Born of Viking ancestry in the American mid-West in 1945, Jeff Alvin Olson (Lama Lodro) was drawn during his childhood to the esoteric traditions of India and the Orient. At the age of twenty-one, while on a college field trip in Hong Kong, Jeff jettisoned the protocols of conventional life and started walking through southern Asia on the first stage of a pilgrimage to India.

After navigating safely (during the Vietnam War) through China, Laos, Cambodia, and Malaysia, Jeff’s pilgrimage was interrupted at Wat Maha Dhatu, a Theravadin Buddhist monastery in Bangkok. Abbot Chou Koon Raja Siddhi Mooni, the Chief Vipasana Instructor and a Meditation Governor of Thailand, invited Jeff to study meditation at Wat Maha Dhatu. After two years of intensive meditation work under the direct tutelage of Abbot Chou Siddhi Mooni , Jeff was ordained at the age of twenty-three as a Theravadin Bikkhu (monk and teacher) and received his first Thai initiation name, Khamajito (Of Good Heart).

The goal of the original pilgrimage, however, was not forgotten. Soon after his ordination in Thailand, the then Bikkhu Khamajito journeyed to India where he providentially met, and received private teaching from, His Holiness the 16th Gyalwa Kharmapa, the head of the Kargyu order of Tibetan Buddhism.

On the advice of His Holiness Kharmapa, Bikkhu Khamajito moved to Canada in the late 1960’s and started a series of investigations into alternative esoteric studies with the Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche. Bikkhu Khamajito’s first meeting with Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche occurred in the Yukon, which immediately became Khamajito’s home base during subsequent decades of globetrotting.

After becoming a Canadian citizen and withdrawing from the Theravadin order, Jeff undertook further journeys to the Orient for a wide range of cultural and religious studies. One of these visits provided a second meeting with His Holiness Karmapa, who then initiated Jeff into the Kargyu order and conferred the name of Karma Tsundulp Lodro. Lama Lodro’s instruction in Tibetan Buddhism was further supplemented by studies undertaken with His Holiness Sakyapa, the head of the Sakya order, and with Kali Rinpoche of the Kargyu order.

In 1989, while studying at a monastery in northern Thailand, Lama Lodro was re-ordained as a Bikkhu and received his second Thai initiation name, Kiccanana (Knows the Law), from Aja Thung, northern Thailand’s official Vipassana Meditation Master. The then Bikkhu Kiccanana undertook specialised meditation training with Sayadaw U Pandita, Maha Thera, and fourteen Burmese Theravaden meditation teachers from the school of Mahasi Sayadaw. During this period, Bikkhu Kiccanana was selected for a series of term appointments as “relief” Abbot for a number of Buddhist monasteries in South-east Asia. Following his return to Canada, Bikkhu Kiccanana worked as Resident Teacher for five years at the Dharma Centre of Canada.

In 1996, during a two and a half-year meditation retreat in the Yukon wilderness, Kiccanana formally withdrew again from being a Theravadin Bikkhu in order to expand his range of study and activity as a Lama and Yogi. Lama Lodro moved his home to Whitehorse after marrying Chrys JaggedFang Antaya, a Metís of Cree and mixed European ancestry.

Lama Lodro’s lively and irrepressible curiosity has taken him far afield and many times around the world. In addition to his training, both classical and eclectic, as a meditation teacher, Lama Lodro is also an artist, certified journeyman carpenter, house builder, cabinet maker, amateur chef, movie set constructor, textile designer, mechanic, and amateur naturalist. Lama Lodro has recently started to write his first book and is very much enjoying this “exotic new adventure”.