Harvey Aronson Tibetan Buddhist

Harvey Aronson is a psychotherapist and teacher of Buddhist psychology. He is the founding co-director of Dawn Mountain: Tibetan Temple, Research Institute, and Community Center in Houston, Texas. The center’s mission is to preserve and present authentic traditional Buddhist practice while investigating ways of making it practicable to modern Westerners. He is the author of Buddhist Practice on Western Ground, the writing of which was supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation program on Religious Pluralism in the United States (1999-2001). Aronson has studied and practiced Buddhism since 1964. In 1971–1972 he practiced meditation and studied with Buddhist teachers from the Theravadin and Tibetan Gelukba and Nyingma traditions in India. This laid the groundwork for his 1975 doctoral dissertation in Buddhist Studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, which was published as Love and Sympathy in Theravada Buddhism (Motilal Banarsidass, 1980, now in its fourth printing). From 1974–1982 Aronson taught Buddhist psychology and philosophy and Sanskrit and Pali languages at the University of Virginia. During this period he also studied and became fluent in Tibetan, and served as translator for Tibetan teachers during retreats.

Aronson pursued professional psychotherapeutic training at the Boston University School of Social Work from 1982 to 1984. He earned a Masters in Social Work, focusing on psychodynamic and self-psychology, family therapy, chemical dependency, and group therapy. From 1986–87, he worked with children cancer patients and their families at the Ronald McDonald House at Stanford Children’s Hospital, and from 1987—89 with abused children and their families at Eastfield Ming Quong Residential Treatment Center. In 1989 Aronson moved to Houston, Texas. He served as stint supervisor and teacher of therapists-in-training at the Family Service Center. From 1992 to the present he has maintained a private practice, using an integrative model of psychotherapy that spans both brief solution-oriented therapy and longer-term psychodynamic work. In 1995 Aronson and Dr. Anne Klein, also a meditation teacher, co-founded Dawn Mountain, in Houston. They meet with students twice a month for Buddhist practice and sponsor Tibetan lamas a few times a year for intensive teachings. Aronson has accompanied Tibetan teachers as a translator on recent tours throughout the United States. For the last five years he has dedicated one to two months a year to further study and/or intensive meditation practice.