About the Teacher
Why study with them?
George Wiegand is our well-known and loved volunteer at Ratna Ling. He has been a student of our Founder Tarthang Tulku and a full-time volunteer in Nyingma organizations for 40 years, as a chef, baker, kitchen manager, temple builder, book binder, and pressman.
He earned his Masters of Education in Counseling in 1974. After teaching high school while in the Peace Corps, he served as a Counselor at a Catholic high school before moving to California in search of a meditation teacher. He intensively trained in Tibetan Yoga (Kum Nye) from 1982-1986 at the Nyingma Institute in Berkeley, and then moved to the Odiyan country center.
George describes his daily practice as meditation in action, working on projects in the Nyingma community, cooking, baking, building temples, printing, binding books, and teaching Tibetan meditation. His active meditation has been a solitary practice, internally studying the working of his own mind as he performs dharma activities. Some of his greatest lessons have come from caring for a dying parent and teaching communication to teenagers at a mindfulness-based youth treatment center.
His hobbies include bread baking, basketball, and choir singing.