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Ngagpas - who are they?

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Below is the approximate script of the third episode in the Double Dorje podcast, released on 15 May 2024 at  the Double Dorje podcast . Hello, and first of all a very warm welcome to the Double Dorje podcast. Ngagpa – that’s a kind of lay practitioner, isn’t it? Well, certainly, that’s kind of true, but that’s barely the half of it. First of all, the word: ngagpa is the nearest I can come to the pronunciation, although whether a real Tibetan would recognise the word without enough context is another matter! I won’t trouble you with the actual Tibetan spelling, which is a subject of its own to wrestle with if you want to learn Tibetan, so let’s just say that it’s N G A G P A. That’s two syllables, ngag and pa, and a simple translation is nothing more than “mantra person” or “mantra practitioner”. The female version has M A at the end instead of P A, and I’m happy to say that the number of female practitioners of this type is quite high, especially these days. I think (and somebody can
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Remembering Thrangu Rinpoche - with gratitude

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It is not yet a quite a year since Thrangu Rinpoche passed on, just short of his 90th birthday. And while it could not remotely be said that I was any kind of "close" student of his, I would claim that he was very important to me. I first met him in 1979 in what I recall as an up-market apartment in Compayne  Gardens, London, where he gave a White Tars empowerment and teachings to the packed assembly, and a few weeks later when he gave the Karma Pakshi empowerment in Edgbaston, Birmingham. At that time, all I knew was that he was an important teacher in the Karma Kagyu scheme of things, but I had no idea quite how important. We sat around casually in the back room of Karma Ling in Carlyle Road, chatting. IIRC Peter Roberts interpreted. I do remember we students struggling to grasp the shape of a "chöjung", and fashioning one from carboard cut from a breakfast cereal box. Sprayed with red paint (I had a rusty old red car parked outside, but I'll refrain from rela
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Advice to my young self

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This has turned into a bit of a TL:DR. You have been warned. It is 50 years since I first formally took refuge in the Three Jewels and so became a Buddhist, receiving the name Karma Yeshe Dorje from Lama Chime Rinpoche. If I had but known then what I know now! Or if I had been blessed with a mentor who knew what I know now! But no. My karma was to grope. And grope I did, starting from no more than an adolescent sense that there must be something more. I hunted through supposedly occult magazines in a corner of the newsagent’s kiosk in the subway by Birmingham New Street Station, spent hours requesting musty copies of works on Theosophy, Spiritualism, mysticism, works by Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and Brunton in the reading room of Birmingham City Library. I was familiar with those shelves in the back basement of Hudson’s University Bookshop that carried works on yoga, travelogues of central Asia and the pioneering translations of Evans-Wentz, though it was near Foyles in London that I first
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Dzogchen and mahamudra: same dance? Or what?

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First off, they are clearly not identical. In particular, dzogchen has a specialized and unique vocabulary in which words like “base” or “bodhicitta” have meanings distinct from their meanings in other Tibetan Buddhist literature and teaching. When studying or practising either, it’s really important to know which is which! And yet, they do have a lot in common. It is widely accepted that the “space division” and “mind division”, along with the first part of the “instruction division” of dzogchen (trekcho) have close parallels with mahamudra, while the final part of the “instruction division” (thögal), with its use of dark retreat and focus on “photic” phenomena is really quite distinct. Karma Chagme’s text, The Union of Mahamudra and Dzogchen, is very informative for those who want to go deeper. My point here is just to suggest an analogy: dzogchen and mahamudra are like a polka and a mazurka (not necessarily in that order). These are both European dances from similar musical cultures
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Direct introduction to the true nature of the mind - it's a conundrum!

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This is all a bit wordy. I was thinking to myself. Only worth reading if you've already been puzzled by this!  Ink gets spilt liberally in some corners of the internet about the importance of what is sometimes called "direct introduction" or DI (*1 below) . DI is also referred to elsewhere as "pointing out instruction". Some will tell us that receiving DI from Namkhai Norbu or his authorized representative is essential for dzogchen practice - that the necessary and fundamental insight, termed "rigpa", simply cannot be achieved in any other way. Rigpa is said to be knowledge of - or recognition of - the "base" or "ground", which is a pure empty consciousness that needs to be recognized to achieve awakening. DI cannot possibly be conveyed by, for instance, words in a book. You can't go to your local bookstore, get a book about dzogchen, read about the ground and start practicing. DI has to be obtained "live" from a livin
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Trungpa at Oxford University? Really?

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  Trungpa studied at Oxford University, did he? Well now we know. One of the main pillars of Trungpa’s story as told by his followers is that he was extraordinarily brilliant – "flawed but nevertheless brilliant". One of the main pillars of that notion is that he “got himself into Oxford” (see, for example, 2 minutes into the trailer for “Crazy Wisdom”, a filmic eulogy to Trungpa, watchable at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80jGSadccmY ). In the light of his background as a refugee from mysterious Tibet, this appears particularly impressive. The claim has been woven so deeply into the story told by his followers, and repeated so often, that many observers will take its truth for granted. The glamour of being “an Oxford man” was encouraged by Trungpa himself, as witness the elocution lessons he gave to his followers in “how to speak properly”, which is to say to imitate what he thought of as his Oxford accent. Yet on close examination it appears to be a fable. The trut
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Cutting through ego

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... such a narcissistic project! 
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