Wisdom Dharma Chat | Ācārya Malcolm Smith – Aug. 2025

August 21, 2025

In this episode of Wisdom Dharma Chats, host Daniel Aitken welcomes Ācārya Malcolm Smith, a longtime student and translator of the Great Perfection teachings. Fresh from filming his new Wisdom Academy course, The Nine Yanas, Malcolm and Daniel dive into a rich conversation about the philosophical depth and unique position of Dzogchen within the Buddhist tradition.

This conversation offers both practitioners and scholars a rare window into Dzogchen’s radical approach to awakening, showing how these teachings remain as vital today as they were in the time of the great masters.

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Meet Our Guest

Ācārya Malcolm Smith

Ācārya Malcolm Smith has been a student of the Great Perfection teachings since 1992. His main Dzogchen teachers are Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, the late Kunzang Dechen Lingpa, and the late H.H. Taklung Tsetrul Rinpoche. He is a veteran of a traditional three-year solitary Tibetan Buddhist retreat, a published translator of Tibetan Buddhist texts, and was awarded the Āchārya degree by the Sakya Institute in 2004. He graduated in 2009 from Shang Shung Institute’s School of Tibetan Medicine. He has worked on translations for renowned lamas since 1992, including His Holiness Sakya Trizin, Kunzang Dechen Lingpa, Khenpo Migmar Tseten, Tulku Dakpa Rinpoche, and many others. His works include Buddhahood in This Life, his forthcoming volume, Yoga of the Natural State: The Dzogchen Aural Lineage, and his translation work on The Seventeen Dzogchen Tantras, including (The Self-Arisen Vidya Tantra (vol 1) and The Self-Liberated Vidya Tantra (vol 2), and The Tantra without Syllables (vol 3) and The Blazing Lamp Tantra (vol 4). Additionally, he is the instructor of the Wisdom Academy online course Dzogchen: Ten Key Terms, and the upcoming course, The Nine Yanas.