Glenn and I talk about “humourful humility”, the power of the inner life, Buddhism, the first Tibetan fart joke and the beneficial presence of others.
Biography
Glenn H. Mullin is a Tibetologist, Buddhist writer, translator of classical Tibetan literature, and teacher of Tantric Buddhist meditation. He divides his time between writing, teaching, meditating, and leading tour groups to the power places of Nepal and Tibet.
Glenn lived in the Indian Himalayas between 1972 and 1984, where he studied philosophy, literature, meditation, yoga, and the enlightenment culture under thirty-five of the greatest living masters of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism. His two principal tantric gurus were the late great masters Kyabje Ling Dorjechang and Kyabje Trijang Dorjechang, who were best known as Yongdzin Che Chung, the two main gurus of the present Dalai Lama. The list of Glenn’s other teachers and initiation masters includes the Dalai Lama, Sakya Trizin Rinpoche, Kalu Rinpoche, Ngakpa Yeshe Dorje Rinpoche, Tai Situ Rinpoche, Khenchen Konchok Gyaltsen, Geshe Ngawang Dargyey, Geshey Rabten, and Gongsar Tulku.
Glenn is the author of over 20 books on Tibetan Buddhism. Many of these (published by Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, NY) focus on the lives and works of the early Dalai Lamas. Some of his other titles include Tsongkhapa’s Six Yogas of Naropa and The Practice of Kalachakra (Snow Lion); Death and Dying: The Tibetan Tradition (Arkana/Viking Penguin); Mystical Verses of a Mad Dalai Lama (Quest Books); The Mystical Arts of Tibet (Longstreet Press); and The Fourteen Dalai Lamas, as well as The Female Buddhas (Clear Light Books). He has also worked as a field specialist on three Tibet-related films and five television documentaries, and has co-produced five audio recordings of Tibetan sacred music. In 2002 his book The Fourteen Dalai Lamas was nominated for the prestigious NAPRA award for best book, and in 2004 his book The Female Buddhas won a Best Book Award from Foreword Magazine.
After returning from India in 1984 Glenn founded and directed The Mystical Arts of Tibet, an association of Dharma friends that was instrumental in bringing the first tours of Tibetan monks to North America to perform sacred Temple music and dance, as well as create mandala sand paintings. He gave this to Drepung Loseling Monastery in 1994, and it continues to bring Tibetan spiritual culture on tours around the world.
Glenn has also curated a number of important Tibetan art exhibitions. The first of these, “The Art of Compassion,” was created for Tibet House in New Delhi, and toured Europe for two years. Another, entitled “The Mystical Arts of Tibet, featuring personal sacred objects of HH the Dalai Lama,” was created for the Summer Olympics of 1996 as a joint project with The Drepung Loseling Institute (DLI) and the Oglethorpe University Museum of Art (OUMA). It premiered in Atlanta during the Summer Olympics of 1996, and then for the six years to follow toured North America. Recently (in 2001) Glenn curated “The Female Buddha: Women of Enlightenment in Tibetan Mysticism” as a joint project with OUMA and the Rubin Museum of Art in New York (RMA). In 2003 he curated “The Flying Mystics of Tibetan Buddhism,” again as a joint project between OUMA and the RMA. He also wrote the readers that accompanied these four exhibits.
As well as leading tour groups to the Buddhist power places of Nepal and Tibet, Glenn acts as consultant and advisor to independent groups wanting to travel safely and meaningfully through these sacred sites.
You can read more about Glenn here.
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