Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

Mingyur Rinpoche was born in Nepal in 1975, the fourth son of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, and is the seventh Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. He began studying meditation as a young boy with his father. Tergar says he had anxiety and panic attacks through his childhood and into his teens, and learned to transform the panic through meditation. Conversations with scientists who visited his father sparked an early interest in contemporary science.

Lineage and training

He received the Karma Kagyu transmissions mainly from Tai Situ Rinpoche and Saljey Rinpoche, and the Nyingma transmissions mainly from his father and Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche. The Tergar lineage, whose name combines ter (treasure) and gar (gathering), joins the Karma Kagyu and Nyingma. Tergar describes it as primarily a practice lineage, founded by the first Mingyur Rinpoche in the late 17th century. He has completed a traditional three-year retreat.

Tergar and research

He heads the Tergar Meditation Community, which supports groups of students in more than thirty countries through three tracks: Joy of Living, Path of Liberation and Exploring Buddhism. At Tai Situ Rinpoche’s request he built a monastery in Bodhgaya, completed in 2006, and in 2010 he reopened Ösel Ling in Kathmandu, given by his brother Tsoknyi Rinpoche, as a shedra. He has worked with neuroscientists and psychologists, including Richard Davidson and Antoine Lutz at the University of Wisconsin, on research into the effects of meditation on the brain and mind.

Wandering retreat

He later left his monastery, without telling anyone, for a wandering retreat of about four years, living on the streets of India with sadhus and meditating in Himalayan caves. Lion’s Roar reported his plans in March 2012 and his return in November 2015. In an interview he described falling gravely ill in Kushinagar early in the retreat, letting go of any fear of death, and waking in a local clinic. He wrote about the journey in In Love with the World.

Books

His first book, The Joy of Living, was a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into more than twenty languages. Joyful Wisdom explores working with difficult emotions and life situations. Tergar describes his approach as joining traditional Buddhist practice and philosophy with current scientific understanding of the mind.