About Orgyen Chö Dzong

Orgyen Chö Dzong is the Tersar community’s North American retreat center located in the northern Catskill Mountains near Greenville, New York.

Orgyen Chö Dzong offers seminars and retreats under the guidance of  Dungse Shenphen Dawa Norbu Rinpoche, and supports practitioners doing individual retreats throughout the year.

The center provides comfortable accommodation for sixty to eighty people for large events, as well as isolated caravans in the woods for individual retreats. A private home near the center has recently been donated for long term individual retreats. The center is also the home to a World Peace Stupa (with many important relics from Tibet) and a lamp house for offering lamps.

Vision for the future

Dungse Shenphen Dawa Norbu Rinpoche envisions Orgyen Chö Dzong as a revitalizing source of Buddhism in the coming age.  The pure and complete Nyingma transmission, based on the Nine Vehicles of Buddhist teaching, will be given here by qualified teachers of the lineage.  Masters from various schools of Buddhism will also be invited to give their interpretations of the Dharma. Thus, a comprehensive scholastic foundation will be combined with intensive meditation practice to bring about the true spiritual realization that can keep Buddhadharma alive and accessible.

At Orgyen Chö Dzong we already have an excellent setting for the study and practice of Dharma, but these facilities need to be maintained and improved.  In the future, we plan to build retreat cabins and a library.  A translation group will work to convey the meaning of Tibetan scriptures.  An herb garden will be planted and a Tibetan doctor invited to teach the traditional science of Tibetan medicine.  The fine arts of music, dance, thanka painting, woodblock printing, weaving, the casting of the sacred ritual instruments, gold and silver engraving, scroll, mask and traditional paper making—this rich cultural heritage of Tibet can be preserved and transmitted here in the West. In addition, a small public museum will display Tibetan arts, artifacts and important relics. To realize this vision means that one of the supreme schools of Tibetan Buddhism will no longer be hidden in the Orient, but will openly offer its pure unbroken lineage of awakened mind to us in the West.