The Founder

Very Venerable Kalu Rinpoche

"You live in illusion and in the appearance of things. There is a reality. You are the reality. If you wake up to that reality, you will know that you are nothing, and being nothing, you are everything."

Kagyu Thegchen Ling was established in December, 1974 under the guidance of the most Venerable Kalu Rinpoche, who had been senior meditation master of the Kagyupa and Shangpa lineages of Tibetan Buddhism before his death in 1989. Born in Eastern Tibet in 1905, by age 25 Rinpoche had completed two three-year retreats of advanced Vajrayana Buddhism. He then left the monastery to lead the life of a solitary mountain yogi for the next fifteen years. As wisdom and compassion became perfected in him, he returned to the world with the sole purpose of helping to liberate his fellow beings from the miseries of conditioned existence.