Rama's Biography

Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz was an enlightened Buddhist teacher.

Rama was born in San Diego, California. He grew up in Connecticut, graduated from the University of Connecticut, Phi Beta Kappa, and received his Ph.D. in English Literature from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His dissertation was entitled, "The Evolution of Matter and Spirit in the Poetry of Theodore Roethke."

Rama began teaching meditation in the 1970s on the East Coast of the United States. In the late 1970s, he moved to California and started a spiritual center called Anahata.

In 1982, he took the name Rama and formed Lakshmi - a spiritual center with students in San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. In 1983, Rama published The Last Incarnation which contained stories by his students about their experiences with Rama. In the 1980s and 1990s, Rama continued to give public seminars in self-discovery throughout the United States.

Rama taught meditation and self-discovery through a variety of pathways including Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, Tantric Buddhism, Taoism, kundalini yoga and mysticism.

Rama experienced enlightenment through meditation and absorption in nirvana. He also found enlightenment in software, music, business, snowboarding and scuba diving.

In the mid 1980s, Rama formed an electronic music group, Zazen. Rama produced with Zazen over 25 albums for meditation and listening enjoyment. Rama discovered that in this crowded and hectic time, it was easier to meditate when listening to certain types of music. Rama was able to transmit empowerments directly through this music.

In the late 1980s, Rama gave public classes in New York and seminars for his students. He also began developing several software systems, including graphics games, database programs and artificial intelligence programs.

Rama made over 100 audio talks, discussing many aspects of self-discovery from a wide variety of viewpoints. He covered topics like meditation, Buddhism, the yoga of love, women / men and enlightenment, career success, living and working in the world, spiritual absorption and nirvana, personal happiness, miracles, dharma and karma, the Zen of sports and athletics, reincarnation, the Tibetan rebirth process and Tantric Buddhism.

Additionally, Rama took up scuba diving, and became a PADI divemaster, specializing in technical deep diving. Rama found that certain underwater locations have a tremendous purity and power that is equal to that of the high Tibetan Himalaya. They are, as he wrote in Snowboarding to Nirvana, "the last refuge of pure aura and power on our planet, the oceans' depths."

In the mid 1990s, Rama wrote two books about meditation, Buddhism and snowboarding: Surfing the Himalayas and Snowboarding to Nirvana. They chronicle the adventures of a young snowboarding enthusiast as he travels to Nepal to snowboard the highest mountains in the world - the Himalayas. While in Nepal he meets Master Fwap and the Oracle of Nepal, two enlightened Buddhist masters who teach him the path of Tantric Buddhism.

Rama, Frederick Lenz (February 9, 1950 - April 12, 1998)