Roger Edwin Mark Lee, (1940-2024), Mark Lee, to the world, was an outstanding educationist and thinker who served the Krishnamurti foundations (started by Jiddu Krishnamurti) in America and India and taught in its schools for close to six decades. Lee was a teacher, school principal, school founder, director (of Oak Grove School, California), foundation director, and, finally, a trustee of the Krishnamurti schools; and, then, of the foundations. If you had to count the people who were closest to Krishnamurti on the fingertips of one hand, Mark Lee would be right there and rather prominent. It was in the nature of who he was that he never spoke of, or broadcast, that most vital personal connection.
Before Krishnamurti passed away, he had asked Mark Lee to bathe his body prior to his cremation. To my mind, Mark was the son Krishnamurti never had. His quotidian life bore — and radiated — truth, tangible peace, integrity, and joy, all of which he shared with his friends, and us, his beloved students.
Lee was my English teacher at Rishi Valley School when I was eight years old. He arrived at school close upon the heels of the departure of our English teachers Hilda Yarrow, and her sisters, Eva, Edith, and Mary, of Cornwall, England. I stayed close to him right until he passed away. Now that he is gone, the miracle of being taught by — and remaining in constant contact with — someone inherently noble in thought, and deed, bears the stamp of the magical. In the back of my mind, I had always prepared myself for this loss, but no amount of theorising sets you up for the actual passing. This is a void beyond all voids — it is akin to losing a parent.
As a teacher, Mark brought creativity, an encouraging and inquiring spirit, excellence, compassion and patience to his classroom. He introduced us to Miguel de Cervantes, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and other writers, when we were eight, and asked me to write the script for ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, when I was nine, which was then produced as a play. During that year, Mark also asked me to write the script for a puppet production of Homer’s The Odyssey. Mark’s style of teaching was noted for its broad range, commitment to the highest benchmarks of creativity, kindness, gentle discipline, and attention to — and consciously including — students who were shy, and not academically strong. In the puppet show he and I collaborated on, the most shy and hesitant students participated, and shone — they had been accorded major roles.
We waited, and waited, each week, to listen to him read to us from Stuart Little and then, Charlotte’s Web, in one of Rishi Valley’s enchanting outdoor classes. We could never have enough of those readings.
Mark possessed integrity, kindness, goodness, and an unstinted affection for us and for almost everyone he met. He was strikingly handsome, at six-feet-and-five-inches tall, and the irrepressible warmth he generated was in proportion to his height. He had a winsome smile, and was always accessible across campus — this made us feel not merely comfortable with him, but trust him, and hold him close to our eight-year-old hearts.
It was Mark who repeatedly invited me to give Odissi dance recitals for Krishnamurti in California. Those were memorable visits — I was invited to lunch each day with
Krishnamurti and a few others at Arya Vihara; and, after lunch, Mark would ask me to walk back with Krishnamurti.
In large measure, Mark was an embodiment of what Krishnamurti spoke about; and he told me that Krishnamurti himself was an embodiment of his own teaching. Mark and I often had conversations, across the world, about Krishnamurti, consciousness, awareness, love, fear, death, and the power of silence. He once told me of a discussion he had with Krishnamurti about the overwhelming proliferation of evil and how we might deal with it. Mark asked me what I would do when I encountered rank evil. My response: “Surround it with love”; “No,” Mark replied: “Surround it with goodness.” That’s what Krishnamurti had said to him.
The writer was appointed Distinguished Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University in 1990. She is also a global advisor on public policy, communications, and international relations, and an Odissi and Bharatanatyam artist and choreographer
