Khensur Jampa Tegchok
Born in 1930, Khensur Jampa Tegchok became a monk at the age of eight. He studied major Buddhist treatises at Sera Monastic University in Tibet for fourteen years before fleeing his homeland in 1959. The former abbot of the Jé College of Sera Monastic University in India, he was also a beloved teacher at several FPMT centers including the Masters Program at Instituto Lama Tsongkhapa in Italy, Land of Medicine Buddha in California, and Nalanda Monastery in France.
Books, Courses & Podcasts
Insight into Emptiness
A former abbot of one of the largest Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the world, Khensur Jampa Tegchok has been teaching Westerners about Buddhism since the 1970s. With a deep respect for the intellectual capacity of his students, Khensur Tegchok here unpacks with great erudition Buddhism’s animating philosophical principle—the emptiness of all appearances. Engagingly edited by bestselling author Thubten Chodron, emptiness is here approached from a host of angles far beyond most treatments of the subject, while never sacrificing its conversational approach.
Practical Ethics and Profound Emptiness
In Practical Ethics and Profound Emptiness Khensur Jampa Tegchok walks us carefully through a classic of Indian Buddhist philosophy, explaining the implications of its philosophical arguments and grounding its advice in a recognizable day-to-day world. In The Precious Garland, the source text for this commentary, Nagarjuna advises his patron king on how best to take advantage of human life to secure a happy rebirth in the next life while making progress toward the goal of enlightenment. Known primarily for his incisive presentation of emptiness, here Nagarjuna shows his wise understanding of how to navigate the intricacies of worldly life to balance everyday needs with spiritual practice. Loaded with equal measures of penetrating explanations of the highest reality and inspiring encouragement toward the bodhisattva practices, Practical Ethics and Profound Emptiness makes the case for living a thoughtful, morally upright life in the world to achieve immediate and ultimate spiritual goals.