21 Nails - Bon Dzogchen Teaching
December 11th, 12th, 13th
3 Sessions Each Day: 9a-12p; 2p-5p; 5:30-7:30p
$600
21 Nails - Bon Dzogchen Teaching
with Chongtul Rinpoche and Dan Brown
21 Nails is the profound instructions of meditation on the mind.
It contains a large variety of wisdom from the experiences of the 21 rainbow body Masters. After becoming an expert on Sutra and Tantric practice, Dzogchen is the main principle teaching method of how to attain the rainbow body.
Dzogchen is the highest teaching in the Nine Ways of Bön. All existing phenomena rise in the mind, remain in the mind, and dissolve in the mind - all phenomena are manifestations of mind.
This is a training of mind to experience how can we calm down and make peace the source of happiness, and thereby naturally heal all stress, anxiety and energy blockages, and transform them into a rainbow.
This teaching of the 21 Nails is one of the most special teachings of Dzogchen and will be very special and meaningful for both Dzogchen practitioners and experienced mindfulness & meditation practitioners.
General Admission $600
Chongtul Rinpoche
Chongtul Rinpoche was born in 1967 in Oachghat, Himachal Pradesh, India.
When Chongtul was seven years old, the abbot of Yungdrung Ling Monastery asked the abbot of Menri Monastery, His Holiness the 33rd Menri Trizin Lungtok Tenpai Nyima, to look after Chongtul. He told H.H. that Chongtul Rinpoche was connected to Bon spiritual transmissions and that he would be of great help in preserving them. Chongtul joined the Menri Monastery at the age of seven to stay with His Holiness. He studied the reading and writing of Bon texts and attended an English school. When he was only 10, His Holiness gave Chongtul the responsibility of the Protector House. For two years, he made the traditional invocations in the morning and evening to the Bon guardians. When Chongtul was 14, he entered the Bon Dialectic School where he studied Sutra, Tantra, and Dzogchen. During that time he received all of the Bon initiations, transmissions, and teachings from His Holiness Lungtok Tenpai Nyima and Lopon Tenzin Namdak Rinpoche.
At the age of 16, Chongtul Rinpoche was appointed to the high position of Prayer Leader of Menri Monastery. When he was 20 years old, His Holiness the 33rd Menri Trizin revealed to Chongtul Rinpoche that he was the reincarnation of Sherap Tenpai Gyaltsen, one of His Holiness’ lamas from Tibet. At the age of 23, he was awarded the geshe degree, the highest level of education in Tibetan philosophy. Chongtul Rinpoche had received many invitations to visit Tibet from Kyong Tsang Monastery, the home monastery of his previous incarnation. In 1994, he attempted to go there but was unable to acquire a visa due to the political situation in Tibet. An enthronement ceremony was performed in his honor at Menri Monastery in India when he was 27 years old. At that time, His Holiness named him Chongtul Rinpoche. He was asked to be one of the two teachers in the Bon Dialectic School. The next year, Chongtul Rinpoche was made Secretary of the Yungdrung Bon monastic Center, which is the head office of the Bon religion. At age 28, he began his work with the Bon Children’s Welfare Center, which is an orphanage for approximately 120 Bon boys. In 1996, Chogtul Rinpoche traveled to Tibet as assistant to His Holiness. During this trip, he was finally able to visit Kyong Tsang Monastery, his home monastery in Tibet.
Chongtul Rinpoche is the founder of Bon Shen Ling: Tibetan Bon Education Fund in New Jersey, USA. Bon Shen Ling is a place for the Bon practice of compassion. Chongtul Rinpoche has been teaching Bön religion in North America over the last decade. Each year the number of students increases because of a growing interest in meditation and in Bön religion. Rinpoche believes that the interest in Bon – particularly the Bon Dzogchen meditation system – reflects a growing desire for peace.
Daniel P Brown
Daniel Brown is the author of 15 books including Transformations of Consciousness (with Ken Wilbur & Jack Engler), and a book on Mahamudra, Pointing Out the Great Way: The Mahamudra Tradition of Tibetan Meditation-Stages (Wisdom Publications), and two books on public dialogues with H.H. The Dalai Lama. He is also the co-author of a book on the Bon A Khrid lineage of Bon Great Completion Meditation.
In graduate school at The University of Chicago he studied Sanskrit with Hans van Beutenen, and also studied Tibetan, Buddhist Sanskrit, and Pali languages in the Buddhist Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison WI. He spent 10 years translating meditation texts for his doctoral dissertation on Tibetan Buddhist Mahamudra meditation.
He has studied meditation practice for about 45 years, beginning with reading Patanjali's Yoga Sutras and its main commentaries in the original Sanskrit with the great historian of religion professor Mircea Eliade, as well as practicing Patanjali's stages of meditation directly with Dr. Arwind Vasavada. At the same time, Dr. Brown studied the Burmese Theravadin Buddhist mindfulness meditation, first with Western teachers in the United States like Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, and Christopher Titmus, and then directly with the originator of the Burmese mindfulness tradition, Mahasi Sayadaw in Rangoon, Burma and other masters like Tungpulo Sayadaw and Achaan Cha.
Most of his meditation experience has been squarely centered within the Indo-Tibetan Mahayana Buddhist tradition. He lived with his Tibetan root lama, the Venerable Geshe Wangyal summers between school for about a 10-year period. Geshe Wangyal, H.H. the Dalai Lama, and the Venerable Denmo Locho Rinpoche, former Head Abbott of Namgyal Monastery, the Dalai Lama’s monastery were the main students of senior teacher Ling Rinpoche in the Gelukpa lineage.
Dr. Brown first learned Indo-Tibetan concentration and insight meditation with Geshe Wangyal, and then years later co-taught concentration and insight meditation with Denmo Locho Rinpoche and Yeshe Tapkay at Geshe Wangyal's retreat house over a 15-year period. Dr. Brown learned Mahamudra from numerous Tibetan lamas mainly in the Tilopa/Marpa tradition and its subsidiary traditions, such as the Dwags-po/Karma or 'Seat' lineage, the 'Bri gung' or 'Five Parts' lineage, and the Drug pa or 'One Taste' lineage, and also from the ecumenical Rime movement wherein Mahamudra and Gelukpa emptiness practices were integrated and Mahamudra and Great Completion practices were integrated.
Dr. Brown spent 10 years translating meditation texts from Tibetan and Sanskrit, including translating Tashi Namgyal’s great commentary on the Mahamudra, Moon Beams, as well as translating most of the important Mahamudra meditation practice texts found in Jamgon Kongtrul’s great collection of meditation texts, The Treasury of Instructions.
As a Western psychologist he spent 10 years conducting outcomes research on beginning and advanced meditators.
He has taught meditation retreats for 20 years.
More recently, Dr. Brown has been studying the Nyingma Dzogs Chen [Great Completion] lineage from Garab Dorje and Vairocana with Rahob Tulku Rinpoche, and the Bon po A Khrid and Zhang Zhung snang gyud lineages of Dzogs Chen [Great Completion] lineages with H.H. the 33rd Menri Trizin, Abbott of the Menri Bon Monastery, Donaji, H.P. India, and spiritual head of the Tibetan Bon religion.
Dr. Brown is currently translating both the A Khrid and Six Lamps Bon po Dzogs Chen teachings into English.
danielbrownphd.com
pointingoutway.org