About

Preserving the living experience and meaning of the Dzogchen lineage.

བོད་ཀྱི་འཇིག་རྟེན་ནས་མ་འོངས་པའི་དུས་རབས་གསར་པར་བརྒལ་བའི་བར་མཚམས་སུ། རྫོགས་ཆེན་གྱི་གསོན་ཉམས་ལྡན་པའི་དོན་སྙིང་ཉམས་པ་མེད་པར་རྒྱུན་འཛིན་པ།

Great Vehicle

Great Vehicle is a small religious community in Oregon, in the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. The name is an old one for the path that is walked for the sake of everyone, not only oneself.

Nothing on this site is sold. Offerings in support of this work are welcome and never expected; if you would like to make one, write to new@greatvehicle.org.

Who writes

My name is Nick Walker. I live in Ashland, Oregon, and I practice in the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism as a student of my teacher, Orgyen Chowang Rinpoche.

I came to these teachings the way many people do, through trouble. When I was thirteen I nearly drowned in freezing water off the coast of Maine, and what happened in those minutes stayed with me. A couple of years later my older sister died of liver cancer, and I was close to her while she was dying. For a long time afterward I did not know what to do with either of those things. Books by Buddhist teachers gave me some solace in my grief. Much later I met my teacher, and I felt on the first day that here was a person who lived, at peace and with an ordinary cheerfulness, what I had only glimpsed in the water. I have been his student since.

I am not a monk, a doctor, or a therapist. I practice every day, I have sat with people who were dying and with people who were grieving, and I have a teacher I can ask when I am out of my depth. That is the whole of it.

Teachings

Dzogchen is an encyclopedia of Dzogchen meanings. Each entry explains one term, distinction or teaching in plain English, and shows the Tibetan passages it rests on.

What goes in

An entry says what its sources say and stops there. Nothing is omitted merely because it is difficult, restricted, or raises questions. Difficult passages are placed in context, likely misreadings are named, and uncertainty, contradictions, and variant readings remain visible.

Working entries are kept separate from reviewed entries. “Reviewed” means the Tibetan evidence, cited contexts, terminology, variants, and editorial reading have all passed the published review gate. A consultation is described only at the scope actually reviewed; neither an entry nor the site is called “lineage approved” on the strength of narrower advice.

How to read an entry

The first sentences answer the question “what is this?” on their own. The rest explains, with quotations. Each quotation names its source, and the Tibetan original is one click away under it. Related entries and full sources come at the end.

Terms and spellings

Every term keeps one English rendering across the whole encyclopedia. Under each title you will find the Tibetan script, the Wylie transliteration (a letter-by-letter spelling used by scholars), a pronunciation where it helps, and the Sanskrit where there is one. Thesearch covers all of these, so you can look a term up by any of them.

Translations

Quotations are translated from the Tibetan for this encyclopedia. They follow the original line by line wherever they can.

Help: Death & Grief

The teachings behind the Death & Grief pages come from the great masters of this lineage, Longchenpa, Jigme Lingpa, Mipham Rinpoche, and Dudjom Lingpa among them, who wrote about death and about the passages between things. I read them in Tibetan, slowly, and those pages are my attempt to hand on the useful parts in plain words, without the scholarship, to people who need them now. Where I quote them, the renderings are my own, and any mistakes in them are mine.

Every page in Death & Grief may be shared, printed, read aloud at a bedside, or handed to someone who needs it.

How the work is made

The public site is the last layer, not the archive itself. See the method and review processfor the chain from Tibetan source to publication and the limits of what the public pages disclose.