Namdrol Miranda Adams, EdD

Namdrol Miranda Adams is the Dean of Education and a founder of Maitripa College. Namdrol holds a Doctorate in Education from the University of Portland. Her dissertation The Water In Which We Swim: The Influence of the Contemplative on Higher Education in American (Capitalist) Culture, was based on a study of the influence of the Tibetan Buddhist contemplative tradition on the Western academy. Her research interests are focused on contemplative education, pedagogy, learning communities, and building caring, sustainable, and socially responsible institutions of higher education.

Since 1998 she has dedicated her life to the study and practice of the Tibetan language and the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. She has worked extensively with the texts of the tradition as an editor and translator of many publications, has completed the major retreats on the sutra and tantra traditions of the lineage, and was ordained as a Buddhist nun for seven years.

Namdrol considers her close connection and alignment with traditional Tibetan Buddhist thought, practice, and some of the most renowned Tibetan teachers and meditative practitioners of the 20th century to be fundamental to her purpose, and is committed to understanding and articulating ways that the tradition can inform modern American thought and practice in the Academy and in daily life. In service to this aspiration, she has presented original research at conferences of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and others, and serves on the Theological Education Committee of the AAR and as a founding member of the Buddhist Ministry Working Group. Since 2005, she has worked with the faculty, staff, and board of Maitripa College in Portland, Oregon to develop curriculum, practice, and community for graduate students that is contemporary, culturally relevant, and simultaneously rooted in tradition.

Selected Publications

Adams, N.M. (forthcoming 2021). Making Hope Possible: The Radical Dream of Maitripa College, in Radically Dreaming: Illuminating Freirean Praxis in Turbulent Times, T.Kress, E.Stein & B.Lake, Editors, DIO Press.

Adams, N. M. (2021). Now I Can See the Moon: Contemplative Pedagogy Informed by Western Influences in Teaching and Learning in Twenty-First Century America. The Wabash Center Journal on Teaching, 2(1).

Adams, N. M., & Kecskes, K. (2020). The Long-Haul: Buddhist Educational Strategies to Strengthen Students’ Resilience for Lifelong Personal Transformation and Positive Community Change. Metropolitan Universities, 31(3), 140–162.

Adams, N. M. (2020). Lineage: Love, Transformation, Action. Maitripa College. Lapis the Learning Story 11, March 2020.

Adams, N. M. (2019). Practicing the Path: The Roots of Maitripa College. Maitripa College. Lapis the Learning Story 3, May 2019.

Adams, N. M. (2007). The Geluk Tradition, The Treasury of Lives: A Biographical Encyclopedia of Tibet, Inner Asia and the Himalayan Region. https://treasuryoflives.org/tradition/Geluk

Rinpoche, Y. (2003). Practicing the Path: A Commentary on the Lamrim Chenmo (N. M. Adams, Ed.). Wisdom Publications