James William Coleman was born and raised in Southern California, and earned an MA and PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a specialization in the sociology of religion. He began his academic career at the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where he is he is currently Professor of Sociology Emeritus. He first discovered Eastern philosophy in his undergraduate years, but didn’t begin a daily meditation practice until sometime later when he was a guest student at the San Francisco Zen Center’s Green Gulch Farm in Marin County. He practiced with SFZC for many years until he encountered the woman who was to become his root teacher, Toni Packer, who had left the Zen tradition to follow a nonsectarian spiritual path.
He wrote two sociology textbooks which went through numerous editions, and his first book length work in the sociology of religion was The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition which was published by the Oxford University Press in 2001. It employed extensive survey research, interviews, and library sources to analyze the new Buddhism that is evolving in the West. After Toni’s death, he returned to Zen practice, and became fascinated by Reb Anderson Roshi’s lectures on the wonderful Samdhinirmocana Sutra. He persuaded Reb to let him put those lectures together into a book which was entitled The Third Turning of the Wheel: The Wisdom of the Samdhinirmocana Sutra and was published by Rodmell Press in 2012. After that he, began exploring the Vajrayana tradition–developing a deep connection to Tara practice while doing the Six Yogas of Sukhasiddhi and Niguma under the guidance of Lama Palden Drolma and Lama Drupgyu of the Kagyu Shangpa tradition.
His next book ,The Buddha’s Dream of Liberation: Freedom, Emptiness, and Awakened Nature, published by Wisdom Publications in 2017, combines the perspective provided by the Samdhinirmocana Sutra with the later developments of the Vajrayana tradition to lay out a vision of the full spectrum of Buddhist philosophy. He is currently finishing a new project entitled, The Goddess, The Hero, and The Buddha which traces the evolution of human spirituality from our most ancient ancestors to the uncertain future that lies ahead.
He co-founded the White Heron Sangha with Rosemary Donnell in San Luis Obispo California, and some twenty-five years later he still practices and teaches there in the nonsectarian Buddhist community it created.
James William Coleman 