Rigpa organization

Rigpa is the name of an international Buddhist organization founded by Sogyal Rinpoche in 1979. It has centers and groups in 41 countries around the world. According to its website, Rigpa seeks to make the teachings of Buddha available to benefit as many people as possible, and to offer those following the Buddhist teachings a complete path of study and practice, along with the environment they need to explore the teachings to their fullest.

After five years teaching in the West, Sogyal Rinpoche gave the name 'Rigpa' to his work. At that time, Rigpa had just one centre, in north-west London and was known as Dzogchen Orgyen Chö Ling. By 1980, Sogyal Rinpoche was teaching in the UK, France, the United States, Ireland and Holland. Rigpa centres opened in a number of major cities, and in each country Rigpa was established as a non-profit organization. A programme of Easter and summer retreats began, and Rigpa’s first retreat centre, Dzogchen Beara, was set up on the west coast of Ireland.

Rigpa invited the Dalai Lama, or sponsored his teachings or empowerments, on a number of occasions; in Paris in 1982, London in 1984 and San Jose in 1989. Five and a half thousand people attended the teachings in San Jose, in what at the time was the largest gathering of practitioners and masters of Buddhadharma in America, and possibly in the West.

In 1990, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche taught and gave empowerments to 1,500 people at Rigpa’s summer retreat near Grenoble in the French Alps. In 1992, the Dzogchen Monastery in Kollegal in India, sponsored by Rigpa, was officially inaugurated when Dzogchen Rinpoche invited the Dalai Lama to give empowerments. In the same year, Rigpa opened its main retreat centre, Lerab Ling near Montpellier in the south of France. Thich Nhat Hanh, Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok and Penor Rinpoche were among the masters who taught there in the years that followed.

In 1999, Trulshik Rinpoche founded the basis for a monastic community within Rigpa by ordaining the first nuns. In 2000 the Dalai Lama visited Lerab Ling, and gave five days of teachings entitled The Path to Enlightenment, attended by more than 10,000 students of Tibetan Buddhism from around the world. The teachings given by the Dalai Lama have been published in a book entitled Mind in Comfort and Ease: The Vision of Enlightenment in the Great Perfection.

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Wikipedia