Lama Foundation co-founder dies

SHE WAS THIS “big mountain of a woman,” who was protective, fiercely loving and a profound presence in the lives of all who knew her. During her time amid this vast community of spiritual seekers and family, often one

and the same, Asha Greer shared what her longtime friend and

protégé Mirabai Starr called a “radical authenticity.”

Greer, known formerly as Barbara Durkee, was 87 when she passed away Friday (Jan. 7) at her home in Virginia after a year-long struggle with a brain tumor. She was surrounded by her family and loved ones, according to a

social media post from the Lama Foundation north of Taos of which she was a co-founder. “Her vast teachings of love, her celebration of the small stuff, and her deep commitment to being present will carry on as inspirations and teachings for us all” the post reads.

Greer was born in Los Angeles. “She learned to drive at an early age and was one of the first female lifeguards in California,” her bio at asha-greer.com/ about reads. “After much adventure she became an artist, educator, and community builder. She cofounded USCO, an innovative and influential multimedia art collective in New York City where her first child Dakota was born.

“In 1964, she and her then husband Steve Nooruddeen Durkee, moved to New Mexico and founded the Lama Foundation — one of the first spiritually motivated communes of the era

to distinguish itself as an center for education, service and practice without a single teacher or belief system. Asha’s other children Shanti, Aurora

and Savitri were born in New Mexico. Lama was and is a thriving community.” Greer served as a board member until her death.

Taos author and teacher Mirabai Starr grew up with all of her daughters in Taos when, at age 14, she decided to move up to Lama following the death of her first boyfriend. Starr makes

reference to this time in her life in an excerpt from her book, “Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics” (2019, Sounds True Books). She writes, “As the mother of four girls, Asha recognized early on

that unless she focused on parenting as a spiritual practice she would have

no spiritual life. When I left home at 14 and moved to Lama Foundation, Asha was my ‘guardian.’ This made it possible for a minor like me to live there on her own. She didn’t try to parent me,

but she did pay attention to my physical well-being and spiritual development.”

On the occasion of Lama’s 50-year anniversary in 2017, Tempo spoke

to Greer about the foundation’s early years on the mountain slope above San Cristobál. “My husband and I in 1967 had a vision of starting an ecumenical spiritual community,” she said that sunny day in June. “We were married and we were kind of conservative, among the conservative people that we knew and so we … came out here to look for land.”

“We came to get away from the conservative world that was pretty tight and boxed-in, non-diverse and not very spiritual,” she said. “When I grew up, in spite of the fact that everybody I knew went to church on Sundays, nobody talked about God. Nobody talked about

love. It seemed crazy. So, we wanted to get out of that, and many other people did, obviously. So, it was very small at first.”

She made a point of mentioning the help the budding foundation received from Taos Pueblo tribal members, such as Joe and Henry Gomez, who “helped us a lot in making the adobes and in

living lives that were so much closer to the land than ours. It’s changed a lot

since we started because we started with the orders that we were to sit and

meditate for half an hour a day and also then have discussions about spiritual things.”

Then, her marriage broke up. “So, I went to the east to start another community with another group of people and my husband actually went to build a place at Dar al Islam up in Abiquiú. It’s a very beautiful place, a kind of

mildly used Islamic center, I think. Anyway, one of the things that has

remained the same is that it’s ecumenical. Everyone was welcome here. The community has grown. … You know who Richard Alpert is? Ram Dass?”

Richard Alpert, A.K.A. Ram Dass, and Timothy Leary, who have both

passed away, were prominent Harvard college professors who became known

in the 1960s for their experiments with LSD. Alpert “continued his psychedelic research until [a] fateful Eastern trip in 1967, when he traveled to India. In India, he met his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, affectionately known as Maharajji, who gave Ram Dass his name, which means “servant of God,” according to his biography (ramdass.org).

Greer said “Richard had been part of our original group, and we had been living with him before when we were at Nambé Pueblo. And, he went

to India and he found a teacher and came back and he wrote a book, which we helped put together, called ‘Be Here Now,’ which was very successful and made us an income that was a

little bit more secure than everybody whose parents would give them some money.”

After 12 years at Lama, Greer and her four daughters “joined a group of

friends and moved to Charlottesville, Virginia. They found a rural property and began building homes in what is now known as Miran Forest. The families developed a thriving, loose knit community, and raised many, many children,” her online bio reads. “Asha

had numerous occupations while raising her children — teacher, nurse, writer, administrator, principal, and

artist to name a few. She worked at a women’s support center called FOCUS and started what became a large-scale

hospice care program in Charlottesville. When she was in her 40s she went to nursing school after which

she spent 25 years working the medical floors at the University of Virginia Hospital — primarily in Oncology. She

has helped many people die in and outside of hospital.”

She also became a murshida in the Sufi Ruhaniat International. She taught meditation and practices of presence

for decades. Greer advocated for “life through practice, love and just being.”

Starr said she was scheduled to be at an event with Greer on the 50th anniversary of “Be Here Now” in 2021 when Greer announced that a diagnosis had revealed a brain tumor. Starr said she then had an operation soon

after, but the news was still not good. However, when she awakened, Starr

said it was within a “state of pure love, where she loved everybody and every object, and was completely happy. She

said the happiness she had been looking for her whole life was there. The

love she had been seeking in everything she ever did and in everyone

she ever knew was just there in abundance.”

While she was well enough, Greer decided to come back to New Mexico

last summer, “to say goodbye to this place and the people she loved so much,” Starr said.