Khenchen Tenpa Yungdrung Rinpoche

He began with the Bön ritual texts and Tibetan calligraphy as a boy, then went to Menri Monastery in Dolanji, in the Indian Himalaya, to study at its dialectics school under the 33rd Menri Trizin Lungtok Tenpai Nyima Rinpoche and Yongdzin Lopön Tenzin Namdak Rinpoche. Thirteen years followed, covering the Bön philosophical systems of sutra, tantra and Dzogchen alongside the five Tibetan sciences: grammar, poetics, astrology, the arts and medicine. He was awarded the Geshe degree in 1994 and went on to Triten Norbutse in Kathmandu for further work in tantra and Dzogchen with Yongdzin Rinpoche.

In 1996 his two teachers appointed him Ponlob, head teacher, of the Yungdrung Bön Academy of Higher Studies at Triten Norbutse, and in 2001 abbot of the monastery. In that role he also carries responsibility for Shenten Dargye Ling, the Bön monastery in western France that Yongdzin Rinpoche established and that Shenten describes him as having co-founded. Together they opened the first Gomdra there in 2009, a four-year meditation school that gives lay practitioners the same systematic training monks receive. He started comparable multi-year Dzogchen programmes in Germany in 2015 and in the United States in 2019.

He has taught abroad since 1998, in Europe, the United States and South America, and spends part of every year at Shenten. His teaching centres on the four main Dzogchen cycles of Bön: Zhang Zhung Nyen Gyüd, Drakpa Korsum, Yetri Thasel and Atri. Much of his other work goes into preservation. He has set up several foundations and the Tise Himalayan International School in Siliguri, India, which opened in 2018 and teaches children from remote Himalayan areas the standard curriculum alongside their own language, religion and history.