Robert G. Nairn (died 30 September 2023)[1] was a South African Buddhist teacher, author and populariser.
[2] Graduating from the University of Rhodesia with an LL.B (Hons) (London), Nairn was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship for postgraduate studies in UK and went on to study criminology, psychology and law at King's College London and to receive a postgraduate diploma in criminology from Edinburgh University.
As a result, Nairn was banned from South African prisons, cutting him off from his main research topic.
[citation needed] Nairn's first contact with Buddhism was with a Theravadin monk in the 1960s,[4] and he trained in this tradition for around ten years.
[2] As he was instructed by the 14th Dalai Lama to teach meditation and Buddhism in 1964 and also instructed by the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa to teach insight meditation in 1979, Nairn spent much of his time teaching and running retreats in Southern Africa as well as the United Kingdom, Ireland, Iceland,[7] the United States, Italy, the Netherlands and Germany.