Erik D. Curren, PhD

Author of Buddha's Not Smiling
Staunton , VA
(703) 340-8669

Erik D. Curren was born in Chicago in 1965. He currently teaches English at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA and edits Conserve magazine online. He received his B.A. in English from Washington and Lee University in Lexington, VA in 1987 and his Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Irvine, in 1995.

From childhood, Erik was drawn to the study of politics, as relating both to government and to private institutions. When people told Erik to “follow the money” his impulse was to follow the powerful intangibles—power, status, reputation. Growing up, Erik immersed himself in politics, though his parents were not joiners, they loved to debate issues at the dinner table. With this background, Erik became a political activist on his own. Though he was a year too young to vote, in the fall of 1982 he served as a precinct captain for the Republican Party in the Chicago mayoral election. He also served on Ronald Reagan's campaign for president and, when Reagan won, Erik attended his first inauguration in January 1983.

In graduate school at the University of California , Erik changed his politics to the other extreme. He imbibed the far-left politics of a big university humanities department, with its interests in feminism, multiculturalism and even Marxism. He was looking across the political spectrum for something to give meaning to his life and to help others. After completing his doctorate in literature, and trying his hand at marketing communications for large organizations—including the State of California and Wells Fargo Bank—Erik returned to politics. First in San Francisco , and then in Washington, DC, he helped manage the oldest and largest political consultancy for progressive organizations, Fenton Communications.

“Then, my dream job was to work in Washington helping good-guy groups like the Sierra Club or the Natural Resources Defense Council.” But after a while, the limits of our approach became clear. “We did save trees. But who was to stop someone from cutting down more trees somewhere else, or even returning to the saved trees later on?” Erik felt that “As long as people generally believe in looking out for number one, the environment will never be safe. I wanted a method to deal with a basic problem—human ego.” And for this, he turned to religion.

He had started studying Buddhism and meditating with Zen centers in the Los Angeles area in 1995. In 2003, Erik began studying Tibetan Buddhism, and started meeting numerous monks and lamas, including his own teacher, Shamar Rinpoche. He soon learned about the Karmapa controversy. “Coming from the Shangri-La image of Tibetans as non-violent and naively believing most lamas to be saints, I was shocked and disenchanted. But because I still respected Shamar Rinpoche, I could not just dismiss all lamas. So I decided to learn more.”

Erik traveled to Europe, Tibet, Nepal, and India to meet lamas, visit holy sites and perform meditation retreats. “My faith in Buddhism was growing as I could see its results on my personality. Yet, my doubts were growing as I learned more about the Karmapa issue. This dynamic of faith and doubt led to my own investigation of the controversy and Buddha's Not Smiling. ”