Christopher Key Chapple, Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology and founding Director of the Master of Arts in Yoga Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He has published more than twenty books and more than a hundred scholarly articles on topics that include studies of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Yoga, and religion and ecology. He serves on numerous advisory boards, including the Forum on Religion and Ecology (Yale), the Center for Religion and Spirituality (LMU), the Jain Studies Centre (SOAS, London), the Ahimsa Center (Pomona), the Dharma Academy of North America (Berkeley), the South Asian Studies Association and the International School for Jain Studies (Delhi). He currently resides in India as a Fulbright Nehru Fellow working on the interfaith approach of Haribhadra Virahankha as found in the Yogabindu, a sixth century Jain Sanskrit text.
Dr. Chapple’s interest in Yoga began when he was very young. He started his study and practice of Yoga while in high school in upstate New York. In 1972 he joined Yoga Anand Ashram in Amityville, New York where, along with his wife Maureen, he helped establish a vegetarian restaurant, an art gallery, a bookstore, and a community education Center. Professor Chapple earned his bachelor’s degree at Stony Brook University in Religious Studies and Comparative Literature, with a specialization in Sanskrit and Tibetan language and literature. He completed his M.A. and Ph.D. in the History of Religions at Fordham University, focusing on the intersection between Buddhism, Vedanta, and Yoga. He served for five years at The Institute for Advanced Studies of World Religions at Stony Brook where he also taught undergraduate classes in Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Yoga. He joined the faculty of Loyola Marymount University in 1985.
Dr. Chapple is a featured teacher on YogaGlo.com., dedicated to the teaching of the whole person, body, mind, and spirit, through the modalities of book learning and experience as provided in Yoga traditions.
ARTICLES:
Religious Pluralism and Inter-religious Friendship in Los Angeles