Lee Mirabai Harrington

Lee Mirabai Harrington (Sangye Rinchen Lhamo) is an ordained ngakma, a tantric householder yogini, and a mantra-healer in the Yuthok Nyingthik lineage. This tradition of Tibetan Buddhism is connected with Sowa Rigpa and Medicine Buddha. She is also a devotional mantra music artist based in New York's Hudson Valley. She has followed the Mantrayana path of Buddhism since 2002 and has studied yoga since her teens. Her daily practice is rooted in Buddhism, Green Tara and the Divine Mother in all Her forms.

For Lee, leading kirtan is not a performance but a spiritual, devotional and healing experience. She believes each of us can heal ourselves, and countless others, through our own voices and through mantra. Her passion for mantra has led her to chants from Hindu, Sikh, Native American, Shamanistic, Taoist, Sufi and ancient Christian traditions. Her teachers include His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, Amma, Meher Baba, Shyamdas and Yogi Bhajan. She has sung for the Karmapa at Madison Square Garden and for Amma at Amritapuri Ashram in India.

Lee grew up in a musical family and sang in church choirs, including the Riverside Church Inspirational Choir, a gospel choir in Harlem. She has studied Classical Indian vocals with Lakshmi Santra of Pondicherry and Silvia Nakkach, and harmonic singing and vocal toning with David Hykes and Timothy Hill. Her debut album, Beyond the Beyond, mixes mantra music from the Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh traditions and was released in 2016. Its Buddhist tracks came out earlier as the EP Into the Beyond, which has the blessings of the Venerable Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche. Since the pandemic she has recorded at her home studio with producer Ben Leinbach and released a few singles a year. Her next project, A Secret Sky, will feature healing mantras from the Tibetan Buddhist and Sowa Rigpa traditions. She has chanted for decades with her weekly community kirtan sangha in Woodstock, NY.

As a teacher, Lee has been on the faculty at Tibet House, Menla, Kripalu, Sivananda Bahamas, the Omega Institute and Yogaville. She teaches meditation, mantra, Nejang and Tibetan self-healing practices. She has also led kirtan and mantra workshops at festivals, ashrams and monasteries. She is a certified Tibetan spiritual healer and offers treatments at Menla's Dewa Spa in the Catskills.

Lee holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. She wrote the memoir Rex and the City, was a columnist for BARK magazine, and was an editor at Zoetrope: All-Story. She taught creative writing at New York University and Columbia University. Today she edits dharma books and spiritual memoirs.