Acharya Tashi Wangchuk is the resident teacher at Nalanda West, the Nalandabodhi event
center in Seattle, where he teaches regularly. Acharya-la also is
the main acharya overseeing the North American Nalandabodhi
centers. Acharya Tashi was born and raised in eastern Bhutan, and
at the age of 15 moved to Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim, India, the
seat-in-exile of His Holiness the Gyalwang Karmapa. At Rumtek,
Acharya studied for ten years and graduated from Karma Shri Nalanda
Institute, the principal Karma Kagyu shedra, or monastic college.
This is the same shedra from which Nalandabodhi's main teacher Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche
and our former resident teacher Acharya Sherab Gyaltsen Negi
also graduated.
After graduating from Shedra, Acharya Tashi took on one year of
teaching responsibilities for the Karma Kagyu lineage in Hong Kong.
After that, he returned to Rumtek to teach at the shedra from which
he graduated. He then went to Nepal, where he did editorial work
for Nitartha International, an
educational organization founded by Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche and
devoted to the preservation of endangered Tibetan texts in digital
formats. Acharya Tashi is one of the principal editors in the
Nitartha International project of publishing the renowned Eight Great
Treatises of the Karma Kagyu lineage, and remains active while
in Seattle in preparing for publication in many different forms
classical Tibetan texts vital to the continuity of the Kagyu
lineage.
Acharya-la has been a featured teacher at Nitartha Institute and
the Nalandabodhi annual retreat.