About
Anne C. Klein holds the Rigzin Drolma designation in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. She is affiliated with the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. Klein is known for work in Tibetan Buddhism, particularly in areas connecting Buddhist philosophy and practice with contemporary contexts. She has authored and contributed to scholarly and teaching materials on Buddhist thought and meditation.
Teaching focus
Her teaching combines academic Tibetan Buddhist scholarship with contemplative practice in the Dzogchen tradition. The combination of scholarly depth and practical instruction is unusual. The work draws on the Tibetan Buddhist tradition as the foundational framework, taught with care for the textures of present experience rather than as abstract doctrine. Foundational shamatha and vipashyana support the more characteristic Tibetan practices: refuge and bodhicitta, deity visualization, mantra recitation, tonglen as the core compassion practice, and pointing-out instructions in the higher teachings depending on student readiness. Lovingkindness gets serious time on retreat, treated as central practice rather than supplemental, and the broader brahmavihara framework offers additional ground for the slower work of equanimity and forgiveness. Daily-life integration runs through the recorded teaching as a steady concern. The same awareness that opens during a sit is the awareness that meets traffic, family, and work, and the teaching keeps coming back to that continuity rather than treating retreat as a separate world. Across the recorded teaching runs a steady commitment to the actual work of practice, the slow unfolding that doesn't always make for inspirational soundbites but that carries the path forward across years of sitting. The recorded talks return often to the question of how practice meets specific lives rather than an idealized practitioner, and the careful framing of instructions reflects that orientation. Students don't have to fit themselves to the teaching; the teaching meets them where they actually are.
Background
Anne C. Klein (Rigzin Drolma) is an established teacher in the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition with roots in the Tibetan teaching lineages. Anne C. Klein holds the Rigzin Drolma designation in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. She's affiliated with Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. She's known for work in Tibetan Buddhism, particularly connecting Buddhist philosophy and practice with contemporary contexts. She has authored and contributed to scholarly and teaching materials on Buddhist thought and meditation. The teacher's recorded material is mostly hosted through affiliated centers and personal platforms rather than through Dharma Seed. Established teachers occupy a useful middle position in the directory, with enough recorded teaching to give students a sustained body of work to study, and enough ongoing practice to keep developing. Recorded talks suggest a careful pacing and a refusal to dress dharma up in inflated language. The lay-teacher form of practice this teacher works within asks something specific of students: they have to take responsibility for their own practice in ways monastic students don't always have to, since the structures of monastic life don't carry them. That responsibility is part of what the teaching points at. The wider Western Buddhist landscape that grew up across the second half of the twentieth century has produced a range of teaching voices working at the meeting point between classical Asian sources and contemporary lay practice, and this teacher is one of those voices. Across the recorded body of work runs a consistent attention to what's actually workable inside ordinary obligations rather than only in retreat. For practitioners surveying women teachers in the Tibetan tradition, Klein's work alongside teachers like Tsultrim Allione and Lama Palden Drolma contributes to a small but growing group of senior Western women teachers in Tibetan Buddhism.
Lineage
Klein holds the Rigzin Drolma designation in Tibetan Buddhism. She's a senior teacher in the Dzogchen tradition with extensive academic background in Tibetan Buddhist studies. The teacher works as a layperson, in keeping with the broader Western lay-teacher form of the tradition. She's affiliated with Barre Center for Buddhist Studies and is a senior teacher in the Tibetan Dzogchen tradition.
What to expect
Programs include both academic and contemplative offerings, drawing on her Dzogchen training and her scholarly background. Programs include traditional Tibetan elements alongside formal sitting: refuge and bodhicitta practice, mantra recitation, visualization, and tonglen, with shrine forms and offerings that distinguish Vajrayana retreats from their Theravada counterparts. The pacing is careful and the teaching is specific, suiting practitioners who want concrete instruction over inspirational framing. The center or platform where the teaching happens publishes current schedules and registration information, and email contact is generally the most direct way to ask specific questions about a particular retreat or program.
