Chandra Easton

Chandra Easton is a teacher of Tibetan Buddhism based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She studied Tibetan language in Dharamsala in 1996, then religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she worked with B. Alan Wallace on an English translation of two Dzogchen texts. Since 1999 she has trained with Lama Tsultrim Allione, and in 2015 she was named a Dorje Lopön, or vajra teacher, of Tara Mandala, where she helps shape the study programmes. Her 2023 book Embodying Tara explores the twenty-one forms of the female Buddha Tara as a living practice for today.

Her classes join seated meditation, mantra, devotional singing, gentle yoga and talks on the Dharma, and she has taught Hatha Yoga alongside Buddhism since 2001, later adding Tibetan yogic exercises. She leads a weekly online class, Releasing Into Presence, as well as weekend retreats in Berkeley and long-running annual programmes at Esalen in Big Sur. With two fellow singers she founded the 21 Taras Collective, which sets the Tara mantras to music. She also offers one-to-one guidance, including sessions in the Feeding Your Demons method developed by her teacher.