Mark Bowen first encountered Zen Buddhism as a high school student in the late sixties and had his first run-in with the genius of Chögyam Trungpa in the mid-seventies through the book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. But he must be a slow learner, for it took him another twenty years finally to settle down and start meditating. The catalyst was a 1996 expedition to Sikkim, India, with the legendary and deeply spiritual British mountaineer, Doug Scott. Soaking in the atmosphere of that formerly Buddhist kingdom and visiting Rumtek monastery, the seat of Trungpa’s Kagyu lineage, turned his mind from study to practice. He connected with the Boston Shambhala Center shortly after his return and although he still considers himself a student, has been teaching in various capacities since 2003. Presently, his primary interest is Mahamudra, which seems quite applicable to silent retreats such as this one.

Mark holds a doctorate in physics from MIT. For about twelve years after graduate school, he worked in the medical device and pharmaceutical industries, and then left all that behind to become a writer. He has written three books of narrative non-fiction, the first two about global warming and the third about a crazy telescope buried deep in the ice at the South Pole. He lives near Karmê Chöling with his partner Wendy Stein.