Ngagpas - who are they?

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 correct me if I’m wrong), however that the version of the word that ends in PA is used generally, and doesn’t specifically mean that the practitioner is male. Anyway, “mantra practitioner” is enough to tell us that we are in the world of mantra, tantra and vajrayana Buddhism. Now I think it’s fair to say that anybody who practices Tibetan Buddhism, from the highest lama sitting on the highest, brocade-covered throne down to the least educated person whose practice just consists of shuffling their way round the stupa every evening – everyone in other words – recites mantras, quite possibly getting through hundreds or even thousands a day. A ngagpa however is a rather more special case.

My own main teacher is a ngagpa, without a doubt, as was his father before him. He not only transmits and teaches very profound methods Buddhist practice, but, for example, performs funeral rites, reads sutras in people’s homes or businesses as a form of blessing, and plays a key role in the Dalai Lama’s annual exorcism ceremonies. So I like to think that these days I am studying and indeed practising in a “ngagpa” tradition, but I’m not convinced that it would be helpful to say that I actually am a ngagpa.

A ngagpa is therefore, first of all, a solid practitioner. You might say a serious practitioner, or a committed practitioner. This of course immediately raises the question of – what is one of those? In no way do I want to suggest that there is a sharp distinction between this kind of solid practitioner and someone whose level of interest is lighter, nor do I want to say that a lighter level of interest is necessarily inadequate. We all have our own backgrounds, our own culture, our own influences, and it is quite possible for a light level of interest to be absolutely the best level of interest for many people. All the same, I think there is a difference, even if it’s only a question of being toward one end of a spectrum, and these podcasts are mainly meant to be about and for people towards that end of the scale. So we can quibble about definitions, but one thing is clear, and that is a ngagpa needs to be one of the solid practitioners.

A monk, or a nun, can certainly do many of the same practices that a ngagpa does, and it may well be entirely correct to call them a practitioner of mantra – the “path of secret mantra”, as it’s known, but this actual word, ngagpa, is used to refer to this kind of lay practitioner rather than monks or nuns. Visibly, rather than having the shaven head of a monastic, which is a sign of renunciation, ngagpas generally have hair that is not cut at all, as a sign of leaving the mind in its natural state. The more hardcore ngagpas don’t just leave their uncut, but leave it completely uncontrived. The dreadlocks that result are worn piled on top of the head. My own feeling is that the smell, the lice, and the fleas that will certainly develop from this lack of treatment may not be the most skilful thing to do in modern societies.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with the monastic ideal, and we wouldn’t have a Buddhism remotely like what we do have if it were not for the monastic institutions. But let’s be honest, monasticism, and celibate priesthood, always brings problems with it. The habit of sending children to the monastery to become monks, with the intention that they will stay there for life, is something most of us these days would find quite unacceptable. It’s often emotionally damaging, and some of these ways of doing things wouldn’t even be legal in the West. And that’s before we even start to think about the possibilities of bullying and sexual abuse. I’ll come back to this topic in another podcast.

Monasteries and nunneries will never be seen in the modern world in the same way as they were in Tibet. Perhaps a few will flourish, and – provided they are populated by people who have chosen, as informed adults, to take renunciate vows – their presence is likely to be very helpful. But there is no market for large numbers of monastics, and the level of support will be very low. Neither the families of these monks and nuns, nor the people who live locally around the monastery, are likely to provide much by way of donations. So the tradition of seriously committed lay practitioners, in particular in the form of the ngagpa, maybe something that can feed fruitfully into the modern, so-called Western, forms of Buddhism.

There’s no particular reason to make a sharp distinction between these committed or serious practitioners on the one hand and the rest of us but it IS a bit of a thing. Some people put their practice very close to the centre of their lives, where for other people it’s more of an add-on.

What kind of things will this sort of more heavy-duty practitioner be doing? They will without doubt have taken refuge formally, making them what you might call officially Buddhist. They will have a connection with at least one teacher, one centre or perhaps a particular lineage. In the last case they may have taken teachings, transmissions or empowerments from the head honcho of that lineage without having much by way of personal contact. Having a personal connection to a trusted teacher is of course very helpful if not actually vital. They will have practised what is known as the calm abiding form of meditation. The Tibetan for that is shiné, sometimes spelt S.H.I.N.E. Not to be confused with shine! Those who are following Tibetan forms of Buddhism will have received at least one empowerment, probably a number, they will be practising or have practised the famous “preliminaries”, often called the ngöndro – there’s that dratted NG and the start of the word again! That’s a rather extensive practice, and certainly one to return to in another podcast. They will no doubt have a deity – a form of the Buddha – with whom they have a special connection, practising the associated visualisation, mantra recitation and so on. They may be moving on to what counted as the highest – or perhaps I should say deepest – practices of their particular traditions such as mahamudra and dzogchen. I’ll include some of these words in the description so that you can Google them if you feel the need. There were know a number of prayers by heart, and will practice daily, as well as having particular practices on special days like the new moon, the full moon, of the 10th and 25th days. These last two are dedicated to Guru Rinpoche and to the dakinis respectively. There is a huge scope for variation, especially when we take the variety of traditions into account, but what I’m trying to describe IS a stage that people do get to.

How, then, does this compare with a ngagpa? A ngagpa will certainly tick all the above boxes, and then some. Regular retreats of weeks or months will feature in the lives of many ngagpas. One of the key features that makes a full-on practitioner into a ngagpa is as much social as spiritual. A ngagpa’s practice will put heavy emphasis on the application of mantra, on practices sometimes classed as skilful means. He or she will have received the transmission of many mantras for purposes perhaps more ordinary or worldly than the enlightenment of all sentient beings and will, most importantly, be recognised as having the mantric power to use these skilful means effectively. It is not imagined that anybody can just find mantra – these days perhaps we might find it on the Internet – whose purpose is, let’s say, for finding lost objects, rattle it out a few times and receive a vision of where the lost object is. The mantric power is expected to come from having practised at least one special deity, known as a yidam and its mantra extensively and intensively. This is what gives the ngagpa the ability to potentially find lost objects, to generate healing, to protect against disaster, against disease, to purify places where bad things have happened. Astrology might be part of their spiritual armoury, and they will be called on for funeral rites, for exorcisms, for reading the scriptures in order to bless businesses or houses, to protect crops and livestock, to stop rain and hail damage in the fields and to bring rain when needed. Wonderful. But. There is no great market for these things in our society, is there? There are simply not enough people with enough confidence in these methods to make enough donations for many people to make a viable living this way. Perhaps it’s not impossible, as there are people who manage to make a living from astrology feng shui, reiki or clairvoyance after all, but I have a suspicion that in most cases it’s not much of a living!

It follows from this that a modern equivalent to the ngagpa is less likely to put so much emphasis on to these essentially magical practices, and is much more likely to have a day job! We should not forget that the kind of ascetic life followed by some Tibetans, subsisting on begging, living in caves while having no fixed abode would simply lead to arrest in most modern societies.

You will be likely to come across people who say that they have been “ordained” as ngagpa. With all due respect, and clearly recognising that some of these people may indeed be good practitioners, that’s not really the right way to put it. Taking monastic vows is certainly an ordination, as the supplicant is admitted to the order of monks and nuns. There isn’t really such a thing as an order of ngagpas, and when I have had an opportunity to ask any of those people what they count as having been their ordination ceremony, it generally seems to be based around an important empowerment in some particular tradition. In the Nyingma tradition that I practice these days, this might be the empowerment of the wrathful black mother, Throma Nagmo. My small sample also suggests that in the case of those empowerments particular emphasis was placed by the officiating teacher on the tantric vows that the students are expected to adopt. The subject of tantric vows may again be something for another podcast, but at this stage let me offer my humble opinion, which is that these vows are often not emphasised enough when empowerments are given these days, especially when the empowerments are given to large numbers of people. It’s clear, sadly, that many of those people don’t even know that the tantric vows even exist, let alone what they are and that they are supposed to adopt them. Without the vows, it’s not even clear whether the empowerment has been given properly, if I may be harshly honest.

Anyway, the kind of empowerment I just described, when done properly, is a wonderful thing, but there are two reasons for wondering whether it makes much sense to call them ordination. The first, as already mentioned, is that there is no order of ngagpas in any case, and the second is that for most of these people the social aspect of training in and exercising the activities, the skilful means, is largely missing. So I do like to say something like training in a ngagpa tradition. But “being” a ngagpa, or having been “ordained” as one is perhaps questionable. In addition to this there is a higher or more profound way of looking at the nature of a ngagpa.

My own teacher explained that the main meaning of being a ngagpa is that the five root emotions radiate as the five wisdoms; that subject object and action dissolve into emptiness becoming the one taste of the dharmakaya. Then one is naturally enrolled as a rigdzin, or vidyadhara to use the Sanskrit equivalent, that is a true, genuine ngagpa with bodhicitta intention.

Now that something to chew on, isn’t it? Some of the words and concepts in that description will themselves not be at all obvious to many of us. If you are new, you will have to look up some of those terms and many of us will have to think quite hard about what the whole thing means. But I hope you will come to see that THAT is something well worth aspiring to!

So enough now! Don’t forget to like, subscribe, share or whatever is appropriate, and in the meantime – keep up the good work. Bye!

Possible look-ups:

• Ngagpa
• mantra
• tantra
• vajrayana
• shiné
• ngöndro
• mahamudra
• dzogchen
• Guru Rinpoche
• dakinis
• yidam
• Nyingma
• Throma Nagmo
• rigdzin / vidyadhara
• bodhicitta