Celebrating the Return - Dilgo Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche visits Lerab Ling 17-22 July

In just a few weeks time, Dilgo Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche, the incarnation of Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, will visit Lerab Ling as part of his first world tour.  This tour coincides with the worldwide centenary celebrations of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche's birth, which began in Nepal earlier this year.

You can read about the opening celebrations, which were attended by many lamas including Sogyal Rinpoche, here.

Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche will be teaching and giving empowerments over 5 days (17-22 July) during the annual All Mandala Retreat at Lerab Ling.

His public talk, The Lineage of Good Heart, (18th July), will be video-streamed live and for free via the internet. 

For details about the visit, how to register and how to follow the video-streaming, go to www.lerabling.org

More news from Rigpa’s Tibetan Translator Training Programme

Namdroling Monastery (Photo courtesy of www.namdroling.org)

Rigpa's Shedra, or study college, has been steadily educating a small group of students in Buddhist philosophy, the art of traditional Tibetan debate and Tibetan language, first in the West, at Dzogchen Beara and Lerab Ling and, since 2006, in Nepal under the guidance of Khenpo Namdrol, one of the most senior Nyingma khenpos.

The curriculum is designed with a view to supporting the needs of the wider Rigpa Sangha, complementing the teachings of Sogyal Rinpoche and also the courses offered in Rigpa centres throughout the world. It is entirely non-sectarian, and features the most important writings of the great Indian and Tibetan masters, including works on both sutra and tantra. The teachers providing commentary on these texts are highly qualified khenpos and acharyas. Additional teachings and guidance are also sought from many of the lamas connected with the Rigpa sangha. In addition to studying the most important classical writings, students have the option to study the Tibetan language, and all the major and minor sciences studied by the panditas of India and Tibet, including the history of Buddhism in India and Tibet, Tibetan medicine, astrology, grammar (according to the main Tibetan grammar treatises), poetry and arts and crafts.

Now the Shedra is offering its own intensive Tibetan translator training programme.  The first group of students in the programme started in May at Namdroling Monastery, in the south of India.

Namdroling, the largest Nyingma center in the world, was established by the His Holiness Penor Rinpoche, and is home to over 4,000 monks and nuns and, currently, eight Rigpa students.

Rita Ives, who is one of these students, reports from Namdroling.

Together with our instructor, we are now fully immersing ourselves in Tibetan language. Our daily classes include classical Tibetan, colloquial Tibetan with monks and nuns for tutors, and listening comprehension with a Khenpo.

We also have the chance to participate in some of the life of the monastery, especially the main practice and anniversary days in the Tibetan calendar. Recently, we gathered for the anniversary of Mipham Rinpoche, a great master and writer in the Nyingma tradition.

On this evening, the entire community, monastic and lay, gathered to practice, offer kataks (ceremonial white scarves) under a thangka of Mipham Rinpoche. At the end of the evening, the monks held a traditional debate in honour of Mipham Rinpoche.

Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche leads Rigpa students on a Pilgrimage to Skellig Island

On 28 May 2010, on his way to Dzogchen Beara to lead a weekend retreat, Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche led a pilgrimage of 40 Rigpa Sangha members to Skellig Michael, a rocky and steep island that is the site of an ancient Christian monastic settlement, 9 miles off the coast of County Kerry, Ireland.

Also in the group were representatives from Glenstall Abbey who welcomed Rinpoche onto the island with a Greek blessing (a language that the Skellig Island monks would have used) and sang a prayer of blessing from the celtic Christian tradition.

At the top of the island, amongst the ancient walls of the monastery's beehive huts, Rinpoche  lead a practice of Riwo Sangchö.

During the retreat which followed at Dzogchen Beara, entitled Awakening the Mind, Softening the Heart, Rinpoche stressed the importance of strong faith, confidence and perseverance on the path of meditation for which the blessings of the environment is very helpful. He said:

Skellig Michael is a great example.  For 600 years many great monks lived in these minimal, primitive conditions for a higher purpose, for a higher cause and have definitely had great results.  I am sure many saints came from there.  To visit this place is a great experience for us now, even after so many centuries, it has the power to inspire us.  Ireland has a lot of great places like that, in the western world it is very unique.

(Story, Matt Padwick, Photos courtesy of Veronica Nicholson)

Khenpo Pema Sherab at Rigpa Shedra West

Khenpo Pema Sherab, one of the seniormost khenpos in the Nyingma tradition, recently taught at the Rigpa Shedra West at Lerab Ling (26 May-6 June) on Mipham Rinpoche's Beacon of Certainty. Khenpo Pema Sherab is well known to Rigpa's Shedra students, having also taught them in Nepal at Rigpa Shedra East in 2008.  He also visited Lerab Ling in August 2009 during the Three Year Retreat. On that occasion he taught on Longchenpa's Thirty Pieces of Advice from the Heart.
Read more on the Rigpa Shedra website