Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche LIVE
Upcoming Broadcasts on Facebook
Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche invites you to connect with him, the ancient Tibetan teachings and fellow students around the world through regular live broadcasts that can be easily viewed on Rinpoche’s Facebook page.
Each of the scheduled broadcasts shown below includes a teaching and guided meditation and is free and open to all – you don’t need a Facebook account to view it. Each is part of Rinpoche's ongoing series of Pith Instructions, in which he offers personal reflections on the heart essence of dzogchen.
- April 4, 1 p.m. New York time: “Precious Gems: Witnessing the Sacred in All You Meet”
- April 18, 1 p.m. New York time: “Beyond Fear: The Ultimate Protection Is Within You”
To receive advance updates, subscribe to our Announcements email list by sending an email to:
twr-live-announcements+subscribe[at]googlegroups.com (please copy and paste this address into your email application TO, replace [at] with @). You’ll receive a return email (check your SPAM folder if needed); replying to this email will activate your subscription.
More about Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche LIVE and latest schedule updates
Archive of recorded live broadcasts
GlideWing Online Course Starts March 30
'The Nature of Mind – Achieving Great Bliss Through Pure Awareness'
“The Nature of Mind: Achieving Great Bliss Through Pure Awareness,” is a three-week course with Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, running March 30–April 21. This ancient Tibetan meditation practice teaches you to enter the state of pure awareness that leads to peace, joy and ultimately, to self-realization. More
Learn and practice from your own home, at your own schedule, with personal guidance from Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, founder and spiritual director of Ligmincha International.
These teachings are a direct introduction to the nature of mind. In this interactive course, Rinpoche will guide you through each of the five steps of meditation in the Fivefold Teachings of Dawa Gyaltsen. Not only can you learn how to heal your day-to-day life, making it lighter and more joyful, but through the profound simplicity of this practice, you can recognize and connect with your innermost essence, the nature of your mind as a buddha or pure consciousness. Personal support and guidance are provided by Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche.
Learn more/register
Coming in May: "Tibetan Dream Yoga" with Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, May 11–June 9, 2019.
Two Upcoming Ligmincha Learning Online Courses
'Ngöndro' Begins March 30 and 'The Six Lokas' Begins May 11
TapihritsaLigmincha Learning is offering two upcoming online courses with Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche: “Ngöndro: The Foundational Practices” starting March 30 and “Transforming Our Emotions Through the Six Lokas” starting May 11. More
“Ngöndro: The Foundational Practices” is a nine-month online course with Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche that will be held from March 30–December 31, 2019.
The ngöndro teachings are a set of nine practices that offer complete instructions for taming, purifying, and perfecting the suffering mind. Although these practices are considered the foundation for entrance into the five-part cycle of Tibetan Bön dzogchen teachings – Bön’s highest teachings on the nature of mind – many practitioners adopt the ngöndro as their main meditation and complete the nine sets of 100,000 repetitions over the course of a lifetime. Within each is contained the entire path to liberation. They are considered to be the foundational practices for the entire tradition.
There are three groups of ngöndro practices.
The Three Practices for Taming Oneself:
- Opening Your Heart with Guru Yoga
- Impermanence
- Admitting Your Misdeeds
The Three Practices for Purifying Oneself:
- Bodhicitta: Generating the Mind Intent on Enlightenment
- Going for Refuge
- Offering the Mandala
The Three Practices for Perfecting Oneself:
- Purification through Mantra
- Offering Your Illusory Body as a Tsok
- Request for Blessings
“Transforming Our Emotions Through the Six Lokas” is a seven week course running from May 11–June 29, 2019.
Shenlha Okar – Essential Buddha of the Six Lokas Practices
At one time or another each of us suffers strong emotions that throw us off balance, cause us to act in ways that we later regret and make us lose touch with our true nature. Centuries ago, the masters of the Bön lineage developed the meditations of the Six Lokas specifically to remedy this situation, to help us live our lives in a balanced and relaxed way.
The meditations focus on the root causes of our suffering: anger, desire or greed, ignorance, jealousy, pride and laziness. Through each meditation we examine our habitual patterns so that we may recognize them, then invoke the enlightened energy of the buddhas to purify and transform us so that we and all other beings might not continue to suffer in this way. The practices have a deep healing and transformative power, and are traditionally practiced at length as a preliminary to dzogchen contemplation.
Coming in July: Sherap Chamma, Mother of Wisdom and Love with Marcy Vaughn, July 10–August 7, 2019.
Opening the Door of Body
An Interview with 3 Doors Senior Teacher Laura Shekerjian
Laura Shekerjian, a senior teacher with The 3 Doors, is a psychotherapist practicing in Berkeley, California and a longtime practitioner in the Bön tradition. Holding master’s degrees in counseling psychology as well as Buddhist studies, she has worked for more than 20 years in individual, group and classroom settings to actively engage her clients and students in the process of self-discovery. Through The 3 Doors she is offering several programs related to Opening the Door of the Body. More She was interviewed recently by Robyn Tighe of The 3 Doors.
3 Doors: Why did you choose Opening the Door of Body as a focus for your programs?
Laura Shekerjian: I started getting interested in what it really means to connect with the body. Even though I was doing my best to follow the instruction bring awareness to the body, I began to wonder if this was in fact what I was doing. How was I assessing whether I was connected? What was I actually experiencing?
When I looked closely, I started to recognize how often my mind stepped in to interpret and control my experience with my body. For example, I realized that when told to connect with my body, my mind would brush over my face and then conclude I had connected. In other words, I had learned that connecting meant touching some piece of my body, deciding I had followed the instruction and then moving on to whatever was next. This "moving on" was a necessity of the mind and prevented true contact and deepening. And so I asked myself, if I can’t even feel my body as a whole, how can I deepen into stillness in an authentic way? This led me to really slow down my practice and work more kinesthetically to explore my relationship to the body as a door.
I became interested in how the small or limited identity is held in the body, for example, in the meditation posture itself. I noticed myself and others holding the posture with tension—frowning, tightening the jaw, closing the abdomen—and then trying to practice from the limitations of this tension. This led me to consider the question, who is practicing? Which self is guiding the practice, assessing the results and probably not even changing?
3 Doors: Are the practices supportive of connecting to the lower chakras, too?
Laura: Yes. I think that in the West, we often operate from our minds and the upper centers. So much of what we do supports visual as opposed to tactile experience, and the demands of life cause us to emphasize doing over being. People don’t often just sit in a café, for example, without needing to inform, entertain or distract themselves. When you don’t just sit, you aren’t really resting into the moment and into yourself. To really rest, you have to let go of the congestion of habitual stances. And in order to do this, you have to take the time to become sensitive to how you are holding yourself, where you are “locating,” and how this affects your experience.
In particular, I think many of us do not fully inhabit our lower chakras. There is a lot stored there that we want to avoid. Eventually, we want to live from the whole of us, not just part. But we don’t often know we are living “partial” lives. Attention to the body can help us recognize our default positions.
3 Doors: How has working with the body and breath affected you personally?
Laura: Over the years I’ve been struck by how immediately body and breath reveal how I’m doing in a particular moment. I remember being in a group interview for graduate school where everyone was expressing their nervousness and anticipation. I was sitting there sweating and trembling but convinced that I was calm and somehow above all the emotions others were sharing. At that point in time, I hadn’t yet recognized the prevalence of fear in my Iife. When I began to pay attention, I started seeing how fear manifested in a shallow breath and a reluctance to rest into my back and lower body. When I looked deeper, I could see how a lack of trust in life was preventing me from truly letting go. If I couldn’t let go, how could I take refuge? What I had been calling taking refuge was being blocked by fear because the fear-self had become the practitioner without me being aware of it.
3 Doors: Tell us about your new monthly meditation sessions.
Laura: We all know that continuity is very important. My plan is to offer ongoing monthly guided meditation sessions, where people can have a sense of being supported to go deeper into what I have offered in my programs. The format will be an hour-long meditation followed by a half-hour of sharing and discussion where people bring their challenges and excitements about their own practice. I think that by articulating our own experience and hearing the experiences of others, we energize our practice and encourage one another to go even further.
Learn more about the 3 Doors Opening the Door of Body Programs
Longevity Practice of Lama Tsewang Rigdzin
Upcoming Teachings in Pasedena, California and at Chamma Ling Colorado
Two upcoming teachings, in Pasadena, California and at Chamma Ling Colorado, will focus on the longevity teachings of Tsewang Rigdzin (Rikdzin). More
Join Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche on April 6-7, 2019 in Pasadena, California, near Los Angeles for teachings on “The Knowledge and Wisdom of Longevity: Teachings from the Tsewang Jarima.” In this special two-day retreat, Rinpoche will for the first time in California offer teachings from the Tsewang Jarima, a text by Tsewang Rigdzin, known as the “King of Longevity” and also a dzogchen lineage master.
View program flyer
Join Geshe Denma Gyaltsen on April 25–29, 2019 at Chamma Ling Retreat Center near Crestone, Colorado for a retreat on “Longevity Practice of Lama Tsewang Rikdzin,” the first in a series of three retreats on Soul and Life Force Retrieval that will be taught over the next year. This ritual, although complete in itself, is part of a group of of practices that is called Soul and Life Force Retrieval that will be taught in three consecutive retreats.
Lama Tsewang Rikdzin was the son of the great Bön sage Drenpa Namkha. Literally, tsewang translates as power of life or power of longevity. Geshe Denma Gyaltsen will teach from the ancient text of the Tsewang Jarima.
Geshe Denma Gyaltsen is the resident lama of Ligmincha Texas, resides in Houston, and has taught at centers throughout the United States and Europe. Born in northern Nepal, he began his studies at Menri Monastery in 1981, receiving all the teachings, initiations and transmissions in sutra, tantra and dzogchen, and was awarded the geshe degree in 1996.
Retreats in the Soul Retrieval series:
- April 25–29, 2019: Longevity Practice & Ganapuja of Lama Tsewang Rikdzin
- October 3–6, 2019: Soul Retrieval (La Lu)
- April 30– May 3, 2020: Life Force Retrieval
Learn more/register
Learn more about Chamma Ling Colorado
Indestructible: The Longevity Practice of Lama Tséwang Rikdzin, is a beautifully translated and annotated book by Raven Cypress Wood, published by Ligmincha's Sacred Sky Press. Known as the “King of Longevity,” eighth century Tibetan master Tséwang Rikdzin composed many ritual texts aimed at alleviating suffering and was a dzogchen master.
Sacred Sky website
Student and Teacher
Together on the Path
As students on the Tibetan Bön Buddhist path, we offer our teachers a range of simple and difficult questions. Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche has a wonderful ability to understand human nature, cut to the truth and share his wisdom in his response to these questions. Here is a comment from a student attending the 2018 Summer Retreat at Serenity Ridge and an edited excerpt given in reply by Rinpoche. More
Student: Rinpoche, today just in my simply hearing you and the lamas reciting the prayer that's connected with our practice, my experience was that it touched a much deeper place in me than I've ever been able to touch in my own practice. And a wonderful experience arose of having so much trust in such beautiful and reliable deities and guides. I was wondering if you could say something about that experience?
Rinpoche: Well, that's what it is! When we talk about the blessings, grace, connection to the lineage, that's what it is, you know? But of course, you are very open to be experiencing it in that way. For people who are not so open, then it won't happen. But when you're open like that, then for sure its a support – the power of the lineage, the power of the support, for what you are feeling. So, just enjoy it! [laughter]
Spanish Translation of VOCL
Link to February Issue Now Available
Look for the translations of Voice of Clear Light newsletters at the top of the Voice of Clear Light website.
Read VOCL in Spanish
Upcoming Retreats
Serenity Ridge Retreat Center
The retreats listed below will take place at Serenity Ridge Retreat Center, Ligmincha International headquarters located in rural Nelson County, Virginia. To register or for more information, click on the links below, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call 434-263-6304.
April 8–11, 2019
Spring Service Retreat
Learn more
April 11–14, 2019
Spring Retreat—The Five Elements: Connecting with the Living Universe
with Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
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April 14–16, 2019
Ligmincha Symposium for Contemplative Sciences: Body, Breath & Mind
with Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche and other researchers/presenters
Learn more/register
June 17–23, 2019
Summer Service Retreat
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June 22, 2019
Sa Le Ö Benefit Dinner and Concert for Tibetan Orphans
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June 23–July 7, 2019
Summer Retreat—Tummo: Inner Fire of Realization, Part 2 of 3
with His Holiness Lungtok Dawa Dargyal Rinpoche and Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. All are welcome.
Learn more/register
October 22–27, 2019
Fall Retreat—Guidance for Living and Dying: Commentary on the Bardo Teachings from the Bön Mother Tantra
with Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
November 7–10, 2019
Trul Khor, Part 2 and Part 3
with Alejandro Chaoul-Reich and Rob Patzig
November 8–10, 2019
Special Retreat, Topic TBA
with H.E. Menri Lopon Trinley Nyima Rinpoche
December 26, 2019–January 1, 2020
Winter Retreat—Dzogchen Silent Practice Retreat: Turning Inward
with Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
To register for any of the above retreats, or for more information about teachings in the Bön Buddhist tradition of Tibet, please This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , call 434-263-6304 or visit the Serenity Ridge website.
