Vajrakilaya Seminars with Vajranatha
I have known Vajranatha (John Reynolds) for 23 years and consider him to be my most important teacher both in Tantra and Magic in general. Everything I know about Tibetan Magic and Tantra I learned through him, even stuff I learned from other lamas took on new life when going over the material with his help.
Finding a scholar-lama is rare enough. Finding one that understands magic and likes to explain things in those terms is ULTRA-rare.
Vajrakilaya Seminars
Lama Vajranatha (John Myrdhin Reynolds)
December 13-14, 2014
In order to subdue and transform negative energies and especially those that arise directly from the passion of anger, wrathful practice is adopted.
In general, the function of Vajrakilaya practice is to overcome obstacles and demolish negative energies afflicting the life of the individual practitioner. These methods include the higher spiritual practices (stod-las) for attaining liberation and enlightenment and the more practical ritual actions (smad-las) for transforming negative energies in everyday life.
For the overcoming and subduing negative energies generally in his own time, it is said that Vajrakilaya was the personal meditation practice of Guru Padmasambhava himself, as well as that of the Tibetan princess Yeshe Tsogyal, who wrote the first Tibetan commentary on this practice.
Vajrakilaya has become among the most widespread and popular cycles in Tibet. This seminar will introduce some of these practices for Vajrakilaya according to the Düdjom Tersar, in particular, the sPu-gri reg-phung, “the Razor that Destroys at a Touch.
Bae Acupuncture (Samaya Education)
190 N. 10th Street Suite 204
Brooklyn, NY 11211
Saturday and Sunday Dec 13-14, 2014
10-12:30/2-5pm
Fee: $55/day; $100 for both days
$85 preregistration by Dec. 1
John Myrdhin Reynolds, aka Vajranatha, studied History of Religions, Anthropology, Arabic, Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, at the University of California at Berkeley, and at the University of Washington at Seattle. At the former he pursued Islamic Studies under Prof. Arthur Jeffrey and Iranian Studies under Prof. J. Duchesne-Guillemin. He did his PhD research in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Buddhist Philosophy under Prof. Edward Conze, the world-renowned scholar of the Buddhist Prajnaparamita literature.
He then spent more than ten years in India and Nepal doing field research at various Hindu Ashrams in South India and at Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in Darjeeling, Kalimpong, and Nepal. At these latter locales, he researched the literature, rituals, and meditation practices of the Nyingmapa and Kagyudpa schools of Tibetan Buddhism. His Lama teachers included Dezhung Rinpoche, Kangyur Rinpoche, Chatral Rinpoche, Dudjom Rinpoche, Kalu Rinpoche, Gyalwa Karmapa, and many others. His special study was Dzogchen and the Buddhist Tantras, both in their own terms, and in comparison with Gnosticism and other mystical traditions of the West. As a result, he translated into English many original Tibetan texts belonging to the Nyingmapa and Kagyudpa traditions, and more recently texts from the Bon tradition. In Nepal he researched the techniques and lore of Tibetan shamanism, including rites of exorcism and soul retrieval, employed and practiced among Ngakpa Lamas belonging to the Nyingmapa school. The thrust of this research was experiential and participatory, and not just restricted to texts. He has been initiated into both the Nyingmapa and the Kagyudpa orders of Tibetan Buddhism and in 1974 in Kalimpong he received ordination from HH Dudjom Rinpoche as a Ngakpa or Buddhist Tantric Yogin of the Nyingmapa order, receiving the name Vajranatha (Rigdzin Dorje Gonpo). With the inspiration and permission of His Holiness, he began in-depth research into the Ngakpa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism stemming from Guru Padmasambhava and Nubchen Sangye Yeshe in the 8th century of our era.
Since then he has continued his researches and lectured widely in India, Europe, and America. He has taught History of Religions and Buddhist Studies at Shanti Ashram (South India), at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst), at the University of California (Santa Cruz), and more recently at the College of New Rochelle in New York City. Furthermore, he has taught in various countries of Europe, lecturing and presenting seminars on Buddhism, meditation, Tibetan shamanism, and psychological development in Amsterdam, Den Haag, Groningen, Copenhagen, Malmo, Oslo, Devon, and London, as well as in Italy, Greece, Mallorca, Poland, Hungary, and Jugoslavia.
In the past two decades he has worked closely with Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, the foremost exponent of Dzogchen practice in the West, on a number of translations of important Nyingmapa Dzogchen texts. Since 1989, he has worked closely with Lopon Tenzin Namdak, the foremost scholar of the Bonpo tradition outside of Tibet, on the translation into English of a large number of ancient and rare Bonpo Dzogchen texts, including the Zhang-zhung Nyan-gyud, and also the Ma Gyud, the Bonpo Mother Tantra. As his principal focus, he continues his research into the historical origins of Dzogchen in both the Nyingmapa and the Bon traditions, and especially into the connections of Dzogchen and the Bon tradition with the Iranian religious culture of ancient Central Asia and the West, including Iranian Buddhism, Mithraism, and Gnosticism. This research into original texts in Tibetan and Sanskrit, as well as comparative studies in terms of religion, mysticism, and magic, and the producing of monographs thereon, is known as the Vidyadhara Project.
