It may seem strange to look to a university psychology program for an example of American Buddhism, but at Naropa University, Buddhist values permeate every academic discipline. When Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche founded the Naropa Institute in 1974, which would become Naropa University in 1999, he sought to unite contemplative studies with Western academics. The MA Psychology program was among its first degree programs and the school was finally accredited in 1986.
Founding and Inspiration
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche was born in Tibet in 1939. In addition to being a teacher in the Kagyu lineage and being trained the Nyingma tradition, he was an adherent of the nonsectarian movement within Tibetan Buddhism, known as the Rimay movement. After being forced to leave Tibet when the Chinese Communist party took over, Trungpa eventually studied comparative religion and philosophy at Oxford University, afterwards settling in Scotland where he founded the first Tibetan Buddhist practice center in the West. In the 1970s, he moved to the United States, having decided to give up his monastic vows in order to teach as many people as possible about Buddhism.
To further this goal, Trungpa developed Shambhala Training, a more secular program emphasizing meditation. This found an eager audience in America, especially among members of the counterculture movements and the Beat poets of the 1960s. By the early 1970s, Trungpa had established himself in Boulder, Colorado, where he would eventually realize his dream of integrating Buddhism with the academic world he had achieved success in.
In founding the Naropa Institute, Trungpa was largely inspired by Nalanda, a Buddhist monastery that rose to prominence in the 5th century in what is now Bihar, India. Scholars flocked to Nalanda to learn about subjects such as theology, grammar, logic, astronomy, and medicine. For this reason, Nalanda is often considered equivalent to a modern-day university. Many early Mahayana philosophers, such as Nagarjuna, Asanga, and Vasubandhu, were high priests of Nalanda. Though it fell when Buddhism was largely wiped out in India, it is now an archaeological site that can be visited by those who, like Trungpa, seek inspiration among its ancient ruins.
Naropa was finally established in 1974, with the first summer sessions drawing more than 1300 people, far more than the expected three to five hundred. This number included many prominent American writers, artists, and composers, such as Allen Ginsberg and John Cage. The school was established on the foundation of the three Prajnas of Buddhism, or the three ways of knowing: study, reflection, and meditation. Having successfully established several programs of study, Trungpa pushed to gain accreditation, which was awarded in 1986. Though he moved to Nova Scotia in the mid-1980s, Trungpa remained invested in the university until his death from chronic alcoholism in 1987. Currently, Trungpa’s eldest son is the lineage holder of Naropa University, speaking to the university annually and sometimes teaching classes. (Needless to say, this is not a position universities typically have.)
The roots for the psychology program lie in Buddhist values. The program seeks to help students understand the roots of suffering and enable them to work as counselors with an emphasis on transpersonal psychotherapy. Transpersonal psychology owes much of its origin to humanistic psychology, a more mainstream movement within psychology that focuses on human goodness and potential and views individuals holistically. It claims psychologists such as William James, Carl Jung, and Abraham Maslow, all big names in the profession, to be among the first transpersonal thinkers. Transpersonal psychology delves further into the spiritual aspects of existence, arguing that they are an integral part of our lives and should not be overlooked in psychotherapy. It seeks to explore altered states of consciousness, making use of meditation and other transcendent experiences. It asks how the Buddhist eightfold path relates to psychotherapy and requires counselors to develop an awareness of their own transpersonal, spiritual journey.
Student Body
Though students at Naropa University do not all necessarily identify as Buddhist, they have inarguably chosen an educational path infused with Buddhist values and practices. Though the Naropa University website does not provide statistics on students’ self-identified religions, Naropa places a huge emphasis on contemplative life, offering numerous resources for meditation, some of which are required by departmental curricula. The university highlights the myriad of spiritual opportunities in their area, listing nine different Buddhist gatherings or congregations compared to just four Christian groups and seven groups associated with other religions specifically. Naropa prides itself on its students’ commitment to spirituality and open mindedness, citing that the vast majority of their students discuss religion in their everyday lives, view themselves as tolerant of others with different beliefs, want to develop a meaningful philosophy in life, and value spirituality highly as compared to the general population.
Almost two-thirds of the student body is white, about 11% identifies as Hispanic or Latino, 1% as Asian, 3% as Black or African American, and 11% identifies as multiracial. This is about average for an American university, and faculty appears to have a similarly majority-white ethnic breakdown. Their form of Buddhism is roughly what you would expect from a white American Buddhist community: they emphasize meditative practices and sitting as central to the religion and important parts of daily life. These practices are so crucial to life at Naropa that they are built into the academic curriculum– it’s hard to imagine too many Naropa students not identifying as Buddhist to at least a certain extent, and all students certainly value Buddhist practices.
Programs and Requirements
Currently, Naropa University offers three different MA programs related to psychology: transpersonal counseling psychology, contemplative psychotherapy and Buddhist psychology, and somatic counseling. Though they vary in focus, all three have curricula infused with Buddhist thought and require participation in meditative practice. They all view spirituality as a key aspect of psychological wellness and lament its absence from traditional training in psychotherapy.
The transpersonal counseling psychology program offers three concentrations: art therapy, wilderness therapy, and counseling psychology. Their approach uses “contemplative traditions [that] see healing as a return to ‘right relations’ with all living systems on our planet,” again invoking the Buddhist eightfold path. Though not explicitly Buddhist, the art therapy program emphasizes transpersonal concepts and the healing power of creative processes. Wilderness therapy, less common in the field of psychotherapy, echoes the practice of Theravada forest monks, finding healing through communing with nature. All concentrations require students to take courses on meditation, and all require students to experience the transformative nature of transpersonal psychotherapy firsthand, finding their own spiritual path before they can go on to help others.
Contemplative psychotherapy and Buddhist psychology requires participation in Maitri retreats. Maitri is one of the Four Immeasurables, most often translated as lovingkindness. Naropa characterizes it as love and “unconditional friendliness,” both to others and to yourself. The retreats involve meditation instruction and integrating meditation and clinical perspectives. In their third and final year, students discuss concepts from The Tibetan Book of the Dead on their Maitri retreat, examining life and death as they come to the end of their journey at Naropa. The program also emphasizes Trungpa’s notion of “brilliant sanity,” the idea that our basic nature is characterized by clarity and compassion, and finding this in even the most distorted states of mind.
The somatic counseling program similarly emphasizes the importance of mindfulness. It is based on the idea that the mind and body are deeply connected and that the body can help us transform. They emphasize the good in people and the power of movement to promote growth, taking a holistic view of the individual. They focus on promoting wellness rather than curing illness, similar to how many white American Buddhists de-emphasize the problem of suffering in favor of promoting the benefits of meditation.
Naropa also has a consciousness lab, which applies psychological research principles to investigate altered states of consciousness. As you might expect, much of their research is on meditation, investigating many different forms of meditation and meditative traditions, many of which doubtless come from Buddhism. They also have a particular research interested in synesthesia, a sensory phenomena in which an individual experiences a specific sensation induced by an unrelated stimulus (i.e., a person “sees” music or views different letters as inherently having different colors). This may seem unrelated to other aspects of Naropa’s psychology program, but it can reveal a lot about the nature of perception and reality, which is deeply linked to the practice of meditation.
Naropa University offers programs in a variety of academic disciplines at the undergraduate and graduate levels, all of which are as intimately linked to Buddhism as their psychology masters programs. Though it is neither a traditional university nor a traditional religious community, it truly blends the two worlds in order to fulfill Trungpa’s goal of spreading Buddhism, specifically the contemplative and meditative aspects, to laypeople in innovative and transformative ways.