two years ago, as a way of recovering from the Covid-19 Pandemic, the DFF began using their YouTube channel to post monthly dharma lectures hosted by their President. Van Voast taught some of these dharma lectures himself, and some were taught by volunteer instructors such as the Ven. Lozang Yonten of Maitripa College.
Now, as a lingering side effect of the Covid-19 pandemic, the organization is low on volunteers. The DFF depends on donations for all of its funding, and donations post-pandemic have been low as well. Thus, the Board of Directors focuses its efforts on holding one-time events or small event series, but the DFF does not currently hold regular practices of any kind. The Board of Directors makes sure to record and post every event to their YouTube channel so that they can increase the number of people who are able access the Foundation’s programs while also minimizing costs. By recording events, the DFF is able to rent out smaller event spaces or avoid venue costs entirely by holding events in their small headquarters at 2109 31st Avenue.
Modern DFF events take many shapes. Often, they involve a guest presenter giving some sort of seminar about a prominent topic in Buddhism. For example, their most recent discussion took place in October of this year with Geshema Yeshi Sangmo from Jangchub Choeling Nunnery in Mundgod, India. The discussion centered around an analysis and Q&A on the Four Seals of Buddhism. Another recent example of such a seminar can be found in January of 2022. Guest speaker Khensur Jhado Rinpoche gave an explanation of the origins of the Lojong practice, which comes from a set of aphorisms from Geshe Chekawa in 12th century Tibet. He led the event’s attendees through a Lojong practice where they channeled these aphorisms as a way of “purifying one’s motivations.”
Other events focus around Buddhist celebrations that aim to increase merit. For example, their most recent event from this past October contained such a celebration in addition to the seminar on the Four Seals. The DFF rented out a community space so that several of the Jangchub Choeling nuns could stop by on their Loving Kindness Tour around the US. The nuns spent a week in Seattle, during which they assembled the mandala of Akshobya Buddha out of colorful sand. This mandala symbolizes a pristine awareness of the dharma and the removal of obstacles to enlightenment. After the mandala was formed, the sand was gathered and dispersed into the Portage Bay to increase the merit of all who attended the event.
Works Cited
dharmafriendship.org
www.alanwallace.org
thubtenchodron.org/biography
maitripa.org/yangsi-rinpoche
northwestdharma.org/group_member/dharma-friendship-foundation
northwestdharma.org/seattles-venerable-dharma-friendship-foundationopens-new-dharma-doors-with-new-energy
www.shambhala.com/snowlion_articles/passing-of-an-extraordinary-mountain-yog-gen-lamrimpa/?srsltid=AfmBOooPS4SEYWZNAs8D6WnropluapZnbZLKGWNRqFHILlQUlt3AXElq
www.facebook.com/DFFSEA
youtube.com/@dharmafriendship
A phone call with the President of the DFF Board of Directors, Jordan Van Voast
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Author: Chasby Cameron, Fall ’24