When he met his root guru, Tenzin Yangchen (Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati), in 1992, she quipped, “So you’re the punk monk I’ve been hearing about!” It became an affectionate moniker that would quickly be adopted by his students.

Khenpo Gurudas Sunyatananda (Lama Jampal Lobsang Gyatso) is a non-sectarian contemplative monk and dharma teacher, ordained in the Buddhist and Eastern Catholic traditions, and best known for his pioneering efforts to bring the dharma of Buddha and Christ to a postmodern audience, in a contemporary, non-theistic and non-religious context, as he believes both Buddha Sakyamuni and the Rabbi Yeshua ben Yusef (Jesus the Nazarene).

Author of more than six hundred articles, and several books, including such classics as The Dharma of Compassion – One Monk’s Reflections on the Teachings of the Enlightened & Anointed Ones, Awakening and Tea & Dharma, he is respected as an authority on interreligious and interspiritual dialogue, social justice, peace and the Feral Wisdom Tradition of Postmodern Buddhism.

Today, Khenpo Gurudas Sunyatananda (known simply to his students as “Servant Father, or Khenpo — a Tibetan honourific given to the spiritual leader of a monastery or contemplative community, which translates as “abbot”) serves as the spiritual director of the Contemplative Order of Compassion, and as the director of the Spiritus Project — a worldwide grassroots, intentional spiritual community of lay men and women seeking ways to live the Dharma more authentically, for the sake of relieving the suffering of others.