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of Buddhadharma Foundation International was inspired
and established by Ven. Tarthang Tulku, founder and
Head Lama of the Tibetan Nyingma Meditation Center
in California, USA. Ven. Tarthang Tulku was born in
eastern Tibet, where he studied with many of the greatest
Tibetan Buddhist masters of the twentieth century.
After leaving Tibet, he taught from 1962 to 1968 at
Sanskrit University in Varanasi, India, where he also
established one of the first printing presses to print
sacred Tibetan texts. Since 1969 he has lived and
worked in America. There he has actualised a long-range
vision of preserving ancient teachings of the Buddha
and transmitting them to the modern world. From the
original mandala of organisations that he founded-the
Tibetan Aid Project, Dharma Publishing and Dharma
Press, Nyingma Institute, Odiyan, and Nyingma Centers
International-centres engaged in parallel activities
have developed in Germany, Holland, and Brazil.
In 1983, Ven. Tarthang Tulku established the Yeshe De Project, which focuses on preservation and translation of sacred texts. In 1989, he founded the Annual Nyingma Monlam Chenmo, now attended each year by more than 7,000 monks, and in 1993 he established the Bodhgaya Trust and the Nyingma Buddhist Trust. The Light of Buddhadharma Foundation was officially established in 2004.
The work of the Foundation is carried out by
four directors:
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 Wangmo
Dixey,
Chief Executive
International Relations (UCLA), an MA
in Development Economics (American University)
and currently serves as a director of
the Tibetan Aid Project. She lives in
the UK with her husband and two children.
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 Nelson
Chamma,
Associate Director
Nelson Chamma holds degrees in economics
and International Relations. A native
of Brazil, he currently divides his time
between Brazil and Portugal, where he
attends to business interests. He has
been involved with the Nyingma Institute
of Rio de Janeiro from 1995 to the present.
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 Richard
Dixey,
Associate Director
Richard Dixey, BA Hons (Oxford), MSc (London), and PhD (London). He has been a student of Buddhism since 1972. Throughout that time, he has worked on the interface between scientific and spiritual perspectives. For 14 years he ran a laboratory at St. Bartholomew´s Hospital in London, researching the biological effects of weak electromagnetic fields. He currently heads a pharmaceutical company that researches new treatments for Alzheimer´s and Parkinson´s diseases, Lou Gehrig´s disease, and obesity.
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 Jack
Petranker,
Associate Director
Jack Petranker, BA (Stanford), MA (Univ.
California, Berkeley), JD (Yale) has been
a faculty member at the Tibetan Nyingma
Institute in Berkeley, CA since 1978 and
served as dean of the Institute from 1988-1991.
An active member of the California Bar,
he is founder and director of the Center
for Creative Inquiry and a director of
the Tibetan Aid Project and Dharma Publishing.
From 1988-92 he served as the North American
Vice-President of the World Fellowship
of Buddhists.
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