DAVID ROSS KOMITO,
PROFESSOR OF ASIAN PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
- Listen to my Talks on Buddhist Philosophy and Practice
- View my Photographs of Santa Fe and the Southwest
- A Course on Buddhism
- Read my Blog
- Read my Books
BRIEF AUTOBIOGRAPHY
I began my professional life as a counseling psychologist. In the mid-1970s I realigned myself to higher education, where my career followed parallel tracks of administration, teaching and scholarship.
After completing my Ph.D. I was appointed to positions at the "Five Colleges" in central Massachusetts, teaching at the University of Massachusetts and managing academic programs at Amherst College and Mt. Holyoke College. At these two liberal arts colleges I learned the tradition of administrators maintaining their roots in scholarship and teaching. So over the years of my academic career I made many trips to Asia, published three books on Tibetan Buddhism, edited a fourth and always carried a teaching load along with my administrative duties.
From the Five Colleges I moved on to Stanford University to be Assistant Director of Stanford's Center for Teaching and Learning. I then took an appointment as Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Transpersonal Psychology and Dean of John F. Kennedy University's Graduate School of Consciousness Studies. Later I pursued my interests in the (then highly experimental) area of online education for the University of San Francisco's Institute for Nonprofit Organization Management, pioneering this teaching modality for USF. Wishing to return to a rural college town atmosphere, I took a position at Eastern Oregon University, where I expanded its distance education programs into online formats and created a program in Religious Studies.
Beginning in 1985 and up to the present I have been teaching at various Buddhist meditation centers in the western USA, such as San Francisco Zen Center, Berkeley Zen Center, Upaya Zen Center, Thubten Norbu Ling Tibetan Buddhist Center and the Finding the Path to Liberation Buddhist Center. Some of my recorded talks are available here.
In 2015 I retired from full time teaching at Eastern Oregon University, and began teaching the Philosophies of Asia and Environmental Philosophy online for Portland State University. In 2017 my wife Kayla and I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I have continued my teaching at PSU while we enjoy the rich cultural atmosphere of Santa Fe.
EDUCATION
Ph.D., Inner Asian Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington
M.A., Religious Studies,
Indiana University
M.S., Counseling Psychology, Indiana University
B.A., Psychology, University
of California, Los Angeles.
Email: komito@pdx.edu
