Tenzin Namdak

Tenzin Namdak

Lopön Tenzin Namdak Rinpoche ( Tibetan : སློབ་དཔོན་ བསྟན་ འཛིན་ རྣམ་ དག Wylie Slob-dpon Bstan-'dzin Rnam-dag ; * 1926 ) is a Bön master, and has been a visiting professor for Bön religion at various European universities since 1961 and author.

Life

Tenzin Namdak was born in Kyungpo Karu (Chamdo Province, Tibet ) in 1926 and comes from a family of Thanka painters. At seven he entered the local Tingchen monastery where he learned to read and write. During his school education, he also learned the art of thanka painting and other art forms. For further training he entered the central Tibetan Bön monastery Yungdrung Ling as an artist at the age of fifteen . At seventeen he went on a pilgrimage to Nepal and after his return he lived for eight years as a hermit under the training and supervision of the famous Bön master Tsultrim Gyaltsen on an island in Lake Namtso . From Tsultrim Gyaltsen he received all relevant teachings of the Bon tradition and the transmissions for Dzogchen . During his training, he also devoted himself to poetry, history, grammar and tantra teaching. In 1950 he joined the Menri Monastery , graduated in 1953 with a Geshe and became Lopön of the Menri Monastery (that is, head of the formation of monks), from which position he retired after four years for meditation.

In 1960, a year after the Tibet Uprising , he was arrested and was only able to escape to Nepal ten months later. In 1961 he was invited as a guest lecturer at the universities of London and Cambridge . He stayed there for three years and, in collaboration with Professor David Snellgrove, wrote the standard work on the Bon religion in English: "The Nine Ways of Bon". In 1964 he returned to India, where he worked as an expert on Tibet and published Bön texts. From there he went to Munich as a guest lecturer and worked on the publication of the German-Tibetan dictionary.

From 1967 he dealt with plans to rebuild a Bön monastery in the tradition of the Menri Monastery, which was finally (re) established in 1969 in Dolanji , near the city of Solon ( Himachal Pradesh ) in India, and since then has been training Bön monks up to Geshe degree (corresponds roughly to a Dr. theol. ). In 1986 he was able to visit his homeland Tibet and the remains of the destroyed Menri Monastery for the first time for three months.

After his return from Tibet, he began with the establishment of the Bon monastery Triten Norbutse near the stupa of Swayambhunath ( Nepal ), which since then has his residence. Since 2005 he has spent a large part of the year in Shenten Dargye Ling , the new Bönpo center near Blou in the Loire Valley in France.

Since then, many trips abroad have taken him to the West - including Germany, England, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria and the USA. In the West he also gives teachings on Dzogchen, the essence of all the higher teachings of Bon.

Works

• David Snellgrove, Lopön Tenzin Namdak Rinpoche: The Nine Ways of Bon: Excerpts from GZi-brjid. Oxford UP, 1964, (2nd edition 2010, ISBN 978-974-524-111-4 ).
• Shardza ​​Tashi Gyaltsen, Lopön Tenzin Namdak Rinpoche (translator): Heartdrops of Dharmakaya. Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca 1993, ISBN 1-55939-012-3 .}
• Lopon Tenzin Namdak: Bonpo Dzogchen Teachings . Vajra Bookshop, 2007, ISBN 978-99946-720-5-9 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Tenzin Namdak in the catalog of the German National Library
• HE Yongdzin Lopon Tenzin Namdak Rinpoche (biography)
• Interview on Bön from 2003 ( Memento from March 22, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Graham Coleman, A Handbook Of Tibetan Culture: A Guide to Tibetan Centers and Resources . Random House, 2016.