Ngala Nor’dzin Pamo
formal portrait
Ngala Nor’dzin Pamo teaches with her husband and sang-yab, Ngala ’ö-Dzin Tridral. In her locality she teaches sKu-mNyé and meditation, and hosts the meetings of the Cardiff Vajrayana Buddhist Meditation Group. She also teaches phurba dance practice and hosts a study group for apprentices.
Ngala Nor’dzin
says:
Vajrayana teachers continually emphasise the need to practice. Vajrayana must be practised. We
must engage in the methods offered in order to arrive even at the initial stages of awakening.
‘Awakening’ is what is offered by Vajrayana. We are offered the opportunity to awaken
from our delusion, from our limited view. We cannot experience awakening without having recognised,
to whatever degree, that we are asleep. We cannot awaken without engaging in the methodology
involved with awakening.
Ngala Nor’dzin and Ngala ’ö-Dzin lead a small sangha of apprentices, three of whom have taken vows as ordained disciples (as of 2007). Currently most of their apprentice retreats are held at their home, Aro Khalding Tsang, which they generously open in a relaxed way, creating an extended vajra family for the duration. Every year they hold a week-long craft retreat.
One of their apprentices, says of this retreat:
The craft retreat is a
wondrously joyful opportunity to be intensely and passionately present. Apprentices attempt to make
all activity – the sewing of a single stitch or one stroke of blue paint onto the shrine room
wall – an opportunity for awareness and concentrated precision.
Another
apprentice comments:
It is a rare opportunity to enter retreat with one’s Lamas in
their own home. Here presence display, personality display and life circumstances display are
clearer to us, intensifying our opportunities for transmission. Living as a Vajra family creates a
remarkable atmosphere, being in close proximity with the Lamas. It is to dwell in the extraordinary
ordinariness of living the view, and heightens our awareness of the endless opportunities our lives
afford to find the presence of awareness
in whatever we are doing.
Ngala Nor’dzin remembers such opportunities for
transmission with her own Tsawa’i Lamas, Ngak’chang Rinpoche and Khandro
Déchen:
There have been many occasions when we have been laughing and joking together with Ngak’chang Rinpoche
and Khandro Déchen – when suddenly the emphasis shifted and we were aware that we
were
receiving a teaching and the transmission of living the view. The sense of transmission is beyond
concept and intellect. On many occasions I have become aware of the atmosphere of a conversation
changing. I would sense a stillness of mind, and a sensation at the centre of my body as if a wave
of direct communication had passed through me. The recognition of such moments of transmission
smoulders within me and, over the years, these experiences have grown into the warmth of continuing
devotion, and openness to the potential for transmission of every moment with my Lamas. I have only
to think of Ngak’chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen or visualise their presence for the
warmth of devotion and sense of transmission to flare within me – often causing tears to
prick my eyes.
