What Makes You Not a Buddhist
Book Talks
Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche
Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche — Bhutanese-born tertön, filmmaker, and the most provocative doctrinal voice in the contemporary Tibetan diaspora — gives the public talks built around his 2007 book. He walks the Four Seals one by one — all compounded things are impermanent, all emotions are pain, all things have no inherent existence, nirvana is beyond concept — and argues that what you actually believe about these four propositions, not your robes or your devotion, determines whether you are a Buddhist. Doctrinally precise, rhetorically unsparing, and unmistakable.
The flagship doctrinal piece by the contemporary Vajrayana world's most prominent provocateur. A four-Seals argument that has become a generation's litmus test.
The sangha responds.
More foundational talks from Vajrayana.
Pointing Out Instruction
Nagi Gompa, Early 1990s
Recorded at Nagi Gompa, the hermitage above Kathmandu where Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche received students for the last decades of his life. This is the foundational document of the Mahamudra–Dzogchen unification that defined the Chokling Tersar lineage in the modern era — the lineage that, through Tulku Urgyen's sons (Chökyi Nyima, Tsoknyi, Mingyur, and Phakchok's father), has become arguably the single most influential Tibetan teaching transmission in the contemporary world. The pointing-out is direct, plain, and absolutely uncompromising. The voice is unmistakable.
Mahamudra and Mahasandhi
Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche — eldest son of Tulku Urgyen, abbot of Ka-Nying Shedrub Ling at Boudhanath, and founder of the Rangjung Yeshe Institute — gives the doctrinal heart of his father's lineage in his own voice. The talks lay out the unification of Mahamudra (the New Translation school's culminating practice) and Mahasandhi/Dzogchen (the Old Translation school's), as transmitted through the Chokling Tersar. For students of the Boudhanath lineage and TPS's Lumbini-anchored Vajrayana audience, this is the central living transmission.
Essence Love, Well-Being, and Okayness
Festival of Faiths 2018
Tsoknyi Rinpoche — second son of Tulku Urgyen and one of the most accessible Vajrayana voices in the West — gives the signature teaching that has become the centerpiece of his Pundarika Foundation curriculum. 'Essence love' is the irreducible warmth at the base of every healthy mind; 'well-being' is its felt expression; 'okayness' is the ground from which contemplative practice can actually proceed. Without it, Tsoknyi argues, every advanced practice eventually collapses. With it, all of them flower.