In Memory of Mike LaTorra

My friend Mike LaTorra died on Wednesday, 2 September 2026. He taught English at New Mexico State University for more than two decades. And he was ordained a Zen Buddhist priest, presiding for a time over the Daibutsuji Zen Temple in Las Cruces.

Mike also served on the board of directors of the World Transhumanist Association when they voted to affiliate with the Mormon Transhumanist Association. That was July 2006. The Mormon Transhumanist Association was just a few months old. He and his fellow board members extended a hand of aspiring friendship that helped to establish the legitimacy of Mormon Transhumanism within the broader movement.

I knew Mike first as a voice for Buddhist Transhumanism. The basic idea was that human enhancement, including radical life extension, isn’t opposed to dharma. Asked how the two fit together, he told an interviewer for Ozy that “the Buddha says coming back over and over again is a pain in the neck.” More time, by his reading, isn’t escape from enlightenment, but rather pursuit of enlightenment with more time to meet the right guru.

To keep expenses low, Mike and I shared a hotel room in the Bay Area the night before the 2014 Religion and Transhumanism Conference. While making the arrangements, he told me he had “very positive feelings about the future of the MTA, and the unique role that Mormon Transhumanists can play in the next stages of our species’ evolution.” After the conference, he praised how well our conference volunteers had worked together without being asked, commenting that if he ever assembled a team to colonize another world, “I’m certainly going to invite MTA folks to be in my ‘Away Team.’”

I hope we’re continuing to earn Mike’s trust.

One of Mike’s deepest convictions, as I understood him, was that religions differ in name but not in their most important function. His Buddhism, my Mormonism, whatever tradition a stranger inherits: all point to what he called “the Great Tradition of human spirituality,” borrowing a phrase from Adi Da Samraj. And he added that they “should indicate to us that something innate in us underpins and transcends the particular modes of expression that appear among the various religions.”

I agree. No single ideology or tradition owns truth. And none of us can achieve our superhuman potential alone.

Grief is no sin, I must sometimes remind myself. Even grief can lead us onward and upward toward all that is true, good, and beautiful. Mormons call that “salvation and exaltation.” Buddhists might call that “liberation and awakening.”

Whatever the name, in function that’s what Mike spent his life pursuing and encouraging. And I’m thankful for the inspiration he continues to provide me.

May you thrive again, my friend.