Copyright 1994 to present
Dakas BuddhistConsulting
One of the first western Buddhist monks in the Tibetan tradition of
Mahayana Buddhism, Jhampa met Ven. Lama Yeshe
and became his first male sanghamember in
1971. From that time Jhampa studied mainly in Dharmsala, India, learning
the Tibetan language. He studied under His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Kyabje Ling Rinpoche (His Holiness's senior
tutor) 
and the Ven. Geshe Rabten
and Geshe Dhargaye.
Over the next 10 years in India he was introduced to many tenets of Buddhism, interspersing this with periods of meditational retreat. He had the opportunity to study and work as a translator for Masters of all 4 sects of Tibetan Buddhism. By 1980 he had completed 6 years of study of the sutras and tantras and approximately 4 years of short retreats such as the four preliminaries and several deities. The list of teachings received over these years was extensive.
In the fall of 1980 Jhampa entered the traditional Great Retreat and spent the next three and a half years on the mountain above Dharmsala, India. 
This was under the spiritual guidance of Ven. Ling Rinpoche. Upon completing that retreat he returned to Canada and established three Dharma centers on Vancouver Island.Jhampa is no longer an ordained monk. He is a married Buddhist practitioner and has helped raise two children. In Duncan he teaches weekly, translates for the Sakya Geshe Tashi Namgyal in Victoria and has taught in the Community Education programs in three campuses of Malaspina College for 9 years. He is one of the first western practitioners to be given permission by His Holiness the Dalai Lama to teach all levels of Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism. His talks are spiced with humorous and fascinating anecdotes of his experiences of transforming a western mind to grip the Buddhist perspective. Being born and raised in the west gives Jhampa's way of sharing the insights of the East a uniquely relevant twist.
