Who We Are

We are a nonprofit, independent media company dedicated to the publishing and propagating of genuine buddhadharma of all traditions. 

The Shambhala Sun Foundation publishes the Shambhala Sun and Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly. The Foundation is an independent, not-for-profit, charitable organization in Canada, and a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in the United States.

Our Background

Started in 1992, the Shambhala Sun has grown to become the most widely-read Buddhist-inspired magazine in North America, bringing the wisdom of contemplative spiritual practice to all the important issues in life. In 2002, in response to the growing community of long-term committed Buddhist practitioners, we launched Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly, an in-depth, practice-oriented journal of Buddhist teachings.

We are proud that our growth from a community newspaper (with a circulation of 3,000) to two magazines (with a combined circulation of over 100,000) has been accomplished without significant outside financial support, accumulated debt, or operating losses. We gratefully acknowledge that our success could not have been possible without the generous and passionate help of all of you—our readers and teachers, writers and artists, advertisers and friends. You have all been our partners in this journey and your contributions will continue to be critical as we embark on a new phase in our mission.

Read Editor-in-Chief Melvin McLeod’s September 2007 editorial announcing the Shambhala Sun Foundation

Read Publisher James Gimian's March 2008 editorial discussing the myth of independence.

Our Mission

The Shambhala Sun Foundation promotes the growth and development of genuine buddhadharma as Buddhism takes root in the West. Through the publication of magazines and other media, conferences and educational forums, we will support all traditions of dharma that teach the three marks of existence and nontheism, and are based on meditation practice and cutting through spiritual materialism. In these endeavors, the Shambhala Sun Foundation will work with and support all those who share the values of wisdom, sacredness and compassion.

Our View of Development

While we are proud of all that our publishing program has accomplished, we also know that the successful transmission of the dharma in the West is a long-term project. Every day we see new and exciting examples of how the path of meditation is taking root. We feel that, with the right resources, there is so much more that we can do to benefit people now and in the future.

Our view of development is to invite our supporters to invest in initiatives designed to help us bring genuine dharma teachings to more people. Together, we can accomplish more than each of us alone. Our hope is that the benefit brought to the Shambhala Sun Foundation by its community of supporters will in turn bring further benefit to them and the larger world where interest in meditation and the dharma continues to grow exponentially.

The focus of our development work, therefore, is to increase our company’s strength and sustainability and to expand the reach and impact of our publications. To achieve these goals, we will need to develop new means of financial support beyond what we can reasonably expect to generate from our nonprofit publications. We seek to accomplish this by offering new products and services that draw on our proven strengths, and by launching for the first time some proven means of fundraising for important initiatives that would otherwise lie beyond our means.

Click through here to learn more about our fundraising efforts, how to contribute, how to make purchases from our secure online store, and more.