“It wasn’t the martial arts itself,” he says. He credits devotion to his martial arts teacher and to the discipline of martial arts practice with getting him through. Along with physical and psychic scars, Steele brought home an addiction to heroin and a five-pack-a-day cigarette habit. Like so many Vietnam veterans, Steele was nearly destroyed by the war. “Right then I knew that life was different from how you see things.” “That’s when my life began to change,” he says. He remembers the day his instructor leaped up and kicked the rim of a basketball hoop. “What that means is that when some Christians elsewhere started saying they were ‘born again,’ that never happened there because no one ever left Christ.”Īn Army brat, Steele’s first exposure to the dharma came during his high school years in Japan, when he began to study martial arts. “It has always been a practicing Christian community,” he said. He was 12 years old before he spoke English. Steele grew up speaking Gullah, a Creole language formed from Elizabethan English and African dialects. Steele grew up on Pawleys Island, a then-isolated speck of land off the South Carolina coast populated by freed slaves from Sierra Leone. He also shares with them the experience of living as an outsider. A devout Christian upbringing is one of the things that Steele shares with Willis and Jarman-and the vast majority of African-Americans. The grandson of a minister, Steele’s family has run a church for the past 150 years. Spirituality runs in Ralph Steele’s blood. The American Academy of Pain Management.The American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy.He is a member of the following organizations: During his tenure as the Chair of the Board of Trustees of Southwestern College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, he was instrumental in transitioning the EKR Hospice Program, from a two year Associate Degree program to a Master’s Degree program in Grief, Bereavement and Counseling. Ralph is also the Founder of the Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Hospice Training Program at Northern New Mexico Community College. He holds BA degrees in Humanistic Psychology, and Religious Studies with board honors.

degree from the University of Santa Clara in Marriage, Family, and Child Therapy in 1979. He has also worked with youth around the country. Along with his interest in preserving the Theravada tradition, he is dedicated to making the dharma available to culturally diverse populations. He completed a year of intensive practice as a monk in Burma and in Thailand. He has practiced Theravadin Buddhist meditation for over three decades and taught since 1987, including at such venues as Spirit Rock Meditation Center and Insight Meditation Society. Ralph Steele is the founder of Life Transition Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico where he serves as the guiding meditation teacher.

New millenium prayer lama surya das