Namgyal Rinpoche (Ven. George Dawson), a Canadian of Irish-Scottish descent, grew up in Toronto, Canada. After attending a Christian Seminary College and participating in politics, he traveled to England where he pursued his interests in the sciences and arts, especially modern psychology and metaphysics. There he met the Burmese Mahathera, Ven. Sayadaw U Thila Wunta, and shortly after, travelled to Bodh Gaya, India, where Sayadaw ordained him and gave him the name Ananda Bodhi.

After a period of intensive meditation in Burma, Thailand and Sri Lanka, he received the full title of Acariya. Invited by the English Sangha Trust to teach, he returned to England and founded several retreat centres, including Johnstone House in Scotland (now Kargyu Samye Ling). He returned to Canada in 1965 and a year later, with a group of students, established the Dharma Centre of Canada, a study-meditation centre near Kinmount, Ontario.

Rinpoche (he was known then as "The Bikkhu") taught in Canada, mostly in Toronto and at the Dharma Centre, for the next five years. During this period he also travelled abroad accompanied by many of his students. During visits to the principal Tibetan monasteries in India and Sikkim, he met H.H. The Dalai Lama and H.H. The (late) 16th Gyalwa Karmapa who, recognizing him as fully enlightened, had him enthroned as Karma Tenzin Dorje Namgyal Rinpoche. Soon after, Namgyal Rinpoche played a major role in the first visits to the West by three great masters: H.H. Sakya Trizen, H.H. The (late) 16th Gyalwa Karmapa, and the (late) Ven. Kalu Rinpoche, all of whom he was, and is, very close to.

Rinpoche's dedication to the liberation of all that live, along with his interest in all formations (including this planet and it's flora and fauna), is as tireless as it is vast. He is unique in his ability to encompass and bridge the traditional methods of Buddhism and Western forms of unfoldement and transmit the path of awakening in universal terms according to beings' interests and proclivities. Rinpoche continues to travel throughout the world giving teaching, most frequently at centres established by his students in North and Central America, Great Britain, Europe, New Zealand and Australia.

This text is reproduced with kind permission of Bodhi Publishing.