The Unique Shangpa Kagyu Lineage by Kalu Rinpoche 27 November 2024

The Unique Shangpa Kagyu Lineage by Kalu Rinpoche 27 November 2024 Online talk hosted by The Buddhist Society www.thebuddhistsociety.org About the Speaker Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche was born on September 17, 1990, on the special day of the Dharma Protector Six-Armed Mahākāla, an auspicious connection that has continued through his life. Rinpoche’s late father was Gyaltsen Ratak, the nephew and lifelong attendant of the previous H.E. Kalu Rinpoche, from the Ratak family of Tibet. He was recognized at a young age as the reincarnation of Kalu Rinpoche, most notably by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and H.E. Kenting Tai Situ Rinpoche. Rinpoche later developed a special relationship with Situ Rinpoche, taking him as his spiritual mentor, continuing a connection over lifetimes. The previous Kalu Rinpoche had been the retreat master at Palpung Monastery, Tai Situ’s seat in Tibet, in the retreat begun by Jamgön Kongtrul the Great, and was acknowledged as Kongtrul’s incarnation and the head of the Shangpa lineage. Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche himself received all the empowerments and entered this traditional three-year retreat in 2004 at Sonada Monastery. After graduating in 2008 he travelled and gained experience of the modern world, before returning to Sonada to give the full Shangpa transmission and put a new group into the retreat. Since then Rinpoche has been continuously working to spread the Dharma and the Shangpa Kagyu tradition in particular. He requested and received the Shangpa transmissions for a third time from Situ Rinpoche in 2009, and has travelled to Tibetan Buddhist and Shangpa centers around the world to sustain and promote those teachings. He entered a group of yoginīs into the retreat in La Boulaye, France in 2017, and is currently overseeing the renovation of that center. He continues the tradition of holding the Shangpa Mönlam (prayer festival), most recently in 2019 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Also in 2019, Rinpoche attended the Religion and Culture Meeting in Dharamsala as the representative of the Shangpa lineage. Even during lockdown, Rinpoche continued teaching remotely and through meditation walks in the forest near where he lives with his family in Berlin. Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche plans to continue these and other activities through the recently established Kalu Foundation, which has three main goals: (1) to translate into multiple languages the twelve volumes of the Shangpa Texts collected by his predecessor and make them freely available, (2) to engage in humanitarian aid, and (3) to sponsor qualified people for the three-year retreat.