The Mindful Life

Waylon H. Lewis

A second-gen American Buddhist, Waylon plans on publishing this blog as a major giftbook, serving as our 46th President, and taking a long bath tonight with his favorite magazine, The New Yorker. For more: themindfullife.com.

Waylon was born in Boulder, Colorado, into a first-generation American Buddhist family. His parents -- dad a Country fan, mom a teacher at the fledgling Naropa University -- named him after Beat poet Philip Whalen, an early mentor, and Waylon Jennings, the bad boy of 70's country and voice of Dukes of Hazzard. 'Homer' Waylon moved through early stardom in Little League baseball and on to Vermont, where he attended the Dead Poets-like (but, God bless, co-ed) St. Johnsbury Academy while living at Karmê Chöling, a Tibetan Buddhist retreat center with monks shuffling down the halls. He moved on to Boston University, one of the best magazine J-schools in the country, where he spent months on end writing lively obituaries for a former editor-in-chief of The Christian Science Monitor. After working a miserable stint at Shambhala Publications, our young man went back West, helping Shambhala Mountain Center raise $12.5 million and grow its program offerings and marketing. Finally, coming full-circle, Waylon attended a whole semester at Naropa's Jack Kerouac Writing School. It was back in Boulder that he got involved in the fledgling Yoga in the Rockies, which never quite took flight. Picking up the pieces, Waylon renamed the rag, expanded the editorial focus (and thus advertising reach) and, 2.5 years later, is at the helm of the second-best magazine in the Rockies, 'elephant,’ which is going national in the Fall. For more visit themindfullife.com.