Lama Norlha Rinpoche, an accomplished meditation and retreat master, is the abbot of Kagyu Thubten Chöling Monastery and director of Kyabje Dorje Chang Kalu Rinpoche’s Dharma centers in the eastern United States. Lama Norlha Rinpoche was born in 1938, in the Nangchen District of Kham, eastern Tibet. He entered Korche Monastery at the age of five, receiving monastic ordination at fourteen. By the age of twenty-one, Lama Norlha had completed two three-year retreats, during the second of which he acted as assistant to the retreat master. After the communist takeover of Tibet, he escaped on foot to India where he met Kyabje Dorje Chang Kalu Rinpoche and became his close disciple. In India, Lama Norlha established several three-year retreat facilities where he trained monks in the complete cycle of transmissions and practices of the Kagyu Lineage. In 1976, at the request of His Holiness the Sixteenth Gyalwang Karmapa and Kalu Rinpoche, Lama Norlha came to New York City where he taught Buddhist philosophy and meditation practices to a wide range of students. Two years later, to provide students with the means of studying and practicing at a more profound level of commitment, he founded Kagyu Thubten Chöling Monastery and Retreat Center. Following the sacred example of his own masters, Lama Norlha has dedicated his life to teaching the practices that make up the Kagyupa three-year retreat. To date he has directed six full retreats at Kagyu Thubten Chöling Monastery, while a seventh retreat commenced in November 2008. Since 1984 Lama Norlha has returned to his birthplace in Tibet several times. As part of his continuing initiative to re-establish the Dharma in Nangchen, he rebuilt the monastery at Korche, including its two retreat facilities. In order to improve opportunities for Tibetan women to study and practice the Dharma, he founded a convent, retreat center and monastic college at Kala Rongo, a sacred place where treasure teachings hidden by Guru Rinpoche were discovered by the renowned nineteenth century treasure master, Chöjur Lingpa. As a result of Lama Norlha’s efforts, the Dharma is once again flourishing in Nangchen. To date six retreats have been completed at Korche Monastery (with the seventh retreat in session), while a fifth retreat at Kala Rongo commenced in November, 2004. In recent years, Lama Norlha has undertaken additional projects to improve the lives of Nangchen’s inhabitants, mostly subsistence farmers and nomadic families. In early 1997, he founded NYEMA, the Nangchen Yushu Educational and Medical Association. NYEMA’s mission is to establish facilities for basic medical care and create schools to teach fundamental language, literacy, and math skills to children. A tireless advocate for the purity of traditional Kagyu methods, Lama Norlha emphasizes developing a strong foundation for practice through contemplating the "four thoughts that turn the mind toward the Dharma" and engaging in the extraordinary preliminary practices (Tib. ngondro). To these essential teachings he joins instruction in calm-abiding meditation (Tib. shi nay) to stabilize the mind and taking-and-sending meditation (Tib. tong len) to develop compassion. Lama Norlha considers this simple yet comprehensive approach particularly beneficial in the modern age, when the mind is easily distracted and obstacles to practice continuously arise. More significantly, these teachings constitute the indispensible core of pure Dharma practice, on the basis of which students can advance toward a profound realization of the true nature of mind. Lama Norlha Rinpoche is renowned for his master of the Six Yogas of Naropa and is one of the most experienced teachers of the traditional Kagyu three-year retreat in the world today. Dedicating his life to the service of his teachers, most notably the Gyalwa Karmapa and Dorje Chang Kalu Rinpoche, and to the guidance of his students, Lama Norlha Rinpoche is known for his tireless efforts in preserving the purity of the Buddha's teachings and the Kagyu lineage.
When Kyabje Dorje Chang Kalu Rinpoche gave the Kalachakra Empowerment in New York City in 1982, it was the very first Tibetan Buddhist event Lama Karma Chötso ever attended. Following that weekend, she continued to take empowerments and teachings from Kalu Rinpoche at Kagyu Thubten Chöling (KTC) in upstate New York where he was preparing participants for the first three-year, three-month retreat in the USA. The Very Venerable Lama Norlha Rinpoche, Abbot of KTC, continued to guide Lama Karma Chötso and, along with His Eminence Tai Situ Rinpoche and Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, remains her closest teacher. Lama Karma Chötso was ordained as a novice Buddhist nun by Kalu Rinpoche in 1986 prior to entering the second three-year, three-month retreat at KTC where the retreatants practiced in strict seclusion for almost three and a half years. After Lama completed the retreat, she added to her training by learning Tibetan painting, traveling to India and Sikkim twice on pilgrimage and into Tibet on pilgrimage with Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche in 1993 where she first met the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa. Lama stayed in Nepal to study and practice for a few months before returning to the monastery in America. In November 1996, Lama Karma Chötso came to South Florida to prepare for Lama Norlha Rinpoche's first visit. At the end of his teachings, Rinpoche instructed her to stay in Florida and begin a center for the study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism. When he returned in 1997, Lama Rinpoche found a small house in Hollywood, Florida with a small but traditional Tibetan shrine room waiting for him. He then bestowed the name “Kagyu Shedrup Chöling” on the center, which means the “Kagyu Dharma Center of Study and Practice”. Lama Karma Chötso kept the center in Hollywood, FL until she raised enough funds to purchase land for the Lama Residence in El Portal. She has also continued to teach in centers she started in the Florida Keys and in Coconut Grove. Many of her students have been under her guidance for as long as 14 years, doing extraordinarily well with their meditation and study of Buddhadharma. During her time in South Florida, Lama Karma Chötso has given lectures at the Whole Life Expo in Fort Lauderdale, Sunshine Cathedral, Dania Library, St. Thomas University, Barry University, health centers and many other venues. She has given blessings to the manatees at the Miami Seaquarium and the dolphins at the Dolphin Research Center in Grassy Key. After having been a member of the Board of Directors of the Interfaith Council of Greater Hollywood for many years, she was President for one year. She has been a Professional Volunteer Chaplain for Hospice Care of Broward County, assisting in the dying process and performing Buddhist death rituals for the deceased. Lama Karma Chötso taught meditation and T'ai Chi to the inmates at Broward Correctional Facility from 1998 until 2004. She co-taught a course in Tibetan Buddhism with Dr. Nathan Katz at FIU and is a Committee member of FAU’s Interfaith group. In February 2010, Kagyu Shedrup Chöling received a permit to build four Tibetan stupas at the Lama Residence. The stupa blog, southfloridakagyustupas.com, shows the progression of the building on the land Lama Karma Chötso consecrated. She has said, “For anyone to even see a stupa in their lifetime indicates that they have accumulated good merit in past lives. But for an entire sangha to actually participate in building stupas shows that all of them have positive connections with one another, with Tibetan Buddhism, with their Lama, and also have inconceivably great merit. This is very unusual to find at any time anywhere, but especially now, and here in South Florida.”
About Dorje Chang Kalu Rinpoche and Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinponche