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Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche (1931–2003)
A highly gifted teacher, pivotal in bringing a vast range of Buddhist teaching to the West, the Ven. Namgyal Rinpoche (Leslie George Dawson) was born in Toronto, Canada in 1931 to parents of Irish-Scottish descent. In his late teens he attended a Christian seminary in Toronto followed by further studies in philosophy and psychology at the University of Michigan. He then became involved in the socialist youth movement in Canada, culminating in an invitation to Russia to address a youth conference in Moscow in 1956. Directly after, he travelled to England where he explored both the Western Mysteries and the teaching of the Buddha and began practicing meditation. While there he met his first teacher, the Burmese Mahathera, Venerable Sayadaw U Thila Wunta, and soon joined him in Bodh Gaya, India, where Sayadaw gave him the novice ordination and the name Ananda. Following Sayadaw to Rangoon, Burma, on Dec. 21, 1958 at the Shwedagon, he was given the higher ordination and the name Bhikkhu Ananda Bodhi. After intensive meditation and studies in Burma, Thailand and Sri Lanka, he received the title Śamatha-Vipassanā-Kammaṭṭhāna-Ācariya, ‘Teacher of Tranquillity and Insight Meditation’. At the invitation of the English Sangha Trust, the Venerable Ananda Bodhi returned to England in 1961 to be their Resident Teacher. That same year he was a special guest speaker at the Fifth International Congress of Psychotherapists in London where he met Julian Huxley, Anna Freud and R.D. Laing, among other notable figures. He spent the next several years giving extensive teaching in England and also established a retreat centre in that country as well as in Scotland. He returned to Canada in 1964 for a short visit and gave classes in Toronto. He returned again in 1965 and began teaching there on a regular basis and, in 1966, subsequently formed the Dharma Centre in Toronto. Soon after, a 400-acre property was purchased near Kinmount, Ontario, for the purpose of study-meditation retreats (and held in a Trust until 1972, when the Dharma Centre of Canada became a Charitable Corporation). In the next five years the Bhikkhu (as he was called by his students then) taught mostly in Toronto and at the Kinmount retreat centre. During this time, he also travelled widely and taught in North America and abroad, accompanied by many of his students. While visiting Tibetan monasteries in India and Sikkim in 1968, he met the heads of the major Schools of Tibetan Buddhism: His Holiness the Dalai Lama, H.H. the 16th Karmapa, H.H. Sakya Trizen and H.H. Dudjom Rinpoche, as well as many other masters of Tibetan Buddhism. After their very first meeting in Rumtek monastery, the Venerable Ananda Bodhi said that H.H. the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa had greeted him like an old friend and seated him beside him on the same level. On a return visit in 1969, he received full ordination in the Kagyu Lineage and the name Karma Tenzin Dorje Namgyal Rinpoche. In the Spring of 1971, in Green River, Ontario, on instructions from H.H. the 16th Karmapa, the Venerable Karma Thinley Rinpoche formally enthroned Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche. On one of his visits to H.H. the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa and to H.H. Sakya Trizen, the Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche invited each of them to visit the Dharma Centre of Canada, resulting in their first historic visits to the West. Several years later, Khen Rinpoche of the Nyingma School, visited him at his residence in Kinmount, Ontario, and recognized him as an emanation of White Manjusri. Until his passing in 2003, Namgyal Rinpoche continued to travel throughout the world giving teaching at centres established by his students in North America, Great Britain, Europe, Japan, New Zealand and Australia. His dedication to the liberation of all that live, along with his interest in all formations, was as tireless as it was vast. A master of Mahamudra, he was unique in his ability to encompass and bridge traditional and contemporary paths of liberation from suffering and the causes of suffering while transmitting the path of enlightenment in universal terms for the benefit of all beings and the world. Karma Chime Wongmo Namgyal Rinpoche’s teaching can be read in the publications by Bodhi Publishing, a non-profit, charitable organization dedicated to publishing books on universal awakening as transmitted by Namgyal Rinpoche for the benefit of all sentient beings.
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