Tsoknyi rinpoche biography sample

[00:03:26] William Green: We’ll also discuss some other very practical techniques that can help you become happier, calmer, and more focused. For example, we’ll talk about a belly breathing technique that can restore your sense of wellbeing when you’re feeling a lot of restless, speedy, unsettled energy in your mind and body.

[00:03:45] William Green: Rinpoche will also share his instructions for two different types of simple meditation. You’ll also hear his wonderfully irreverent mantra which is, “Who cares? So what? Whatever happens, whatever doesn’t happen.” I try to remind myself of this mantra once in a while when I need to lighten up and take myself a bit less seriously.

[00:04:07] William Green: In any case, I’m really thrilled to be able to bring you this conversation with Tsoknyi Rinpoche and Daniel Goleman, who happened to be staying with each other in America for a few days before Rinpoche flew back to his home in Nepal. Our conversation may not make you richer in the strictly financial sense of the word, but I have high hopes that it’s going to make you wiser and happier.

[00:04:29] William Green: [00:04:30] Thanks so much for joining.

[00:04:35] Intro: You’re listening to the Richer, Wiser, Happier podcast where your host, William Green, interviews the world’s greatest investors and explores how to win in markets and life.

[00:04:55] William Green: Hi folks. It’s an honor to be here today with some very special guests. I’ve been joined here by Tsoknyi Rinpoche, who’s one of the greatest Buddhist teachers and meditation masters of our time, and we’re also joined by his clos

This interview with Tsoknyi Rinpoche took place on November 10, 2011, in Paro, Bhutan on the last evening of the pilgrimage.

A message from Tsoknyi Rinpoche to students who could not attend this pilgrimage ~

“Many times during the pilgrimage, I have thought and prayed for all my students, whether on this particular journey or not. In this sense all of you have been with me, and we have journeyed to these sacred places together.”

Pilgrims at Paro, Bhutan

Q: Throughout recorded human history people from all over the earth have gone on pilgrimage to holy places. How is this ancient human activity understood from a Buddhist point of view?

Buddha at Maha Bodhi Temple      Guru Rinpoche at Paro, Bhutan

A: Pilgrimage can be a profound inner and outer journey that opens us to increasingly deeper awareness and experience. Classically, pilgrimage is divided in Tibetan Buddhism as having three interwoven aspects: innermost, inner and outer. These correspond to the three basic levels of reality: dharmakaya, sambhogakaya and nirmanakaya.

The innermost or dharmakaya aspect is primordial purity and to visit this “place” we have to dissolve our cognitive and emotional obscurations (klesas) and directly recognize the child luminosity. This is the royal path to this most secret (hidden only by our obscurations) and sacred place.

Guru Rinpoche hand print at Pharping Guru Rinpoche cave

The inner or sambhogakaya realm is accessible when we have cultivated the ability to experience all phenomena in their perfect purity as they would appear in a Buddha realm. Our way in to this realm is pure perception or pure vision.

Outer appearances take two forms—through the accumulation of merit, strengthening our aspirations, the practice of bodhicitta and the wisdom of emptiness, we can create a special kind of “passport” to the supreme nirmanakaya realm and take birth in places such as Sukhavati or the Copper Colored Mountain in our n

T H E S E C O N D I N C A R N A T I O N

The second Tsoknyi was born to a father named Wön Tenzin Norbu and a mother named Sönam Drönma who was the chieftainess of Tsang Sar. He was recognised by the Fifth Dung Kar Śrī Bhadra of Kyodrak, who named him Karma Tsewang Künkhyab. He achieved the primordial wisdom of the aural lineage as he was primarily focused on meditation practice.

Due to his yogic observances, he established everything he saw or heard onto the path of liberation. Certain aspects such as the dates of his birth and death are not available. In the end, he died at the age of sixty 3 and attained the rūpakāya, the form body.

T H E T H I R D I N C A R N A T I O N

The third incarnation was born with a number of wondrous signs in the lower part of the Senggé district in Kham in the Earth Male Mouse year, 1828. His father was named Orgyen Gönpo and his mother Drongza Lhamo Dröl.

Shugu Tendar, a monk from Kyodrak, knowledgeable in medicine and astrology, named him saying: "Since this child has good astrological signs, the name Tashi Tsegon should be given to him."

Since he was the descendent of the dignitary Lhagyari, a royal lineage of the dharma kings of Tibet, from a young age everyone called him Lhabu, the Divine Son.

When an elder guru of Khang Né Monastery conferred the empowerment of Vajrakīla, the guru encouraged those who knew the mantra to recite the approach mantra for Vajrakīla and for those who did not, to recite the approach mantra for Vajrapāṇi. The Lord Lhabu, also, made a mala of kyerpa wood (berberis aristate) and performed over ten million prostrations and recitations of the approach mantra. Since he meditated on a protection circle, he was free from obstacles.

From a young age, he had visions of Yeshé Gönpo, Padmasambhava, and Banak Genyen amongst others. Even while playing, he acted only in conformity with the doctrine. Frightened by the shortcomings of cyc

Visiting Tibetan Buddhist Master Explains the Benefits of Meditation

(Note:  This article appeared in Hong Kong’s newspaper, the South China Morning Post on November 25, 2013, after Rinpoche’s historic teachings there.)

“As the practice of meditation gains mainstream acceptance, a visiting Tibetan Buddhist master tells Chan Tse Chueen (tsechueen.chan@scmp.com) how it has helped him.

“For someone regarded by the Tibetan Buddhist faithful as a reincarnated master teacher of the dharma, Tsoknyi Rinpoche is remarkably frank about his own human frailties. It took him seven years to stop drinking a certain popular brand of soda, which he knew was bad for his health.

“This story, which he shared last month with a Hong Kong audience at a series of talks on death and meditation, is typical of his teaching style–honest, amusing and direct. It makes accessible the lofty topics of his concerns: the limitless potential of our mind, the nature of reality, and happiness.

“His soda anecdote speaks to those of us who find it difficult to bridge the gap between knowledge and action, which happens, he explains, when the head fails to communicate with the heart. This disconnect, and how meditation can help us to bridge that gap, is a message Tsoknyi Rinpoche carries with him to lectures and retreats in Europe, America and Asia.

“We don’t have to live our life bound by the habits of feelings and behaviour which we have developed over the years; we can choose otherwise, he says, by re-educating ourselves through the practice of meditation.

“In the crowded market today for self-help programmes designed to improve health and well-being, meditation is gaining mainstream credibility. Mindfulness training is now an acceptable tool in psychotherapy, and its ability to “rewire” our brain has become more fact than fiction, thanks to advances in neuroscience research that demonstrate it. Benefits of meditation found through various studies include reduced