ABOUT
Lama Pema Düddul
Lama Pema is the Co-Director and Dharma teacher of Pristine Awareness: Foundation for Buddhist Practice. He is a published poet and author, academic, and was the Buddhist Chaplain in the University of Southern Queensland’s Multi-Faith Service from 2018 to 2022. Lama Pema has been a Buddhist for forty-five years, discovering at the age of eleven that his personal worldview and the tenets of Buddhism were in perfect accordance. Pema began practicing in the Chan tradition in 1979. From the late 1980s he started practicing in the Vajrayana, or Tibetan Buddhist, tradition. He completed a two year program of study in Abhidharma (Buddhist psychology) in 1997. He now practices a form of simple, universal Buddhism that draws on the essence of all traditions. Pema considers Dudjom Rinpoche, Jigdral Yeshe Dorje (1904-1987) to be his Heart Guru. Over the years Lama Pema has received teachings from masters in all four schools of Tibetan Buddhism and is completely non-sectarian, but the teachers who influenced him most are Kyabje Dudjom Rinpoche, Chogyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Ngakpa Karma Lhundup Rinpoche, and Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo. Through Jamyang Tenphel, Lama Pema's practice has also been guided by the pith instructions of Kyabje Togden Amtrin. Lama Pema did his first solitary retreat at the age of 18, in 1987. This was a six month Guru Yoga retreat. From 2000 to 2005 Lama Pema held genyen vows with celibacy and undertook a series of retreats of varying durations, focused mainly on Guru Yoga. In 2005 he received the tantric vows of a white-robe wearer (ngakpa) in the Dudjom tradition, the Tibetan Buddhist equivalent of a non-monastic religious minister. He received these vows from one of his principle teachers, Ngakpa Karma Lhundup Rinpoche. It was around this time that he was given the Dharma name Pema Düddul. In 2019, Dungse Namgyal Dawa Rinpoche, one of Dudjom Rinpoche's grandchildren and Dharma heirs, kindly agreed to be Lama Pema's Dudjom lineage guru. Lama Pema has decades of experience as a Buddhist practitioner and has taught mindfulness and meditation in Buddhist, educational and other settings since 2007. Lama Pema is also a qualified hypnotist and natural therapies practitioner specializing in EFT/TFT (tapping), acupressure (shiatsu, yuk cho), aromatherapy, and energetic healing (Jin Shin Jyutsu etc.). Lama Pema also has a doctorate (PhD) in Written Communication and is an Associate Professor of writing, editing and publishing at an Australian university. Lama Pema describes himself as 'a completely run of the mill Buddhist, an extremely ordinary person. By no means a Buddhist scholar, certainly not a great meditator, not in any way masterful, just trying like every other Buddhist to integrate the path of Dharma into everyday life with all its routine challenges'. Lama Pema teaches the Path of Joy and Ease Practice Program. This program contains the condensed essence of the entire Dzogchen path. One of the primary aims of the program is to make Dzogchen accessible to people irrespective of their background or any challenges they face, such as illness or disability. Lama Pema is the author of multiple books and articles on Buddhism, including Luminous Awareness: A Guidebook to Natural Awakening in Life and in Death, which includes a foreword by Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, and Your Thoughts Create the World
