Venerable Utpala

Ven. Jampa Utpala (Bets Greer) has over twenty years professional experience writing and editing public policy documents, technical documents, legislation, and fiction and non-fiction books—including philosophical works. She has worked in government, business, and volunteer-based organizations. She successfully completed the 18 Asian Classics Institute Foundation Courses and maroke.

Ven. Utpala volunteered at Diamond Mountain during the seven years preceding the three-year retreat that began in late 2010. She served as a board member and committee chair, developed schedules, wrote and produced catalogs, and supported students’ participation. She also taught Buddhist philosophy and meditation, led group retreats, and did many personal retreats. She completed a three-year solitary meditation retreat in 2014. 

Ven. Utpala was the personal assistant to Ven. Thubten Chodron, a popular Buddhist nun and teacher, and director of Dharma Friendship Foundation in Seattle. Her work included managing retreats, scheduling volunteers, and editing books. She has also edited for many private clients, including Geshe Michael Roach, James Connor, David Stumpf, and BuildingGreen.

Ven. Utpala has studied and practiced Buddhist philosophy, Tibetan language, and meditation since 1995. She joined the Diamond Cutter Classics (DCC) translation team, led by popular author and teacher Geshe Michael Roach, at its inception in 2017. 

Her first translation with Geshe Michael—Emptiness Meditations, a book on how to meditate on the lack of a self-nature to things, written by Tibetan author Choney Lama Drakpa Shedrup—was published in 2022. She’s now working on her second translation—Interlude on Emptiness (working title), by Kedrup Je—which will be a multi-volume book. The first volume is scheduled for publication in 2025.

Ven. Utpala is the Managing Editor and Chief Archivist for DCC, and she helps support other translators, including the Pure Gold translation team in Shenzhen, China.

While Ven. Utpala has worn (and wears!) many hats, her work is primarily singular: serving people who are working to realize their highest dreams.