He was born in Peking, China. His maternal grandfather founded Peking University and his mother was a musician, whereas his father taught zoology at the University. He and his parents moved to San Francisco, California in 1927 due to the increasing communist threat in China. His father accepted a teaching position at Lowell High School and taught there until the 1950s.
John Dobson took a degree in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley in 1943 and joined the Vedanta Monastery in San Francisco in 1944, becoming a monk of the Ramakrishna Order.