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Lha-Tri Khenpo Geshe Nyima Dakpa Rinpoche
Lha-Tri Khenpo Geshe Nyima Dakpa Rinpoche is the Abbot and lineage holder of the Lha-tri monastery in the Derge area of the Kham region of Eastern Tibet. His father was a lama of the Te-Wa monastery in Tibet and the third reincarnation of Tsultrim Phuntsok, a great Bön practitioner of Eastern Tibet.
Born in Tibet in 1959, he grew up in Nepal at Dorpatan, the first Bönpo refugee community. At age six, he started his religious studies under the guidance of his father and from Tsultrim Nyima Rinpoche, the Abbot and founder of Dorpatan Monastery. .
At age thirteen he moved with his family to Kathmandu where his father, re-established the Bön community Te Bön Kyi Dug, as he was a lama of the original Tewa Monastery in Northern Tibet. His main purpose was to keep the Bönpo community alive and to grant young people a firm connection to their Bön culture.
In 1974, his father took him to Menri Monastery in Dolanji, India, where he studied until he became homesick and returned to Kathmandu. In 1977 at the suggestion of Menri Lopön, Sangye Tenzin Rinpoche, he returned to Menri and became a monk. A year later, Nyima Dakpa was among the first students to enter the newly founded Bön Dialectic School in the Menri Monastery of Dolanji, India, where all the traditional Bön disciplines are taught. After his graduation with a Geshe degree in 1987, he travelled to Tibet and visited many monasteries including the original Menri Monastery as well as the Lha-Tri Monastery where he was enthroned as Abbot.
Geshe Dakpa is the founder and Director of the Bön Children’s Home in Dolanji, where he is in charge of providing for the physical and educational needs of Bön orphan children. He is the founder of the Yeru Bön Center in Los Angeles; the Shen Ten Ling Bön Centre in Vienna; the Shen Chen Ling in Minsk (Belarus); and the Bön Shen Ling in Moscow, and travels regularly to these centers to give teachings. His organization Aid to Bön Children raises funds to assist with the needs of the Bön Children’s Home. Geshe Dakpa is tireless in his compassion for others, his care for the needs both of Bön orphan children and of Western lay spiritual seekers, and his devotion to spreading the teachings of Bön for the benefit of all sentient beings.
Since the beginning of his studies up to now he has been helping H.H. the 33rd Menri Trizen, spiritual head of Bön, with the administration of the monastic centre and school in Dolanji. In 1988,he was assigned the task of expanding the school system, to add more grades and to allow as many children as possible the opportunity to be raised and educated in the Bön culture. Later that year he founded the Bön Children’s Home (B.C.H.) where most children, aged between 3 and 20 years, are from very remote Bönpo communities such as Dolpo and Lubrak, Nepal.
Since 1991, Rinpoche has travelled to the United-States and various countries in Europe, to spread the teachings of Bön and raise funds for the B.C.H. He founded Bön Centres in Los Angeles (U.S.), Minsk (Belarus), Moscow (Russia) and Vienna (Austria). In May of 1996 he was assigned by H.H. the 33rd Menri Trizen to establish the Mongyal Monastery in Dehradun, India. This project has been aimed at re-establishing the original Tibetan educational System.
In 2005, he published “Opening the door to Bön”. In this book he has detailed the outer and inner fundamental practices of Bön methods to achieve enlightenment and detach from the suffering of cyclic existence through limitless compassion for all sentient beings. Rinpoche’s commitment to spread the Bönpo practice and his love for “his” children give him the strength to take up so many different tasks.
Lha-Tri Geshe Nyima Dakpa Rinpoche, in Opening the Door to Bön, has written a guide to Western students of Bön to prepare them to receive the Bön teachings. Grounded in an educational tradition that spans thousands of years, this book provides practical and explicit instructions for the student. The book covers both the outer and inner fundamental practices of Bön. Topics include the attitude the student should have, how to cultivate that attitude, virtuous acts to strive for, and non-virtuous acts to avoid. Latri Geshe Nyima Dakpa Rinpoche then teaches the Ngon Dro, or Nine Preliminary Practices, that a student should undertake in order to begin Bön practice and apply it to daily life. Writing in clear, simple language, Geshe Dakpa brings to this task not only his formidable knowledge of Bön, and his compassionate desire to share Bön teachings with others, but also his unique experience of having taught Ngong Dro and other Bön teachings to American and European students since 1989.
ADD LINK TO YERU BON CENTER
This biography is based on information from his own comments, The Yeru Bön Center, The Bön Children's Foundation, The Ligmincha Institute, and personal communications. .
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Updated on 3/26/2010