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Chaphur Rinpoche
Chaphur Rinpoche is the founder and spiritual director of the Gyalshen Institute, which was founded by him in El Cerrito (near Berkley), California. The Institute’s mission is to preserve and disseminate the culture and traditions of Tibet and those of its older source, the ancient kingdom of Zhang-Zhung. Chaphur Rinpoche is involved in numerous projects and travels extensively to teach, explain, and spread the spiritual practices of Bön. His teachings derive solely from Bön’s sacred texts, texts which with his organization is actively translating in order to bring the teachings to the wider world.
Chaphur Rinpoche was born in Amdo Ngaba in Eastern Tibet and comes from the Chaphur family lineage, one of the oldest and most important family lines in Tibet, as well as one of the six main lineages in the Amdo region, whose successive incarnations are associated with Nangzhig Monastery.
At the age of 16, under dangerous conditions, Chaphur Rinpoche left Tibet and traveled for many days on foot, through Tibet, Nepal and India, to begin his studies at the Bön Dialectical School at Menri Monastery. This is the main monastery of the Bön tradition in exile, which is located in Dolanji, India. In 2006, Chaphur Rinpoche was honored by the Tibetan Library in Dharamsala with the title Monk and Scholar of Science in recognition of his extensive comparative research into Western and Tibetan cosmology.
In 2008, after fifteen years of study, he successfully passed his examinations and was awarded the title of Geshe at Menri Monastery (in the West compared to a PhD in Science). Chaphur Rinpoche’s speciality and particular talent is in the art of calligraphy, in which he has reached a master level while studying under His Eminence Bön-Gya Rinpoche of Bön-Gya Monastery in Amdo.
The Chaphur Rinpoche Foundation
The Chaphur Rinpoche Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to the dissemination and preservation of the ancient Bön tradition as well as other aspects of Tibetan culture.
Nangzhig monastery, in the Ngawa Amdo region, is the main and largest Bön monastery in Tibet. It brings together hundreds of monks from all over the country, most of whom have traveled a difficult and exhausting journey across many kilometers to study the sacred Bön teachings.
The Chaphur Rinpoche Foundation invites you to help in its goal of giving support to Nangzhig Monastery. With your financial support you will help us in the cause of creating the right living conditions for many monks studying and living in the largest Bön monastery in Tibet and support them in their quest to learn and preserve the priceless teachings of Yungdrung Bön. This goal is especially vital in the changing cultural situation of present day Tibet – a situation that is challenging to the continuance of Yungdrung Bön’s religious tradition.
An additional aim of the foundation is to create a forum for communication between Nangzhig monastery and Western society, in order to present the monastery’s unique and authentic knowledge to the west – to bring the centuries-old methods of meditation and practice to a wider audience throughout the world.
