Lama Marut meditates on the Bardo

Sumati Marut (a.k.a. Brian K. Smith) is the son and grandson of Baptist ministers, a motorcycle enthusiast, a former surfer, a Ph.D. of Comparative Religions and a fully ordained Buddhist monk. Lama Marut has been teaching religion for 25 years. As a Sanskrit scholar and professor of comparative religions, he taught at Columbia University and the University of California, Riverside, where he is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies. For the past decade, he has been as a popular teacher of Buddhist and yoga philosophy, spirituality, and meditation. Lama Marut’s audio and video podcasts are downloaded 25,000 times each month, and his monthly newsletters and daily inspirational Twitters reach thousands more students across the world. Along with countless academic articles and encyclopedia entries, he has published three academic books – Classifying the Universe: The Ancient Indian varna System and the Origins of Caste (published by Oxford University Press), Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual, and Religion (published by Oxford University Press), and The Laws of Manu (translated with Wendy Doniger and published by Penguin Books). He is currently at work on Inciting Happiness: Radical Contentment and Revolutionary Spirituality in a Post-Consumerist Age – the first book in which he distills his decades of study, practice and personal insight into a useful, straightforward, comprehensive guide for how to live the truly good life.