blake.plante@drbu.edu

My educational journey has largely been supported by scholarships and the kindness of my family. 

I started my higher education at Riverside City College, where I completed five associates degrees in the humanities over the course of two years. I transferred to Pomona College on scholarship, and majored in English with an emphasis in creative writing. There I started and edited Agave Review, and wrote articles for the school newspaper, law journal, school student blog, and other publications.

I interned for a spring at the Research Division of the National Endowment for the Humanities, where I got to know the back-end process of grantmaking and scholarship at one of the highest level grant organizations in the US. When I graduated, I received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to explore the intersection between theatre and spiritual practices across the world for a year.

As a reflection of my Watson journey, I wrote these essays, reposted from my now-extinct blog 'Noticing This.'

Since then, I've been relatively quiet to focus on applying what I've learned in my life and working on my first novel. In 2020-2026 I've spent most of my time in monasteries and meditation retreat centers, with 2021-23 in the MA program in Buddhist Classics at Dharma Realm Buddhist University and 2023-24 as a teacher at the Boy's School in the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. My first gig as a writing teacher was teaching a writer's workshop for the DRBU Summer Program in Contemplative Philosophy in July, 2024.  I spent a year between 2024-25 traveling India, Nepal, and Thailand, sitting long meditation retreats, meeting teachers, and volunteering as an English teacher in a Tibetan monastery.

I am now an AP English Literature and Composition teacher at Developing Virtue Boy's School, as well as a writing tutor at Dharma Realm Buddhist University, inside the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas.