Spiritual Director

The Abbot of Tubten Chokhor Ling Monastery in Golog, Tibet, Hungkar Dorje Rinpoche was born into a nomadic family of great and realized yogins.  Rinpoche was recognized early in his life by such Buddhist masters as H.H. Orgyen Kusum Lingpa, H.H. Dodrupchen Rinpoche, Penor Rinpoche, and later, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, as the reincarnation of Do Khyentse Yeshe Dorje, the mind emanation of Jigme Lingpa.  He has trained extensively in Buddhist studies at a monastic university in India and in an Institute for Tulkus in Beijing, and has initiated numerous charitable projects for better education and cultural and environmental preservation in Tibet.   He teaches with incredible humility and lucidity.

Executive Director

Tulku Sherdor is our Executive Director.  Born in Montreal, Canada in 1961, he began studying Buddhist Insight meditation from a very young age, and met his principal teacher, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, in Nepal in 1981.  He was fortunate to study with other pre-eminent masters of the 20th century, including His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Khetsun Zangpo Rinpoche, Dung Say Trinley Norbu Rinpoche, Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, Kalu Rinpoche, and many others. He completed a 3-year lama retreat in the Karma and Shangpa Kagyu schools of Tibetan Buddhism, and a year-long solitary retreat in the Chogling Tersar practice lineage held by Tulku Urgyen.  Over the past 20 years he has traveled far and wide, teaching and working with and translating for a great number of distinguished Nyingma and Kagyu meditation masters, such as helping Trangu Rinpoche establish the monastic retreat program at Gampo Abbey in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia in the early 1990s; helping Kenpo Sonam Topgyal Rinpoche re-establish the vajrayana Buddhist tradition for the Chinese community in Thailand in the mid-1990s; and working closely with his precious teacher, His Holiness Orgyen Kusum Lingpa, to advance many philanthropic projects in Tibet dedicated to world peace. 
Tulku Sherdor is renowned as a scholar and interpreter of Tibetan Buddhist teachings into English, and known for his quiet yet humorous and insightful manner.

listen to a talk by Tulku Sherdor on the importance of aspiration prayers

Treasurer

Ivy Loo is our Treasurer.  She is also a student of Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, Lama Wangdor, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche and His Holiness Kusum Lingpa.
Born and raised in Singapore, Ivy moved to California in 2000, where she worked on Special Events and Fundraising for a non-profit organization.  Ivy came to New York in 2003 to set up Blazing Wisdom Institute with Tulku Sherdor.

Jim did graduate work in linguistics, and worked in Information Technology on Wall Street.  He later obtained certification as an acupuncturist, which he practices with related healing methods in partnership with his wife Binghui.  He is a devoted father to Gwen.  Jim first began to practice Tibetan Buddhism in the 1970s, and has been a student of Tulku Sherdor since 2002.

Howard Stahl, LCSW, is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley.  He helped pioneer (1972 -1994) the development of community-based care for the aged and hospice care for the critically ill and people with AIDS in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Trained by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Howard sat on the original board of The Shanti Project, and spent two decades as an educator and frequent lecturer in Hospitals and Universities throughout California.  He now focuses on the philanthropic work of preserving Tibetan culture and on issues of ecology and environmentalism in Tibet.  Howard has played an active role in The Bay Area Buddhist Community since 1968

Heinz Insu Fenkl is an author, editor, translator, and folklorist. He is a member of the English Department at SUNY, New Paltz, where he teaches, inter alia, the Great Books of Asia.  His work includes Memories of My Ghost Brother, for which he was named a Barnes and Noble "Great New Writer" and a PEN/Hemingway finalist in 1997.  Heinz is a graduate of Vassar College, where he and Tulku Sherdor were editors of the Literary Review; and the University of California, Davis, where he received a Master's degree in Creative Writing.  He also studied literary translation as a Fulbright Scholar in Korea, and spent several years in a Cultural Anthropology program, concentrating on Korean folklore, shamanism, and ethnographic theory.