Vajra Yoga: Tibetan Adepts and the Dzogchen, Mahamudra & Unexcelled Yoga Connection

with Dr. Nida, Tenzin Bob Thurman, and Michele Loew | Online Course

In the late 13th century, Yuthok Yonten Gonpo the Younger (1126-1202) attained full enlightenment and also direct revelations from the Medicine Buddha. He then synthesized the Buddha Medicine teachings of Vāgbhata’s Heart of the Elixir of Healing’s Eight Branches with his original practice synthesis of the old (nyingma) and new (sarma i.e. Kadam, Sakya, Kagyu) tantras known as Dzogchen Perfection Connection and Unexcelled Yoga. 

For the next several centuries, great Tibetan scholars, translators, and adepts worked within this great synthesis, realizing, refining, researching, and teaching, until around 1400, a great renaissance of human awakening and enlightening wisdom exploded in all schools all over Tibet. The full impact of Buddha’s spirituality was activated in the mainstream heart of Tibetan culture, resonating with noted renaissances all over the world.

A key moment of that impact was the historic meeting in 1395 between a Kadam great adept, also master of the Dzogchen Perfection teaching, Lama Namkha Gyaltsen of Lhodrak (1326-1401), and the polymath scholar and yogic adept Lama Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), founder of the Dalai Lama’s Gelukpa lineage. They met in the middle of the latter’s five-year retreat that culminated in his own full enlightenment in 1397. During their seven-month long teaching exchange retreat, when the Khenchen taught Tsongkhapa, he was seen by yogis present as physically transformed into the divine bodhisattva Vajrapani, and when Tsongkhapa taught the Khenchen, he was seen as physically transformed into the divine bodhisattva Mañjushri.

This practice retreat is number six in the deepening and broadening Vajra Yoga intensive series–is inspired by and in the spirit of these meetings, as Dr. Nida comes out of his own recent retreat and wants to focus on the Tsongkhapa-Namkha Gyaltsen dialogue as revealed in the Elixir Essence (already translated in Life and Teachings of Tsong Khapa) wherein the Great adept asks the Bodhisattva Vajrapani’s advice for the Great Perfection Connection meditations and for deepening the Centrist transcendent wisdom insight into emptiness.

The other is Yuthok Yonten Gonpo’s teaching of Mahamudra, on which Dr. Nida wrote a quintessential practice commentary in Tibetan during his retreat, the “Light Energy of Sun and Moon, Commentary on the Yuthok Mahamudra,” translated live as Dr. Nida shares direct personal instruction for the Mahamudra practice in his Yutok Gunanatha lineage, powerful at any level but specially adapted for senior practitioners.

In the practice sessions, yogis and yoginis will hone their Vajra Yoga practices with Master Yogini (Hathayoga and Tibetan Trulkor traditions) Michele Loew and special guests.

A Twenty-Two Part Study at Your Own Pace Online Course
Over 40 Hours of Video Teachings with Bonus Audio