The United States

Awaking the Sacred Body: The Tibetan Yogas of Breath and Movement

with Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

This three-week online workshop instructs you in practices of Tibetan yoga, practices that have been used for thousands of years to open and awaken the energy centers and channels of the subtle energy body. Students will explore two sets of practices that, while easy to perform, can bring profound mental, emotional and physical benefits. In the Nine Breathings of Purification, you will rely on the power of the breath to clear and open three channels of light within the body as a means to connect with the natural mind. The Tsa Lung movements will help you open five chakras within the central channel of the body in order to access the deeper wisdom that is always available to you.

The workshop features personal guidance and support from Rinpoche as you work with the practices, instruction via Internet-based video and an easy-to-use course site. There are no set class times, and instructional videos remain available throughout the workshop.

Website: GlideWing (https://www.glidewing.com/twr/awakening_home.html)

Transforming Our Emotions Through the Six Lokas

with Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

This meditation course will give you a thorough introduction to the Six Lokas practices of the Bön Buddhist tradition.

At one time or another each of us suffer 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, 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.

The Truth That Sets You Free: Discovering Your Inner Wisdom Through Practices of Waking and Sleeping

with Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

This three-week online workshop with personal support and guidance from Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche is about becoming liberated from fear and other disturbing emotions so you may live more fully and genuinely in all aspects of life. Ultimately, its practices are about achieving liberation, or enlightenment.

The meditations taught in the workshop include daytime contemplative practices from the dzogchen, or “great perfection,” tradition of Tibetan Bön Buddhism. They also include sleep yoga practices of the night from the Bön Mother Tantra, which offer helpful support for one’s dzogchen practice. Through these practices Rinpoche helps you to discover the truth of who you are: a state of spacious awareness that is beyond the ego-based identity and which is eternal, changeless, indestructible and serene. Realizing this truth is what liberates us from the fear and negative emotions that have trapped us in suffering.

Website: GlideWing (https://www.glidewing.com/twr/liberation_home.html)

SHERAP CHAMMA: MOTHER OF WISDOM AND LOVE

with Marcy Vaughn

In many cultures the primordial female energy is seen as the origin of existence and the source of all positive qualities. As such, Sherap Chamma, Mother of Wisdom and Love, is the source of wisdom, and her medicine is love and compassion. The teachings of Sherap Chamma comprise one of the most important tantric cycles of the ancient Bön tradition.

In this retreat, participants will learn a beautiful and simple meditation practice enabling each to directly connect with the divine feminine energy. Within the support of the group, an environment is created to promote profound healing of physical, energetic, emotional and spiritual dimensions of life. With visualization, the sound of mantra and deep contemplation, participants can make a personal connection to this sacred form of the universal mother, Sherap Chamma, and are guided through this connection to innate wisdom and the love and compassion that naturally radiate from that wisdom.

Those experienced in meditation as well as those who are beginning are warmly welcomed.

The retreat will begin Friday, Feb. 21, at 9 a.m., and will end Feb. 23 at 1 p.m. Check-in for accommodations begins at 4 p.m. on Feb. 20.

Marcy Vaughn, a senior teacher and student of Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, has been a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism for more than 40 years. She graduated in the first class of the master’s program in contemplative psychotherapy at Naropa University. Currently a therapist in private practice in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, she edited the books Tibetan Sound Healing, Awakening the Sacred Body, Awakening the Luminous Mind and Spontaneous Creativity: Meditations for Manifesting Your Positive Qualities, all by Tenzin Wangyal, and narrates the audio version of his books The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep and Spontaneous Creativity. She helped design and teaches in The 3 Doors Academy, a three-year training program bringing contemplative practices to the secular world, as well as The 3 Doors Compassion Project for those who provide care for others. 

THE BODY OF LIGHT, PART 3: TRANSFORMATION THROUGH SPACE, LIGHT, AND ENERGY

with Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

Every one of us has the possibility of becoming more open, more aware, and more creative by lightening the densities that prevent us from experiencing ourselves as we truly are.

In  this five-weekend series, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche will teach practices that guide us towards this essential state of pure space and awareness, the body of light. These practices take us through the layers of our pain identities as they manifest within each of the five aspects of spiritual and personal development: body, speech, mind, positive qualities, and spontaneous creativity. As we release first the gross and then the subtler blockages we discover the body of light that becomes accessible as these blockages clear. This weekend will focus on mind.

All the weekends emphasize self-reflection and practices of the tantric and dzogchen teachings of the Bön tradition. There are no prerequisites needed in order to attend these teachings. Everyone is welcome.

The Body of Light flyer Part Three

NGӦNDRO: THE FOUNDATIONAL PRACTICES

Online Workshop with Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

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.

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche rarely teaches the ngöndro, and recommends it for dedicated practitioners who feel a strong connection to the Bön lineage. Within the ngöndro are found practices that are used within many other practices, such as the Guru Yoga Prayer, Bodhicitta Prayer, Refuge Prayer, Prostrations, and the Three Heart Mantras, so the ngöndro supports and deepens all other meditation practices.

THE FIVE PRECIOUS WISDOM MEDICINES

with Geshe Denma Gyaltsen

The Five Precious Wisdom Medicines are the healing methods we can skillfully administer to ourselves to counteract the five poisons of everyday life—attachment, aversion, ignorance, pride and jealousy.

Geshe Denma Gyaltsen, resident lama of Ligmincha Texas, will teach us about the five problems that arise for us, destroy our peacefulness and cause us to react in habitual ways that compound those problems.He also will teach us five methods we can use to restore our peacefulness and choose positive, creative responses to those problems. Through this simple-sounding topic, Geshe Denma will take us a long way toward a new understanding. Please join us.

The retreat will begin Friday, March 13, at 7:15 p.m. and will end Sunday, March 15, at 1 p.m. Check-in for accommodations begins at 4 p.m. on March 13.

Geshe Denma Gyaltsen is the resident lama of Ligmincha Texas. Born in northern Nepal, he was brought by his father to Menri Monastery in Dolanji, India in 1981 and was awarded his geshe degree from Menri Monastery in 1996. An accomplished teacher, he was a senior teacher while in residence at Menri; was the first abbot of Zhu Rishing Yungdrung Kundak-Ling Monastery, a Bön Monastery in Sikkim, India; assisted with the Bön Children’s Home, which cares for many children in Dolanji, India; and has been co-editor of the publication Door to Bön. From 2009–2013 he often traveled to the United States to participate in Bön practices and learn more about the work his fellow geshes were doing to bring this tradition to the West. At the request of Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, he became the first resident lama of Ligmincha Texas in early 2016.   

TIBETAN MEDITATION: ACHIEVING GREAT BLISS THROUGH PURE AWARENESS

with Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

This interactive online workshop, offered through GlideWing, allows you to learn and practice from your own home, at your own schedule, with personal guidance from Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. Its video-based teachings offer a direct introduction to the nature of mind. Rinpoche will guide you through each of the five steps of meditation in the Fivefold Teachings of Dawa Gyaltsen — an 8th century dzogchen meditation master — helping you to enter the state of pure awareness that leads to peace, joy and ultimately, to self-realization.

Website: GlideWing (https://www.glidewing.com/twr/meditation_home.html)