TWO MAIN TEACHINGS

Join Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche this year as he continues to take us on a journey into the breadth and depth of Mahamudra. This year, Rinpoche’s teachings on Mahamudra will be Reflections of Mahamudra Siddhas. These are extraordinary masters who have achieved the realization of Mahamudra, including: Saraha, Tilopa, Naropa, Milarepa and Gampopa. In this course, we will receive more Mahamudra instructions based on the realizations of the great Mahamudra siddhas of the lineage.

Open to all registered Summer Institute students.
(Rinpoche is confirmed to teach during Session 2 only.)

The 2025 Summer Institute will also offer four levels of Mahamudra curriculum courses as well as a special review course, all based on the profound text, Ocean of Definitive Meaning:

• Mahamudra Shamatha
• Mahamudra Vipashyana I
• Mahamudra Vipashyana II
• Key Points of Mahamudra Shamatha and Vipashyana
• Mahamudra Enhancement

Enjoy a full summer of Mahamudra and learn how the study of Buddhist philosophy enriches our meditation, and vice versa! 

We are fortunate to receive teachings by Acharya Lama Tenpa Gyaltsen on this crucial text by Maitreya, Distinguishing Phenomena and Pure Being. 

Maitreya’s work speaks about the two sides of the same coin—mind in its confused state of daydreaming its own world versus waking up to its true nature. Like many other Yogacara scriptures, this text too describes the phenomenal world as being nothing but the product of our own essentially confused imagination and thus lacking any real existence outside of the imagining mind.

The samsaric mind, which is ignorant about its own true nature, creates an imaginary split into subject and object and then becomes caught up in its own display of the subject grasping at all kinds of objects. On the other hand, the nature of phenomena (or the mind) is described here in detail as the nonconceptual wisdom that lacks any duality of subject and object, but realizes its own primordially enlightened nature. This wisdom is not something newly produced through the path—it is said to exist primordially and is only obscured temporarily by adventitious stains (phenomena).

Thus, its own natural state is always unchanging, just as the sun itself is never altered by the presence or absence of clouds. However, from the perspective of samsaric beings who do not realize mind’s nature, it first seems to be obscured, thus appearing as the play of various dualistic phenomena, while later, its state seems to change into the pure awareness that is free of illusory dualistic creations.

Open to all registered Summer Institute students.