Lama Surya Das is the most senior Buddhist leader in the United States. Surya has spent thirty five years studying Zen, vipassana, yoga, and Tibetan Buddhism with the great masters of Asia, including the Dalai Lama's own teachers, and has twice completed the traditional three year meditation retreat at his teacher's Tibetan monastery. He is an authorized lama (priest and spiritual master teacher) in the Nyingmapa School of Tibetan Buddhism. For more details visit here - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lama-surya-das/