Author and Meditation Teacher, Ralph De La Rosa, Has Died

On May 10, one of my dearest dharma friends, Ralph De La Rosa, died in their home in Seattle. Their death was a thunderclap. It arrived as spontaneously as they lived, disarming those who had been touched by their work as a trauma-focused therapist, meditation teacher, and author throughout the years. This was Ralph’s way: to leave more questions than certainty in their wake, and to encourage the heart to break open as a potential path to liberation and healing. 

Ralph’s third and final book, Outshining Trauma, was published last November. As in their previous works, in it Ralph offers a unique perspective of Buddhist meditation and Internal Family Systems therapy as a means of working with trauma. Their approach to teaching and therapy was unflinchingly transparent, often placing themselves at eye level with their students by sharing their own struggles openly, along with stories from their recovery from opiate addiction, PTSD, and depression. They put the guts of their lived experience on display with humor and tenderness while creating environments that felt safe enough for others to do the same. 

My first time meeting Ralph was a footnote. They played drums in the same band as the person I was dating, and our connection was brief. It was just enough to spark recognition when I met them, years later, at the Interdependence Project. It was 2009, and after a series of heartbreaks and panic attacks (both excellent gateways to the dharma), I sought out the multilineage Buddhist hub that was situated on the Lower East Side of New York. I can see Ralph now, perched on a stool at the base of the stairs, welcoming folks in for meditation. Black jeans, black T-shirt, the clacking sound of mala beads around the wrist that held the clipboard. That moment imprinted itself onto my mind in the way that many auspicious beginnings sometimes do. They welcomed me by declaring that “This place is like my home!” And for the next few years it became my dharma home, too, and Ralph a dharma companion. 

By the time I met Ralph, they had already spent years seeking and practicing in various wisdom traditions. In their early years, Ralph lived and traveled with the Hare Krishnas. They once told me that they were inspired by the story of the Hindu god Krishna stealing butter from the villagers because it illustrates that divinity—often painted as austere—can be a trickster of playful mischief as well. Ralph later became a student of Indian Hindu spiritual teacher Amma, and remained a devotee of hers for over sixteen years. Amma’s photo was a fixture on Ralph’s practice altar in the many places they lived. Brooklyn. Beacon. Tahoe. Ralph once described Amma as “love incarnate,” which undoubtedly shaped their approach. “Compassion is a doorway to transformation” was a guiding statement of Ralph’s body of work, one of his students recently told me. When Ralph began studying Buddhism in 2008, they chose to learn from a variety of lineages. They studied formally under Vinny Ferraro of Dharma Punx and Ethan Nichtern of the Interdependence Project, and in later years, Reggie Ray of the Dharma Ocean Foundation and Jack Kornfield of the Insight Meditation Society. 

As a teacher, Ralph was a lightning rod. In 2014, they invited me to host a weekly meditation class together at Go Yoga in Brooklyn. Afterward, we would walk over to the local taco joint to debrief over a plate of nachos. We brought an Abbott and Costello dynamic to the teaching seat. I would arrive to class with an annotated outline that I rarely strayed from, while Ralph would roll off-the-cuff, offering spontaneous instruction that spoke to the tone of the room. This was a part of their genius. They were well-practiced and well-studied and would trust that the most useful thing to offer the room would arrive if they simply listened. In the years between 2016 and 2020, when we taught together at MNDFL meditation studios, they admitted that they often couldn’t replicate what they said in class, even if they tried. Leading practice was like a game of Marco Polo. Ralph would listen to what was alive for folks and then offer guidance as call and response. 

As budding meditation teachers, we were offered a good bit of wisdom that we should always aspire to speak from the scar, and not from the wound. I took this to mean that if an experience was openly raw or undigested that it was advised to wait until some healing occurred before using it as fodder for teaching. Ralph, in their divine mischief, asked, “Yeah, but what if I did?” They were skilled enough as a clinician and practitioner to speak from their wounds as an invitation. A student recently described Ralph as a beacon for misfits, folks who perhaps didn’t see themselves in the tidiness and serenity that meditation often conveys. A part of what made them so beloved is that they modeled the process of healing, not just the result, and often with a wink and a nudge. 

A student recently described Ralph as a beacon for misfits, folks who perhaps didn’t see themselves in the tidiness and serenity that meditation often conveys.

The day that I found out that Ralph had died, my mind cycled through snapshots of moments together. I saw them playing pinball at a dive bar in Queens, nursing a recent breakup. Gymnastics class together at Chelsea Piers, manically laughing while hurling our bodies against foam mats. I revisited the last time we practiced together, shortly after my daughter was born. We were both postpartum in a sense and feeling ragged. I was underslept, with a 3-month-old baby, and Ralph had just finished teaching a weeklong retreat at Kripalu. We sat quietly in the familiar sound of each other’s breathing, as we had over so many years. 

The most indelible memory, the one that I return to, is from those early years of our friendship studying at the Interdependence Project. It was the annual holiday party, and in a room full of meditation practitioners milling about, Ralph shimmied their body into an open space in the center of the room. They began noodling their lanky arms and legs to the beat, transforming the space around them into a dance floor while everyone else just stood and watched. Over the next few minutes, one by one, we all trickled onto the dance floor that they had created around them. And one by one, we all broke wide open into silly joy. As was Ralph’s way.