Pema Khandro’s activities focus on making in-depth Buddhist education accessible. This includes offering public classes, teaching courses, leading retreats, mentoring students, training leaders and teaching online courses. She provides training for the public and for serious practitioners, leaders, health professionals and teachers. She offers in depth distance learning opportunities as well as retreat events which are held regularly, as well as leads a vibrant community and residential center.
Buddhist Trainings, Retreats & Online Courses
Through The Buddhist Studies Institute Pema Khandro offers ongoing courses in Buddhist philosophy and practice and to provide a network for the communities of her students worldwide. Her commitment is to make in-depth study accessible to an English speaking audience. In order to accomplish this mission she has offered phone conference courses, web-classes, online trainings, weekend retreats, week long retreats and month long retreats and the Vajra Sangha program. The ongoing distance learning trainings currently offered are: Vajrayana Training and Ngakpa Training. Her students also teach introduction to Buddhism courses. Pema Khandro teaches weekend courses in northern and southern California. For more information visit Ngakpa.org / BuddhistYogis.org
MahaSiddha Center, Berkeley Ca
Pema Khandro founded an urban residential retreat center in Berkeley, California in 2003. This center was devoted to supporting the integration of Buddhist study and meditation practice into every day life. The residents practiced meditation together each morning and then went work in their schools, careers and communities. The center also hosted regular community gatherings led which feature book study, discussion, movies and guest speakers. It regularly hosted Pema Khandro and other guest Lamas for public classes and weekend retreats. This center expanded in 2018 to a larger facility near Lake Tahoe. This is a retreat center, Dakini Mountain on thirty-five acres of pristine mountain meadow and forest set alongside the national forest. Dakini Mountain is now the home of the annual retreats led by Pema Khandro and guest teachers.
The Berkeley community continues to offer meditation classes but no longer be residential. It has relocated to Richmond to a home center. More details to come.
Ngakpa House
Pema Khandro founded Ngakpa House a charity to support the education of children in the Himalayan border regions. Over the last ten years, a grass roots effort among Pema Khandro’s students and friends has collaborated together to raise funds to support other small scale grass roots efforts in the Himalayan borders of Tibet, India and Sikkim. The project serves two purposes. It gives an opportunity to give back so that those who have benefited from Buddhist cultures can also return support and service. Secondly it provides an opportunity for rare, endangered aspects of Tibetan culture which are often left out of large scale efforts, to receive support. The fundraisers have happened annually at the end of each year. Thank you to everyone who donated to surpass the 2014 goal! For more information visit Ngakpa House.
Yogic Medicine Institute
Pema Khandro founded the Yogic Medicine Institute in 1999 to promote health education based on the medical traditions of India and Tibet. The clinic started in Southern California and is currently based in Northern California but serves an international clientele. Its faculty and directors now include two of Pema Khandro’s students who trained at the Institute and also now serve as teachers and practitioners offering a full array of traditional and contemporary wellness practices from India, China and Tibet. Though Pema Khandro has retired from seeing individual clients at the clinic due to her busy teaching schedule, she acts as the clinic’s director and still oversees the curriculum and teaches courses. For more information visit the Yogic Medicine Institute. For more information about Pema Khandro’s teachings on Tibetan Medicine visit: PemaKhandro.net
Ngakpa International
Pema Khandro is the founder and director of Ngakpa International a non-profit organization which oversees the Buddhist Studies Institute and the Yogic Medicine Institute as well as Ngakpa House and an international association of Buddhist Yogis founded by Pema Khandro. Its centers, clinics and schools celebrate and disseminate the tradition of Buddhist Yogis, the non-celibate, life-embracing path of non-monastic Buddhism.
This vibrant community of Buddhist Yogis celebrates and disseminates the history, philosophy and practices of Tibetan Buddhism’s Nyingma & Kagyu Ngakpa lineage, with a dedication to cultivating both spiritual intelligence and natural health. Ngakpa Intl. offers the rare opportunity for accessible, in-depth education focused on the specialities of Buddhist Yogis – Chod, Natural Medicine, Tibetan Yoga and especially, Dzogchen, Buddhism’s most treasured paths to cultivating clarity, presence and intrinsic wisdom.
Ngakpa Intl activities include community led meditation classes, group retreats, ongoing phone and web-cast courses, and seminary for advanced study.
The projects include: a clinic, two residential urban centers, research to preserve the history and culture of Ngakpas, support of Ngakpa schools worldwide and sponsoring orphans in the Himalayan border regions. For more information visit: http://www.ngakpa.org
Khandro Ling, Virginia
Khandro Ling Virginia is a three acre farmhouse in rural Virginia with a small meditation hall and group facilities as well as a small cottage house where Pema Khandro resides when not traveling for teaching. Annual Chod and Vajra Sangha retreats are held at Khandro Ling and it is used for group rentals for the rest of the year.
