The Nyingma

In the eighth century, the Indian tantric saint Padmasambhava brought the vast and profound teachings of Buddha Sakyamuni to a small group of disciples in Tibet. The system of methods he imparted aims at the ultimate development of wisdom and compassion. According to this view, the brilliant inherent nature of beings, while obscured by ignorance, neurotic passion and aggression, remains wholly intact. The realization of this fully awakened nature can be achieved in a single lifetime. To encounter these teachings was and is the rarest of fortunes.

The Tantric Buddhism of Tibet, called the Vajrayana or Diamond Vehicle, kept the full strength of its transmission for centuries, partly because of the country's geographical isolation. The line of transmission was most vitally preserved by the great lineage-holders whose lives were given entirely to the continuing embodiment and protection of this knowledge.

From the time of the Buddha until now, the human mind is essentially the same. Buddha Sakyamuni is the teacher of our era and his teachings are relevent today. The Vajrayana transmissions and practices bring clarity, stability and inner luminosity. The realization of Vajrayana meditation does not isolate the practitioner from the world or provide a merely personal salvation. Rather, it engenders a unity of skill and awareness that gives an open and unshakeable vision of the interconnectedness of life.

Paradoxically, it was through one of history's tragedies that Tibet was to offer its inexhaustible knowledge of being to the rest of the world. With the Chinese occupation and annexation of Tibet in 1959, many of Buddhism's most important teachers fled, as did many thousands of lay people. These teachers brought with them great spiritual realization, sacred scriptures, relics and empowered works of art. At first they went to northern India, Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim. In the years that followed they began to receive those of us from the West who were looking for a path of spiritual insight, a way to live with dignity, courage, humor and compassion in an increasingly dangerous world of chaos.

Among the great individuals to emerge from Tibet was His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche. His Holiness is the spiritual embodiment of the Nyingma lineage, the original Vajrayana transmission in Tibet. In one of his previous incarnations, Rinpoche was a direct disciple of Buddha Sakyamuni; in another, one of Padmasambhava's chief disciples Cheuchung Lotsawa. Widely recognized as a master of masters, His Holiness was a scholar and prolific author of more than forty volumes elucidating the teachings and tantric practices of the Nyingma lineage. He is also a master of medicine and the traditional sciences. Revered throughout the world for his spiritual eminence, profound meditative realization and vast wisdom, Dudjom Rinpoche is one of Tibet's greatest living yogis. He brings this eminence to the establishment of the Nyingma school in America.