Matteo Pistono

Matteo (Matthew) Pistono is a writer, teacher of meditation, and student of engaged Buddhism. He is the author of "Roar: Sulak Sivaraksa and the Path of Socially Engaged Buddhism" (forthcoming 2018), Fearless in Tibet: The Life of the Mystic Tertön Sogyal (Hay House, 2014) and In the Shadow of the Buddha: Secret Journeys, Sacred Histories, and Spiritual Discovery in Tibet (Dutton-Penguin, 2011), and has written about Tibetan, Himalayan, and Southeast Asian cultural, political, and spiritual landscapes for a number of outlets including The Washington Post, Global Post, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Lion's Roar, BBC's In-Pictures, Men's Journal, Kyoto Journal, and Himal Southasian.

Biography Pistono was born to Italian–Irish parents and raised in Wyoming where he completed his undergraduate degree in Anthropology at the University of Wyoming. In 1997, he gained a Master of Arts degree in Indian philosophy at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. After working with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., on Tibetan cultural programs, he lived and traveled throughout the Himalayas. During this time he documented evidence of human rights abuses in Tibet.

Pistono has studied meditation extensively with Tibetan Buddhist teachers, and shares meditation and pranayama techniques in Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Nekorpa, a foundation working to protect pilgrimage sites around the world, and he sits on the executive council of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists.