About
Rita Gross (Acharya Rita) has studied and taught Vajrayana Buddhism for forty years. She holds a position as Buddhist Dharma teacher appointed by Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche. Gross is a professor of comparative religion and has conducted scholarly work on gender and religion. She teaches through Insight Meditation Center and Insight Retreat Center, combining academic and dharmic perspectives in her teaching.
Teaching focus
Gross's core teaching draws on shamatha, analytical meditation, deity practice. The frame is the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition with its layered approach to sutra and tantra, but the language stays plain. Gross doesn't lecture from height. The talks tend to think alongside whatever's actually present in the room. Recurring themes include bodhicitta, emptiness, and tonglen. None of those get presented as abstract ideas. They're worked into the body, into ethics, into how a practitioner shows up in family life or at work, so that the dharma stops feeling like a separate compartment. There's a steady invitation in the talks to keep practice human-sized. Sit when you can, return when you've drifted, and trust that small consistent attention does more over the years than dramatic breakthroughs. Format-wise, Gross teaches in in-person, online, retreat, and the tone moves easily between guided sittings, dharma talks, and Q&A. Questions tend to get answered the way they were asked, without being reframed into something cleaner. That alone tells you a lot about how the room feels.
Background
Rita Gross (Acharya Rita) has studied and taught Vajrayana Buddhism for forty years. She holds a position as Buddhist Dharma teacher appointed by Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche. Gross is a professor of comparative religion and has conducted scholarly work on gender and religion. She teaches through Insight Meditation Center and Insight Retreat Center, combining academic and dharmic perspectives in her teaching. Rita Gross, or Acharya Rita as she is known, has been studying, practicing and teaching Vajrayana for forty years. Known as a warm, humorous and very clear teacher, she teaches with a rare combination of academic and dharmic perspectives. She is internationally known for her innovative work on gender and religion. She also has extensive training and experience as a professor of comparative studies in religion and is a Buddhist Dharma teacher, appointed to that position by Her Eminence Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche. Gross teaches across several communities, including Insight Meditation Center, Insight Retreat Center. That work sits within the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition with its layered approach to sutra and tantra, and the recurring concerns of Gross's teaching, ethical foundation, steady attention, and the slow softening of habitual reactivity, echo the older texts without sounding distant from a 21st-century practitioner's life. What stands out across Gross's talks isn't a single technique but a steadying tone. Practice is treated as something built slowly, in ordinary life, with care. There's room for the difficulties practitioners actually bring into the room, grief, restlessness, the body's complaints, family obligations, and the encouragement is consistent without being pushy.
Lineage
Gross teaches within the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition with its layered approach to sutra and tantra. Current affiliations include Insight Meditation Center, Insight Retreat Center. The lineage shows up less in titles than in the way Gross talks about practice, with steady reference to the older Buddhist vocabulary while keeping the door open for people who've never read a sutra. Whether that framing lands as monastic or lay depends on the specific talk, but the consistent thread is care for the form without letting the form become the point.
What to expect
Sitting with Gross, you can expect grounded instruction in shamatha, with space to ask questions and bring whatever's actually showing up in your practice. On retreat the structure follows a classical rhythm of sittings, walking practice, and dharma talks, with silence held between sessions. Online sessions tend to keep the same shape, shorter sits, a talk, and time for Q&A, in a format that's accessible from home. The teaching voice is steady. Gross won't push you past your edge, and there's a clear preference for slow, sustainable practice over breakthrough chasing. Bring a notebook if you like, or don't. Either way, you'll be met where you are.
