The Power of Vision

Upcoming Events

Bardo Teachings – Self Paced Course

With Pema Khandro, Father Francis Tiso, Lama Lhanang Rinpoche, Chagdud Khadro, Shugen Roshi, Julie Rogers, Jim Tucker, M.D., Koshin Paley Ellison and Dr. William McGrath

Open Dates

Teachings on Death and Dying Facing realities of dying, death, and grief are central to our human experience. This program offers practical instructions for helping others in the process of dying and an overview of essential knowledge on death, bardo, and rebirth. This includes self-paced lectures on dying, loss, grief, and illness from Lamas and scholars of Buddhist Studies. Support the Buddhist Studies Institute by donating for these precious teachings. Your contribution, big and small, helps makes in-depth Buddhist training and education more accessible for all. May the teachings spread and flourish!

Buddhism & Sexuality – Self Paced Course

With Dr. Nicole Willock, Julie Regan, Ph.D., Pema Khandro, Lama Willa Miller, Amy Langenberg , Dr. Ann Gleig, Dr. Nida Chenagtsang, Lama Rod Owens, Dr. Jim Hopper, Dr. Elizabeth Call and Damchö Diana Finnegan

Open Dates

Join Pema Khandro and a group of esteemed Buddhist Studies scholars for an exploration of the history of Buddhist Sexualities from celibacy, to sacred sexuality in Buddhist Tantra and a simple approach to embodied integration with nature in Dzogchen. Support the Buddhist Studies Institute by donating for these precious teachings. Your contribution, big and small, helps makes in-depth Buddhist training and education more accessible for all. May the teachings spread and flourish!

Buddhist Ethics – Self Paced Course

With Pema Khandro

Open Dates

This course on Buddhist Ethics goes through the Five Buddhist Precepts. The five precepts form the basis of a Buddhist way of life and the vows that Buddhists Seek to follow. The Five Precepts are a discipline of freedom, honor, and precision that cover the potent themes of life from the extraordinary perspective of non-duality. Support the Buddhist Studies Institute by donating for these precious teachings. Your contribution, big and small, helps makes in-depth Buddhist training and education more accessible for all. May the teachings spread and flourish!

Women in Tantric Buddhism – Self Paced Course

With Holly Gayley, Judith Simmer-Brown, Sarah Jacoby, Amy Langenberg , Damchö Diana Finnegan, Venerable Karma Lekshe Tsomo and Pema Khandro

Open Dates

This is the missing history of women in Tantric Buddhism. This course addresses the fascinating story of nuns, mothers, teachers, consorts, prophets, and disciples. Taught by scholar-practitioners whose groundbreaking research on women and Buddhism has changed the way we think of Buddhist history. This course will address the history of women in Buddhism, the history of yoginis and dakinis in India and Tibet, the stories of important Buddhist women, Buddhist philosophy on gender, sex, and sexuality, and the role of the consort in historical Tibet, and contemporary manifestations and so much more. Support the Buddhist Studies Institute by donating for…

Cutting Through Fear: Dzogchen Chod Retreat

With Pema Khandro

May 28 - June 1, 2025

May 28 - June 1 San Diego and Online In a world beset with fear, profound methods are needed to reclaim intrinsic wisdom and awaken innate courage. Join Pema Khandro and the Buddhist Studies institute for a contemplation of fierce compassion through the annual Chod retreat, Troma Nagmo teachings, and an optional five month Comprehensive Chod intensive training to follow. Chod is the profound method of psychological transformation in esoteric Buddhism. Chod means cutting, referring to cutting through the fictions that cause fear, anxiety, and hesitations in one’s life.

Fierce Compassion: Comprehensive Chod Training

With Pema Khandro

June 9 - October 13, 2025

Embark on a transformative five-month journey into the heart of Dzogchen Chod with Tulku Pema Khandro, Ph.D. and the Buddhist Studies Institute. This comprehensive Chod training offers a rare opportunity for an in-depth immersion in the Dzogchen Chod system, Healing Chod, and the Secret Black Dakini Teachings. Take your Chod practice to the next level and cultivate fierce compassion and psychological transformation while studying the Tibetan tradition.

October 16, 2021 by BuddhistYogis

Dear Friends and Members,

What’s your vision? For your life? For those you hold dear? For the world around you?

The Buddhist teachings refer to having “karmic vision” where you see things in the same unsatisfying way that has become habitual or having “pure view” where you learn a new way to see things that brings great fulfillment.

So many people speak of the importance of having written goals and holding a vision that becomes reality.

To me, all of this has great power and I hope that your personal vision is inspiring and real to you.

And I have to ask: What is the vision for Dakini Mountain, the new Buddhist retreat center in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Northern California?

And where do these two visions, your personal one and Dakini Mountain’s intersect?

Can I share with you how I see it?

My short-term vision is all of us having a “spiritual renewal” together at the Dakini Mountain retreat on June 2 – 5, 2022. I see us there laughing and enjoying a communal feeling of love and kindness. I see us practicing together with Pema Khandro, reaching new levels of inspiration and life-changing liberation that bring renewal to our lives and great benefit to the world around us.

My long-term vision is seeing Dakini Mountain become a full-fledged pilgrimage site where you can go and feel the immense power of a spiritually charged holy site. I’ve been to these types of places. Perhaps you have too. There’s nothing else quite like it. You enter these places one way and you come out a new way based on a spiritual power that is hard to explain but easy to feel.

It is my sincere wish that these visions become reality, the one of your strongest aspirations coming true and the one of Dakini Mountain reaching its full potential. If you have that same wish, I ask you to please support Dakini Mountain with your donation.

We are entering the final months of the 2021 fundraising effort to provide critical funds to keep Dakini Mountain alive and moving forward. At this time, $30,000 more is needed.

Any donation you can make, large or small, will make a difference.

Please donate now. Thank you!

Also, long term financial support is needed now for the new Dakini Mountain financing. If you don’t have funds to donate now, but you do have the ability to be a loan guarantor or participate in estate planning or legacy giving, there are many ways you could help. Refinancing to reduce the costs of Dakini Mountain is our top priority this year, but one to three more loan guarantors are needed to do this. For more information on guarantor or legacy giving, please reply to this email.

Gifts can also be made by check, payable to Ngakpa International, and mailed to Dakini Mountain, P.O. Box 2396, Nevada City, California 95959, USA.

Ngakpa International is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit EIN 68-0529687 and all gifts are tax-deductible as allowed by law.

For more information about Dakini Mountain, visit www.DakiniMountain.org

Wishing you joy and happiness,

2016FI_JanakKimmel_HeartofCompassion_Ngakpa

Janak

Director of Fundraising

Ngakpa International

Buddhist Studies Institute

Dakini Mountain Retreat Center

P.O. Box 2396

Nevada City, California 95946

USA

Dear Friends and Members,

Contact