Robert Glass spent seven years as a Buddhist monk at Shasta Abbey with Jiyu Kennett, the only woman to establish a Zen lineage in the United States. During that time, he was transmitted and completed the formal Teacher of Buddhism program. 

After returning to lay life and obtaining a Ph.D. in Comparative Religion, he became the Director of the Comparative Religion and Culture Program at Global College within Long Island University.  He traveled with students as they studied the great religions of the world during ten-week terms in Japan, India, and Israel, with breaks in Thailand and Nepal.  Among his memories of those years: overnight visits to Zen Buddhism's two main training temples in Japan; the pilgrimage to Bodhgaya to see the place of the Buddha's enlightenment; visiting Rumi's tomb in Konya, and later, an audience with the Dalai Lama. His most embarrassing moment with his students — while participating in Shinto ritual in Japan, he once stood under a waterfall at midnight, under a full moon, wearing a loincloth, chanting in Japanese, and flapping his arms like a bird.  (Rumor has it there is video of this event.) After his years of world travel with the CRC, Robert became the Dean of Global College and spent another decade visiting students and centers all over the world.

 His academic research and his travels gave him a new perspective on his years at Shasta Abbey and Buddhism as a whole.  His scholarly book, Working Emptiness: Towards a Third Reading of Emptiness in Buddhism and Postmodern Thought, explores conflicting interpretations of awakening, desire, and ethics in Buddhism. Follow-up articles, "A Logic of the Heart: Rereading Taoism and Zen Buddhism," and "Deleuze and the Tibetan Book of the Dead," continue the exploration of this same theme.  Robert lives in Portland, Oregon.