Derek Rasmussen graduated from the three year Buddhist minister's training program at the Kinmount Academy and Seminary, whose faculty included David Bohm, David Peat, Tarchin Hearn, Sonam Senge, Karma Chime Wongmo, Cecilie Kwiat, Sayadaw U Thila Wanta and Namgyal Rinpoche.

Derek co-founded the first Canada-wide East Timor group (with Julia Milton), and helped organize a Toronto-NYC peace walk. He was a member of the Cruise Missile Conversion Project, which used labour organizing and blockades to try to convert Litton's missile factory in Mississauga to peaceful production. As a civil disobedience trainer, he helped found the Alliance for NonViolent Action (ANVA).

He lived in Iqaluit, Nunavut, for twelve years, working for Inuit organizations, with whom he attended the COP 11 UN Climate Change Conference (2005). He has also helped research lawsuits against Canada's violation of Inuit rights--particularly Inuit language and education rights.

Derek has authored or co-authored chapters in 7 books, as well as written for the Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, Yes Magazine, Briarpatch Magazine, InterCulture, Science for the People, Cultural Survival Quarterly, Our Schools Our Selves, and Turning Wheel (Magazine of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship).

His writings are archived at: https://sfu.academia.edu/DerekRasmussen

Derek has been an invited speaker at Eastern Michigan University, Concordia University, McGill University, Trent University, University of British Columbia, Carleton University, University of Ottawa, the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Tampere University (Finland), Nunavut Arctic College, University of Texas, Harvard University, and Yale University.

Derek is studying with Professor Heesoon Bai at Simon Fraser University, researching the "four immeasurables"-- loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity--and how cultivating these states may support insights into anatta (non-self) and sunyata (emptiness) and support those working for social and ecological justice.

Derek loves to weave humour and storytelling into meditation teaching and has served as a retreat facilitator at the Queenstown Dharma House (NZ), Dharma Gate Buddhist College (Budapest), Monday Night Meditation Group (Vancouver), Tampere University (Finland), Morin Heights Dharma House (Quebec), and annual Ecojustice retreats (Detroit, Michigan).

Guided meditations by Derek Rasmussen, Jane Marenghi and the Morin Heights Sangha (en français aussi) are archived on the Youtube channel 'Try A Little Mudita'.