Founded by Venerable Tarthang Tulku

Light 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.

We are officially registered as a charitable organization in the United States and in India.

The work of the Foundation is carried out by four directors:

International Relations (UCLA), an MA in Development Economics (American University) and currently serves as a director of the Tibetan Aid Project.

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.

Richard Dixey, BA Hons (Oxford), MSc (London), and PhD (London). Before retiring to work full time for the Foundation, he headed a pharmaceutical company. He has been a student of Buddhism since 1972. Throughout that time, he worked on the interface between scientific and spiritual perspectives and for 14 years he a laboratory at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London, researching the biological effects of weak electromagnetic fields. He researches new treatments for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, Lou Gehrig's disease, and obesity.

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.