First visit of Gangteng Rinpoche

“In short, all apparitions are the forms of yidams, awakened beings. All sounds are reverberations of mantras, arising of the Speech of the awakened ones. All thoughts are indistinguishable from the mind of the awakened ones. This is how the three types of apparition appear. You should practice that either during and after your meditation session, in real life. Recognition of purity is a continuous process.” Extract from Gangteng Rinpoche’s public talk in Estonia 2017. 

In 2016, a group of Gangteng Rincoche’s students in Estonia found Yeshe Khorlo Estonia, a non-profit organisation to fulfill the goals of Gangteng Rinpoche in Estonia. Rinpoche, who is the lineage holder of Pema Lingpa’s tradition of Nyingma school, has an objective to establish here a 3-year retreat center for his students and other followers of Buddhadharma, who are interested in practices of Pema Lingpa’s tradition.

Gangteng Rinpoche, who is also the current head of Nyingma school in Bhutan, visited Estonia in summer 2017, from 28th of July to 29th July. He gave a fascinating public talk in Tallinn about the Vajrayana tradition in general, having the focus on Dzogchen tradition in particular. The video of the public talk is found here. It is in Tibetan, translated into English (oral translation) and Estonian (subtitles).

After that, Gangteng Rinpoche gave in the village of Umbusi, Umbusi Dharma center in Põltsamaa parish, an introductory lecture about the essence of Dzogchen teachings, from three aspects – ground, path and fruit.

On the last day, on the 29th of July , in the morning, Rinpoche performed the riwo sangchö ritual on the Yeshe Khorlo retreat center’s land which was offered by Khordong association in Estonia (Umbusi Buddhist center). Ths particular plot of land was personally chosen by Khenpo Karma Wangyel, the resident Khenpo of Europe in November 2016. The riwo sangchö ritual was accompanied by a short story about the merits accumulated by those who are acting as sponsors for the Buddhadharma.

In the afternoon, Rinpoche gave  an initiation of Amitayus, belonging to the treasure cycle of Pema Lingpa (tshetri dorje threngwa).