Who is a Ngagpa?

A ngagpa is a heavy-duty kind of non-monastic practitioner of the path of mantra in Tibetan Buddhism. This tradition is also entering modern, "western", societies. What does this entail?

My teacher, Ngagpa Karma Lhundup Rinpoche and friend

Approximate script at https://lunidharma.blogspot.com/2024/05/ngagpas-who-are-they.html.

The following terms are used and can be searched for:

• ngagpa
• mantra
• tantra
• vajrayana
• shiné
• ngöndro
• mahamudra
• dzogchen
• Guru Rinpoche
• dakinis
• yidam
• Nyingma
• Throma Nagmo
• rigdzin / vidyadhara
• bodhicitta

In the early weeks of this podcast I included an approximate script, not particularly well edited, on a blog page. For the episode dropped on 4 September entitled “Bad gurus, tosh gurus and good gurus” and for episodes due to be dropped from 18 September onwards, starting with “Jyekundo / Yushu: travelling in East Tibet” there is a transcript file which is much closer to the actual words used.

Note that other distribution platforms do not necessarily pass this on, and if you want to read it you may need to listen on podbean. YouTube has been making its own transcript, which was an unholy mess.  I think I have now deleted all of these "auto-generated" scripts, but it will not be possible to retrospectively add properly edited transcripts to episodes prior to September 2024.