The Tergar Meditation Community, founded by the respected teacher and master of the Karma Kagyu and Nyingma lineages of Tibetan Buddhism Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, will offer an online workshop examining the practice and benefits of Buddhist insight meditation in analyzing the mental constructs and patterns that form within our minds and shape our perceptions. Senior Tergar lama Khenpo Kunga, a close student of Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, will lead this wisdom webinar on 19 December.

As an intrinsic component of Buddhist practice, meditation has for thousands of years been a path to peace, insight, and transformation for countless people around the world. As well as being a means of for attaining peace of mind and equanimity, especially in times of crisis and instability, the practice offers aproven path to mental clarity and spiritual realization.

“As awareness meditation calms our minds, we may notice that our perception of ourselves and the world is colored by all kinds of limiting ideas and beliefs,” the Tergar Meditation Community stated. “In the practice of insight meditation we use awareness to analyze the nature of these mental constructions and patterns and pry them apart. In this way we learn to see reality more clearly, and gain freedom from the influence of these concepts on our lives. In this workshop, Khenpo Kunga will explore how careful observation of ourselves and our world can lead to liberative insight.”

Ordained as a Buddhist monk from a young age, Khenpo Kunga began his monastic education at Tergar Monastery in eastern Tibet. He undertook a rigorous traditional extended meditation retreat at the age of 15, spending three years studying and practicing the contemplative tradition of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. Khenpo Kunga subsequently studied for 11 years at  Dzongsar Monastic College near Dharamsala in northwestern India, where he received a khenpo degree* and taught for a subsequent three years. Khenpo Kunga has since taught around the world through Tergar’s international network of monasteries, meditation centers, and meditation groups.

“The goal of insight practice is to break down the illusions of permanence, singularity, and independence,” said Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.

Born in 1975 in the Himalayan border region between Tibet and Nepal, Mingyur Rinpoche received extensive training in the meditative and philosophical traditions of Tibetan Buddhism from his father, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche (1920–96), considered one of the greatest modern Dzogchen masters, and subsequently at Sherab Ling Monastery in northern India. After just two years, at the age of 13, Mingyur Rinpoche entered a three-year meditation retreat and then completed a second immediately afterward, serving as retreat master. At 23, Rinpoche received full monastic ordination.

Mingyur Rinpoche famously undertook a four-year solitary wandering retreat through the Himalaya from 2011–15.** In recounting how he came to terms with the realities of his ambition to practice in the manner of a wandering yogi, Rinpoche revealed some of the many personal and spiritual challenges he faced—including at one point confronting his own mortality. He has described the years spent wandering in the Himalayas as “one of the best periods of my life.”

Mingyur Rinpoche is the founder of the Tergar Meditation Community, which now has centers and practice groups across the world, and a best-selling writer, author of The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness (2007), Joyful Wisdom: Embracing Change and Finding Freedom (2009), and Turning Confusion into Clarity: A Guide to the Foundation Practices of Tibetan Buddhism (2014).

* Equivalent to a doctoral degree in divinity, and also a title given to holders of the diploma.

** Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche Returns from Four-year Wilderness Retreat (Buddhistdoor Global)
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche Releases Video Offering Insights Following His Retreat (Buddhistdoor Global)

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Tergar Meditation Community
Online Offerings (Tergar Meditation Community)
Tergar Meditation Community (YouTube)

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