Ngakmang Foundation

Happy Dakini Day! In honor of Saga Dawa month Dakini Day, we are offering a precious teaching Lama Tharchin Rinpoche gave during the Khandro Tuk-Tik Yeshe Tsogy...al Retreat at Vajrayana Foundation’s 1997 Annual Summer Retreat. Invaluable for students of the Dudjom Tersar Lineage, Rinpoche put his insight into Kyabje Dudjom Rinpoche’s seminal highest Atiyoga practice tsok offering verse, Ying Kyi Bhendar, into context: This short but incredibly profound tsok offering verse arose as a treasure from the enlightened mind of Kyabje Dudjom Rinpoche, beginning with the terma’s symbolic proof of dakini script. As he says in the colophon to the treasure, ‘This was written by myself, the one known as Jigdral Yeshe Dorje, from a deluded vision I had when I was 33 years old, in the 1st month, the 17th day of the Fire Rat Year. After the evening that the Dzogchen practitioner, Trulshik Dorje, did hundreds of tsok fulfillments of the dakini for my health, in the early morning, I had a dream and heard a woman reciting these words clearly, and when I awoke, I remembered them. Later that day, there was an auspicious sign that I had recovered from my sickness.’ This tsok offering is unlike any regular tantrayana tsok. It belongs to the highest Clear Light vehicle, which is related to the result, fully awakened buddhahood. You can stream the teaching on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com//concise-tsok-offering-verse-teachi For more detailed teachings by Lama Tharchin Rinpoche on the Concise Tsok Offering Verse, please visit our website: https://www.heartteachings.com//concise-tsok-offering-ying You will also find a BUY link on the SoundCloud track that will take you to the detailed teachings. Your purchase helps support our ongoing work to preserve and make available Lama Tharchin Rinpoche’s unique and authentic dharma heritage. Join Vajrayana Foundation (www.vajrayana.org) for their online Annual Summer Retreat. Photo: Lama Tharchin Rinpoche, Paleaku Gardens Peace Sanctuary, Captain Cook, Big Island, Hawaii. January 1990. Retreat hosted by Lama Dechen Yeshe Wangmo. Photo by Susie Iverson.

. Due... to the surge in Coronavirus cases especially in the Indian sub-continent, Kyabgon Sakya Gongma Trichen Rinpoche bestowed the Parnashavari Initiation & Vajrakilaya Blessing for dispelling obstacles and protecting from pandemics. Kyabgon Rinpoche also gave the Oral Transmission of the Parnashavari Prayer he recently composed at the behest of various Sangha. . The prayer has been translated by Khöndung Asanga Vajra Rinpoche and will be shared in a later post. See more

Happy Guru Rinpoche Earth Day! Twenty-five years ago this month, Lama Tharchin Rinpoche gave his History of a Yogi in Tibet talk at Open Secret Bookstore in S...an Rafael, CA. In honor of Guru Rinpoche Earth Day, we’re offering that night’s recording for streaming via the SoundCloud link below. In this inspiring talk incorporating his personal history, Rinpoche explains what being a yogi or yogini (naljorpa/naljorma in Tibetan) means one who practices to gain realization and perfect the genuine qualities of enlightenment with an emphasis on developing one’s experiential practice versus cultivating intellectual or scholarly knowledge. According to the Dzogchen Great Perfection path of the Vajrayana, yogis gain understanding and realization of the true nature of phenomena through practicing the three yogas of Mahayoga, Anuyoga, and Atiyoga. Rinpoche recounts stories about his Repkong ngakpa yogi family lineage as well as his own development into a Buddhist practitioner with genuine faith and motivation to practice the Dharma. You can help support our work of preserving Lama Tharchin Rinpoche’s dharma heritage by purchasing a download of the teaching via the BUY button on SoundCloud. For those of you following us on Instagram, please see our IG bio for our new Linktree, which serves as a valuable link to our various platform resources. Photo: Lama Tharchin Rinpoche with hair down by Leywang. Vajrayana Foundation 2nd Annual Summer Retreat at Mount Baldy Zen Center, California. June 1990. https://soundcloud.com/lamatharc/history-of-a-yogi-in-tibet

On this Guru Rinpoche Day, we are offering a recording of Lama Tharchin Rinpoche reciting the Prayer to Guru Rinpoche to Dispel Obstacles and Bestow Blessings ...(Du Sum Sang Gyay) in a beautiful melody. We found this little gem in an introductory teaching on Buddhism at Pema Osel Ling from late 1994. It seems especially relevant for our practice today as we are mindful of and saddened by so many tragedies involving gun violence in the US, most recently in Atlanta, Georgia, and Boulder, Colorado. Stream the prayer on our SoundCloud page (link below). You’ll find a link to the text of the prayer there as well. https://soundcloud.com/lamatharch//du-sum-sang-gyay-prayer

Entrance examination for Bachelor in Sowa Rigpa Medicine and Surgery course was conducted today at Sowa Rigpa International College with proper covid -19 safety... measures. The next round of admission application is going on and next round of entrance exam will be conducted on 21st February, 2021 ( Sunday). Those who missed the opportunity in previous round can apply still and appear in the coming round( 21st February, 2021) of entrance examination. See more

According to the lunar calendar, tomorrow January 3rd, is the Parinirvana anniversary day of The Lord of Refuge Chadral Sangye Dorje Rinpoche. He wrote more ...than one prayer concerning our current situation. Here's a brief explaination of them which clarifies our responsibilities as Yogi's and Yoginis. He's suggesting we pray for this planet and humanity. Thanks to Rinchen Paldron for the excerpt. "During this degenerate age in the outer world, there are many natural disasters due to the upsetting of the four elements. Also, demonic forces come with their many weapons to incite the fighting of wars. All of those forces have caused the world to come to ruin and led all to tremble so terrified that their hair stands on end. Still, the demonic forces find it necessary to come up with new types of weapons. That’s why we make supplication prayers to the three jewels, do the aspiration prayers, the offering prayers and the prayers of invocation. We are responsible for those activities." -Kyabje Chantral Sangye Dorje Rinpoche (June 18, 1913 December 30, 2015)

A conversation on Tibetan yoga with Dr Nida Chenagtsang and Ian Baker.

A number of screenshots have been circulating and we would like to share two beautiful photos taken recently, two days into tukdam, of Tsikey Chokling Rinpoche.... Please keep this collage intact if you are circulating so the photos have context, as things we post will outsurvive our explanation. The room where Rinpoche is in tukdam was not lit on Sunday 20/12/2020, and the photos were taken with long exposure, no other filters added. Please keep all his memories close to your hearts.

While this incredible book is obviously not on Vajrayana, since it is on the tradition that has been called Tantric Theravada I think it will very much be of ...interest to all Buddhists including from the Tibetan tradition. http://shmb.la/esoteric_theravada "This book is one of the most important works on the history of Southeast Asian and Southern Buddhist meditation for decades. It shows how a whole tradition of practice, meditation, and mindfulness was lostalmostin the wave of interest in Buddhism for its 'scientific' and rational elements over the last hundred and fifty years. The Born Kamahna is the living meditative tradition of Cambodia and Thailand. Until only a few decades ago, it was taught throughout these regions. Crosby’s book shows how this expressive, embodied system of samatha/vipassan meditation constitutes the oldest documented lineage of Buddhist practice in South and Southeast Asia. Belittled by modernist impulses, the system offers a complete path of spiritual development that works on principles found in South and Southeast Asian generative grammar, medicine, yantra, and the Abhidhamma. This account of how Born Kamahna originated as an enactment of Asian generative systems is brilliant, concise, and revelatory. Born Kamahna is scientific, but in ways steeped in highly sophisticated ancient models of grammar and medicine colonialists did not understand. Reformist agendas, still active today, undermined its rich meditative line: Crosby’s work is essential reading for anyone interested in a true picture of traditional Buddhist practice in these regions. Esoteric Theravada rewrites the recent history of Southern Buddhist meditation." Sarah Shaw, author of Mindfulness: Where It Comes From and What It Means "Professor Crosby’s book sheds new light on a vitally important yet neglectedat times even suppressedsystem of meditative practice in South and Southeast Asia. Her work reveals forms of meditation, once widely practiced though now nearly extinct, that diverge sharply from the techniques and even the mindset of the insight practices (vipassan) dominant today. Deeply researched and lucidly written, Esoteric Buddhism is necessary reading for anyone interested in Theravada Buddhist philosophy (Abhidhamma), the interfaces of scientific learning and practices of self-cultivation, and the history of Buddhist meditation." Erik Braun, author of The Birth of Insight and coeditor of Meditation, Buddhism, and Science "Dr. Crosby’s new book on traditional Theravada meditation signals a new direction in the history of South and Southeast Asian Buddhism. She has uncovered, through an intense interrogation of rare materials, an entire lineage of meditation teachers, methods, and existential ratiocinations that have been neglected by scholars. She effectively cauterizes a wound in the field and will lead a new generation of scholars to a fuller and more nuanced understanding of the relation between the body and the mind in regional Buddhist practice" Justin Thomas McDaniel, Professor of Buddhist studies, University of Pennsylvania "Crosby’s acribic detective work has uncovered the principles of a hitherto almost forgotten meditation tradition that was called ‘the old practices’ (Born Kamahna). The principles of Born Kamahna are hidden in texts abounding with metaphors and substitutions. Crosby unravels and explains these texts by entering thought modes of preindustrial times, mapping correspondences between parts of the body and mystical ideas, and using letter, sound, and number symbolism. By showing us ‘the old practices,’ Crosby lays to rest the myth of a pure authentic original Theravada tradition, a myth that too long obscured the diversity of the past." Barend Jan Terwiel, Emeritus Professor of Thai and Lao Languages and Literatures, Hamburg University "Kate Crosby’s Esoteric Theravada is a fascinating and wide-ranging treatment of traditional Born Kammahna style meditation in Theravada Buddhism. Readable and accessible to anyone interested in meditation and an absolute goldmine for historians of Buddhism, this remarkable study of a meditation tradition, its texts, technologies, and the history of its decline gives us insight into the profound thought worlds of Buddhists who were on the ‘losing’ side of the modernist reforms of Buddhism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Crosby’s rare combination of painstaking historical research, linguistic prowess, and engrossing ethnographic interviews in combination with her own experience as a practitioner of Born meditation deftly opens up an important strand of the Theravada tradition that has too often been lost from view." Anne Hansen, Professor of Southeast Asian History & Religious Studies, University of WisconsinMadison "Crosby’s careful and robust study will be eye-opening for Western Buddhist circles." Publishers Weekly http://shmb.la/esoteric_theravada

The passing of a great master. Tsikey Chokling Rinpoche was the fourth incarnation of the great 19th century treasure revealer Chogyur Lingpa, and father of Dilgo Khyentse Yangsi. He is still currently in the tukdam meditation state sustained by great yogis at the time of death. Om Vajrasattva Hum

Thinley Norbu Rinpoche and Lama Tharchin Rinpoche

"When I was a young student and a very devout Buddhist, full of faith, I used to want my body to become one with Padmasambhava’s body. I did countless recitatio...ns, thousands and millions of mantras and invocations. I used to shout myself half to death reciting mantras. I even felt that I was wasting my time by breathing in during these recitations. I called and called and called to Padmasambhava, trying to make my body one with his. But then suddenly I just realized: I AMmy body ISPadmasambhava. I could go on calling on him until my voice breaks down, but it wouldn’t make any sense. So I decided not to call on him anymore. Then I found that Padmasambhava was calling on ME. I tried to suppress it, but I couldn’t control it. Padmasambhava wanted ME, and he kept on calling MY name. ~the Madman of Tsang, in reply to Jamgön Kongtrul’s question How should we go about uniting ourselves with Padmasambhava? This exchange was relayed by Chögyam Trungpa, at Karme-Chöling in 1972. Artwork by Alex Grey Join the global Seven-Line Prayer accumulation: add your count @ www.sevenlineprayer.com HUNG North and west in Udiyan On a lotus pistil stem With accomplishments supreme Pema Jungne, Lotus-Born! By Dakinis ringed around Practicing I follow you Please come grant your blessings now! GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUNG HUNG: ORGYEN YULGYI NUB JANG TSAM PEMA GESAR DONG PO LA YA TSEN CHOG GI NGO DRUB NYE PEMA JUNG NE SHE SU DRAG KOR DU KADRO MANG PO KOR KYED KYI JE SU DAG DRUB KYI JIN GYI LOB CHIR SHEG SU SOL GURU PEMA SIDDHI HUNG #padmasambhava #sevenlineprayer #gururinpoche #zangdokpalri #lotusborn #Dzogchen #buddhism #dharma #mahamudra #mahaguru #padma #bodhisattva #mahasattva #omahhung #enlightenment #tantra #vajrayana #tantrayana #buddhadharma #blessing #nyingma #nyingmamasters #secondbuddha #vajra #terton #mahasiddha #nirmanakaya #crazywisdom #jamgonkongtrulrinpoche See more