David’s primary spiritual mentor (root lama or guru) and lineage is Lama Alan Wallace. 

One of the world’s leading scholars, writers, and teachers of Tibetan Buddhism and its relation to science, B. Alan Wallace, PhD was ordained by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and devoted fourteen years to training as a Tibetan Buddhist monk.

He earned an undergraduate degree in physics and the philosophy of science at Amherst College and a doctorate in religious studies at Stanford University. He is the founder and director of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies and the Centers for Contemplative Research. With more than 40 years of formal studies in the Indo-Tibetan tradition, he has authored and translated more than 40 books on the philosophy of consciousness, Tibetan Buddhism and applied contemplative practice.

Lama Alan has become an outspoken advocate for a revolution in the mind sciences, one that will replace the current paradigm of materialist reductionism with a new paradigm in which objective research is augmented and completed by rigorous first-person, contemplative methods of inquiry into the nature and potentials of the mind.

Lama Alan embraces the non-sectarian approach. He is renowned for his teachings on Shamatha, Vipashyana, the Four Immeasurables, Lojong and Dream Yoga, and holds primary lineages in Dzogchen, particularly through his studies with Gyatrul Rinpoche in the Nyingma tradition, from whom he received the transmissions and commentaries of Düdjom Lingpa’s Dzogchen treatises among others. His initial training was in the Gelug tradition, while studying under the Dalai Lama and several prominent Gelugpa lamas during his fourteen years as a monk. He also has teachers in other lineages including the Sakya, Kagyu, and Theravada teachers from Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand.