Dawn Mountain Legacy Program: Deep Practice in Modern Life
We are excited and inspired to share with you a dynamic program of study, practice, and experiential learning that we look forward to offering select students over the next three years. After thirty-plus years of teaching and tracking our students, we feel the time is ripe for The Legacy Training Program. It promises to foster an ever more profound sense of spacious aliveness and open-heartedness within each of us. Lama Rigzin Drolma and Lama Namgyal Dorje see this as an opportunity to pass on their legacy of practice, experience, and reflection.
Our treasured Buddhist practices offer paths to full liberation. These pathways have stood the test of time. With ongoing commitment, they can dissolve what hides our true nature from us. And yet, we find ourselves challenged in ways that our Asian predecessors in practice were not. In traditional Tibet, accomplished practitioners were either celibate monastics or life-long tantrikas. Either way, their lives focused on practice. They were not juggling family and full-time jobs as many of us do with all of their attendant challenges. Fortunately, within Western learning there are readily applied methods to help us, in the rush of contemporary life, to effectively untangle habitual knots that block the flow of our ripening. Lama Namgyal in particular has spent thirty-plus years exploring and synthesizing material most relevant for us as Buddhist practitioners. Experience shows that such methods can facilitate access to our deeper nature. They can help us identify specific issues and address them. Doing so can enhance our practice greatly.
Overview
This program embraces the existing Seeing to Being and Dzogchen Cycles programs introduced to us by Lama Rigzin Drolma. It invites practice while also learning more about their textual, cultural, and historical background than is feasible in our current retreat programs alone. The program is structured to optimize the wisdom flowing from our teachers, complemented by that which arises from honest and grounded assessment of our experience in traditional practice.
We do the latter, expanding on the existing Dzogchen Cycles program, using the skills developed in three contemporary disciplines. We draw on, and adapt specifically to the needs and perspective of Dzogchen practitioners, approaches found in Focusing, Microphenomenology (Dawn Mountain’s Discovery Practice), and an Internal Family Systems framework. (We know that each of the founders of these approaches have had deep contact with profoundly practiced Buddhist masters). All of these practices are royal roads for waking us up to the variety and richness of ordinary lived experience. In a kind of shorthand, we can identify them as the Yogas of Lived Experience. We find tremendous and practical synergies among these. They are so rewarding that they inspire us to provide exposure to them within our practice ecosystem for you to see it for yourselves. These each, in a granular manner, can assist us in becoming aware of the specifics of psycho-spiritual obstacles, provide approaches for unwinding said obstacles, and guide fine-tuned attention to the states that ensue from such unwinding.
Why take this program? Because it deepens familiarity with these three specific approaches in the context of teacher-student and student-to-student transmission. We thereby strengthen our spiritual community, supporting and stimulating our traditional practice in a way that allows an ever-richer sense of coming home.
For all these reasons, we warmly invite you to participate in this three-year program. You will gain more depth and detail through the program’s amplification of training in 1) Seeing to Being, 2) sādhana practice included in Dzogchen Cycles, and embedded within these, an illumination of 3) the opening stages of Dzogchen practice. The program also is an opportunity for more time with our Lamas and through the Yogas of Lived Experience to receive guidance and teachings oriented to your unique internalization of practice.
This is now a precious time with our teachers who teach from their own personal, long-standing personal connection, in the native language, with ethnic Tibetan teachers from old and new Tibet. These lineage Lamas serve as the source of the heart-enriched wisdom of all we share. This program offers a rare opportunity. And this training also opens the gateway to subsequent, more restricted Dzogchen teachings.
This program involves relevant reading, but the focus is not a book connection. It is personal in the way that Dzogchen is personal, it encourages greater intimacy with our own internal choreography and geography. “Everyone is different,” Rinpoche often reminds us. We aspire for this training to be a significant enhancement of your life and your practice, and to do so by strengthening clarity, evenness, and ease in the face of all that challenges us today.
Our main goal in this communal learning experience is to strengthen your practice and the collective power of that force-field we recognize as our spiritual community. Like the proverbial bees described in Words of My Perfect Teacher, Lamas Namgyal Dorje and Rigzin Drolma have spent more than five decades garnering nectar from the rare flowering of impeccable wisdom in their lineage teachers, and now they wish explicitly to pass this on to those of you inspired to receive it. We have in our own ways come to understand the need to respect what arises in the course of our spiritual endeavoring in our modern milieu, whether it is pleasant or challenging.
Our aspiration is that some, hopefully many of you, in this cohort will maintain this Legacy through the next generations at Dawn Mountain, led by Lama Rigzin Sherab and others who are still in training, here or in your home sanghas. The book on wisely bringing ancient skills into contemporary times can only be written by all of us together. Please join us in this endeavor.
How Does this Differ From What We Are Already Doing at Dawn Mountain?
Not in kind, but in emphasis. You will be with an identifiable cohort of practitioners, for 3 years, allowing closer connections and supportive Dharma friendships to emerge. With the combination of extra teaching time with the lineage-connected Lamas, focused reading groups, and extra time and support for easeful and deep reflection on your experience, we wish to support a quantitative and qualitative enhancement of your practice experience. We will be spending explicit time on considering how to optimize the integration of traditional practice with embodied sensitivity in ways that will continue well into the future. This group will be implicitly and explicitly engaging with practice and reflection together on effectively moving our Teacher’s traditional teachings into the Dawn Mountain and sister sanghas’ lived experience. We are excited to imagine that there may indeed be emergence of significant helpful spiritual guidance from this community of practice that we in no way may be able to foresee on this side of the gateway.
Who Should Take this Course
You should consider this if you are either (1) a very long-term student at Dawn Mountain, (2) you are a relatively new student but you feel some keen interest, or (3) you are active in one of our sister sanghas following our Teacher; you sense a connection with us; and recognize you may wish to deepen your practice in a way that will enhance yourself and those in your home spiritual community based on what we will offer in this Legacy program.
Everyone is welcome to submit a statement of interest. Please do consider the requirements carefully, because you will need to complete each year’s material in order to progress to the next year.
Trainees who complete the first three years of the program will receive a certificate attesting to their completion of Dawn Mountain’s Legacy Program.
What Comes Next
In the 4th Year (2029-30), there will be a Part II of our Legacy Training Program including further sequences of both Seeing to Being and certain more closely held sādhana or Dzogchen materials, available to those who have completed Ngondro. This all would be integrated appropriately in our Yoga of Lived Experience aspect of the program. If you haven’t already begun the Brilliant Basics course, starting now would give you time to do this if you are able to make a realistic schedule.
Legacy Program Virtual Open House
You are invited to a Legacy Program Virtual Open House on Saturday, May 23rd (9-10:30) and/or Saturday, August 15 (9-10:30) to discuss and open the floor for Q&A regarding the program.
We want to be sure that you all understand the expectations and feel comfortable that you can meet them. This benefits you personally, and optimizing the benefit for the Legacy cohort as a whole depends on it.
Requirements
Full-time membership in Dawn Mountain (at the $20 or $40/month level as your circumstances allow).
Participation in the full Dzogchen Cycles Program. This includes one week-long retreat and two retreat weekends related to traditional teachings, which are part of the Full Dzogchen Cycles program, and also, free to full Dzogchen Cycles participants and thus to Legacy trainees, two workshop days related to complementary approaches to working with experience in life and practice, such as our Discovery and Dyadic Focusing workshops.
One to three 3-hour teaching sessions with the founding Lamas per training year. The first year will include at least one such 3-hour Saturday teaching on August 29th from 10AM to 1PM (Central).
Four Legacy retreat days scheduled throughout the year and restricted to Legacy trainees. These retreat days will offer high-level integration of key traditional and contemporary elements in our Legacy approach and foster a deepening sense of community.
Participation in a reading group to discuss how you are relating to the material assigned (once every 4 months). Ideally, we will have groups attuned to different time zones. Whether you are able to attend a reading group or not, there will be a writing assignment based on the readings every 4 months.
We ask that at least 50% of your overall participation be synchronous. We will make every attempt to schedule at least 1-2 major events each year that are in optimal sync with your time-zone. Synchronous participation is especially emphasized for our 4 Legacy retreat days.
With such consideration in place, we are moving all of our workshop and retreat start times for all of our Dawn Mountain retreat and workshop programs to 9AM Central beginning with our August 29th, 2026, Legacy teaching.
The training year will run from the first formal meeting to 12 months later. Anticipated first formal meeting is August 29th, 2026, 10AM-1PM (virtual).
You will have short writing assignments with respect to some Legacy retreat experiences. These afford an opportunity for you to share your experience in writing with the Lamas. The writing will be in response to a prompt which will orient you to self-reflect more carefully on the effect of your practice making use of one of the perspectives we will be teaching. You will never be encouraged to share anything that does not feel comfortable to share.
Progress to each successive year requires that all reports handed in for the prior year and all retreats are completed.
Our rolling admission begins April/May 2026 and closes on August 25, 2026.
Anticipate one informational meeting in the early summer (May 23rd, 2026, 9AM-10:30AM Central), or another on August 15th, 2026.
Participation already in Seeing to Being Part 1 (Fall 2025) or asynchronous with one paragraph/page report on your experience of the retreat from everyone. (Due by Dec 1, 2026.)
You must participate in or review online the one day Dyadic Focusing workshop offered in Fall 2026 and the one-day Discovery Practice workshop offered in Winter /Spring 2026.
Cost for participation in this program is $475/675/975 per year, with level of fee according to your capacity. Payment plans can be worked for quarterly or monthly payment.
The cost of the program is put toward staff and operational expenses. The Lamas do not receive any support from these fees. Therefore, dana can be given after retreats or at year’s end if you wish. We do not want cost to be an obstacle. We will make every consideration for qualified students who need some financial consideration to attend.
Tentative Reading List
Selected portions of specific readings with page numbers will be distributed from:
Adzom Drukpa, Lamplight on Your Path, Tr. Lama Rigzin Drolma OR
Patrul Rinpoche, Words of My Perfect Teacher
Transcripts of Seeing to Being Part 1 (to be read before August 29, 2026)
Lama Rigzin, Being Human and a Buddha Too
Jigme Lingpa, Treasury of Precious Qualities
Richard Shweder Thinking Through Cultures
Harvey Aronson, Buddhist Practice on Western Ground
Eugene Gendlin, Focusing
Ann Weiser Cornell, Wisdom of Focusing
Relevant Focusing Handouts
Our Community Agreement
Our work together includes self-exploration in dyads, triads, or small groups. You are never asked to share anything you are not comfortable sharing. And everyone agrees that whatever we hear in these conversations remains confidential. Everyone is asked to refrain from shaming or blaming language of any kind, and we will hear more about what this entails. More explicit guidelines for how we interact in exercises will be shared as we move into these practices together.
Everyone must agree to abide by the Code of Behavior for leaders and participants. You will be asked in the application to sign the Participant Code of Behavior agreement that you will abide by our code of conduct. We also ask you to read the other documents with the Code, especially our leader agreement, which describes what is expected of anyone moving into a position of leadership in our spiritual communities.