ABOUT
Lama Pema Düddul
Lama Pema is a Buddhist Chaplain, Dharma teacher and Co-Director of Pristine Awareness: Foundation for Buddhist Practice. He is also a published poet, author, and academic. 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 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 Lama. 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 and Ngakpa Karma Lhundup Rinpoche. Through Jamyang Tenphel (see below), 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 transpersonal counselor, hypnotist and EFT therapist. Lama Pema has a doctorate (PhD) in creative writing 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 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 Natural Presence: Concise Advice on Buddhist Practice.
