Summer School at Harvard and Junior Year at Princeton Before starting at Princeton, the program sent me to Harvard the summer of 1963 for an intensive course in Mandarin Chinese. For seven weeks, we had to learn a hundred characters each week. I was eighteen and found this...

Dr. Berzin shares some of his memories of his relationship with Tsenshap Serkong Rinpoche.

Dr. Alexander Berzin, founder of the Berzin Archives, talks about his experiences of studying Buddhology in academia and practicing Buddhism in real life.

Settling in Dharamsala After traveling around Europe with my fifteen-year-old nephew, Glen Goodnough, while waiting for our Indian visas to be issued, Jon and I arrived back in India in September 1972. Back up in Dharamsala, Sharpa Rinpoche had arranged a shack outside of the...

Teaching Tours around the World Soon after Serkong Rinpoche passed away, I also started to be invited to give talks at many of the Dharma centers we had been to together. Eventually, other Western European, North American, Australasian and Southeast Asian centers invited me as...

Meeting Serkong Rinpoche’s Reincarnation and My Interaction with Him during His Childhood and Youth The reincarnation of Tsenshap Serkong Rinpoche was born in Spiti in 1984, exactly nine months to the day after he had passed away. At the age of two, he pointed to a picture of...

Further Study and Training with Serkong Rinpoche  Coming back to the account of my early years, after returning to Dharamsala from that initial time with Catherine in Bodh Gaya, I continued over the next few years to study intensively at the Library and to attend the...

Dzogchen explains the Buddhist path from the point of view of its final steps and resultant state. Learn the unique features of this system of meditation on the nature of the mind and how they contrast with those of mahamudra, Chan (Zen), anuttarayoga tantra and vipassana.

Dr. Berzin’s advice to Kalmyks on dealing with the massive changes in their lives resulting from the move from their traditional kibitkas (large ox carts with tents on them) to cities in standard flats.

When, through education, Buddhists and Muslims recognize and appreciate their common universal values of love, compassion, patience and forgiveness, then despite their philosophical differences, they have laid the foundation for religious harmony.