About Dzogchen Beara Retreat Centre

Dzogchen Beara is a long-term retreat centre for Rigpa, and is registered as a Charitable Trust in Ireland.
Sogyal Rinpoche is the spiritual director of Dzogchen Beara.

The Centre is situated on the wild and beautiful Beara Peninsula in south-west Ireland, and sits high on cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean with breathtaking views of sea and sky. Many Tibetan masters, and almost everyone who visits, comment on the extraordinary qualities of Dzogchen Beara - its beautiful natural environment and atmosphere of profound peace which comes from deep spiritual practice. We welcome everyone, from all walks of life and of any faith or none, and offer many different ways to visit Dzogchen Beara.

About Sogyal Rinpoche

A world-renowned Buddhist teacher from Tibet, Sogyal Rinpoche is also the author of the highly acclaimed The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.

Born in Kham in Eastern Tibet, Sogyal Rinpoche was recognized as the incarnation of Lerab Lingpa Tertön Sogyal, a teacher to the thirteenth Dalai Lama, by Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö, one of the most outstanding spiritual masters of the twentieth century. Jamyang Khyentse supervised Rinpoche’s training and raised him like his own son.

In 1971, Rinpoche went to England where he received a Western education, studying Comparative Religion at Cambridge University. He went on to study with many other great masters, of all schools of Tibetan Buddhism, especially Kyabjé Dudjom Rinpoche and Kyabjé Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

First as a translator and aide to his revered masters, and then teaching in his own right, Rinpoche traveled to many countries, observing the reality of people’s lives, and searching how to translate the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism so as to make them relevant to modern men and women of all faiths, by drawing out their universal message while losing none of their authenticity, purity and power.

Out of this was born his unique style of teaching, and his ability to attune these teachings to modern life, demonstrated so vividly in his ground-breaking book, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, which has been printed in 31 languages and is available in 61 countries.

Rinpoche is also the founder and spiritual director of Rigpa, an international network of over 130 Buddhist centres and groups in 41 countries around the world. He has been teaching for over 30 years and continues to travel widely in Europe, America, Australia, and Asia, addressing thousands of people on his retreats and teaching tours.

In addition, Rinpoche is a frequent speaker at major conferences, addressing a wide variety of subjects, including medicine and healing, interfaith dialogue, peace and non-violence, business and leadership, and the field of serving the dying and hospice care.

About Rigpa

Open to all schools and traditions of Buddhist wisdom, and with the guidance and gracious patronage of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Rigpa offers those following the Buddhist teachings a complete path of study and practice, along with the environment they need to experience the teachings fully.

At the same time, Rigpa seeks to explore how the wisdom and compassion of the Buddha’s teachings can benefit many different areas of life in today’s world.

“Rigpa is a Tibetan word, which in general means ‘intelligence’ or ‘awareness’. In Dzogchen, however, the highest teachings in the Buddhist tradition of Tibet, rigpa has a deeper connotation, ‘the innermost nature of the mind’. The whole of the teaching of Buddha is directed towards realizing this, our ultimate nature, the state of omniscience or enlightenment – a truth so universal, so primordial that it goes beyond all limits, and beyond even religion itself.”   |   Sogyal Rinpoche

Inspired by the meaning of the word rigpa, Sogyal Rinpoche gave this as the name for his work and to the vehicle he was developing to serve the Buddha’s teaching in the west. Today, Rigpa has more than 130 centres in 41 countries around the world.