“The Dharma Centre of Canada is one of the oldest meditation centres in North America. Founded in 1966 by Namgyal Rinpoche, it is a non-sectarian charitable organization dedicated to the study, contemplation and practice of Dharma, the universal truth of liberation.

Through training and cultivation of profound awareness, compassion and wisdom in formal meditation and daily life, the path of freedom from suffering and the causes of suffering naturally opens to personal transformation that extends to the care and innate awakening of all and the welfare of the world. This path, historically, has benefitted many beings.

With an emphasis on Buddhist practices, The Dharma Centre continues to host qualified teachers from different traditions and paths of awakening. This includes meditation masters, innovative scientists, artists and healers. The Centre’s 400-acre forested property provides a peaceful environment for group and solo retreats and courses of varying lengths of time: weekend, week-long, several weeks, months or years. Some of these may be eligible for certification, which may then be used for accreditation with other educational institutions.

The vision, compassion and skillful teaching of recognized Dharma teachers, epitomized by Namgyal Rinpoche, continues to guide and support beings’ unfoldment and awakening at the Dharma Centre of Canada and other affiliated centres around the world.
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A Short History of the Dharma Centre

The Dharma Centre was founded in Toronto in 1966 and incorporated in 1972 as the Dharma Centre of Canada, a charitable nonprofit organization owning 400 acres of land near Kinmount, Ontario, with the Object—as stated in its Letters Patent—of carrying on the "instruction and practice of meditation, the study of philosophy and religion and the performance of charitable works in Canada.”

The Centre's founder was the Canadian Buddhist monk, the Venerable Ananda Bodhi, who in1965 had recently returned to Canada after ordination in Burma in 1958, extensive training in South-East Asia and comprehensive teaching of meditation in Britain from 1961-1965. Subsequently re-ordained in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and enthroned as Karma Tenzin Dorje Namgyal Rinpoche in 1971, he frequently taught and guided retreats at the Dharma Centre of Canada until his passing in 2003.

During the early years of the Centre's existence, its members welcomed the first Tibetan refugees to Canada (1970) and also invited and sponsored the first visit to the West of two Tibetan spiritual leaders: His Holiness Sakya Trizen (May, 1974), and His Holiness the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa (October, 1974), helping to pave the way for many other Tibetan Lamas to visit North America and establish their own centres here.

This gave rise to the construction of sacred monuments on its retreat property in Kinmount with the first Tibetan stupa (1974) in the Americas, built by Peter Boag under the guidance of Karma Thinley Rinpoche who had accompanied the first wave of Tibetan refugees to Ontario. In due course, a Burmese pagoda (1983) and statue of the Buddha (2001) were built by Sayadaw U Thila Wunta (Namgyal Rinpoche's first teacher) and a Sri Lankan dagoba (1996-97) was built by the Ven. Namgyal Rinpoche's students in his honour. After his passing, some of his ashes were placed within it and also in the Tibetan stupa.

As well as supporting the teachings of its founder, the Dharma Centre has always hosted other teachers of various spiritual paths and traditions, including innovative scientists, artists and healers. Since its inception, many of the Ven. Namgyal Rinpoche's students and graduates of the Centre's program of courses and retreats began establishing other centres across Canada, the United States and many other countries in the world.

Dharma Centre founder

Namgyal Rinpoche, Founding Teacher. 1931-2003.

Ven. Namgyal Rinpoche (Leslie George Dawson) was born in Toronto, Canada in 1931 to parents of Irish-Scottish descent. In his late teens he attended a Christian seminary in Toronto followed by further studies in philosophy and psychology at the University of Michigan. He then became involved in the socialist youth movement in Canada, culminating in a visit to Russia to address a youth conference in Moscow in 1956.

Directly after, he travelled to England where he explored both the Western Mysteries and the teaching of the Buddha and began practicing meditation. While there he met his first teacher, the Burmese Mahathera, the Venerable Sayadaw U Thila Wunta and soon joined him in Bodh Gaya, India, where Sayadaw gave him the novice ordination and the name Ananda. Following Sayadaw to Rangoon, Burma, on Dec. 21, 1958 at the Shwedagon, he was given the higher ordination and the name Bhikkhu Ananda Bodhi. After intensive meditation and studies in Burma, Thailand and Sri Lanka, he received the title ‘Teacher of Tranquillity and Insight Meditation’.

At the invitation of the English Sangha Trust, the Venerable Ananda Bodhi returned to England in 1961 to be their Resident Teacher. That same year he was a special guest speaker at the Fifth International Congress of Psychotherapists in London where he met Julian Huxley, Anna Freud and R.D. Laing, among other notable figures. He spent the next several years giving extensive teaching in England and also established a retreat centre in that country as well as in Scotland. He returned to Canada in 1964 for a short visit and began giving classes in Toronto. He returned again in 1965 and began teaching there on a regular basis and, in 1966, subsequently formed the Dharma Centre in Toronto. Soon after, a 400-acre property was purchased near Kinmount, Ontario, for the purpose of study-meditation retreats (and held in a Trust until 1972, when the Dharma Centre of Canada became a Charitable Corporation).

In the next five years the Bhikkhu (as he was called by his students then) taught mostly in Toronto and at the Kinmount retreat centre. During this time, he also travelled widely and taught in North America and abroad, accompanied by many of his students. While visiting Tibetan monasteries in India and Sikkim in 1968, he met the heads of the major Schools of Tibetan Buddhism: His Holiness the Dalai Lama, H.H. the 16th Karmapa, H.H. Sakya Trizen and H.H. Dudjom Rinpoche, as well as many other masters of Tibetan Buddhism.

After their very first meeting in Rumteck monastery, the Venerable Ananda Bodhi said that H.H. the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa had greeted him like an old friend and seated him beside him on the same level. On a return visit in 1969, he received full ordination in the Kagyu Lineage and the name Karma Tenzin Dorje Namgyal Rinpoche. In the Spring of 1971, in Green River, Ontario, on instructions from H.H. the 16th Karmapa, the Venerable Karma Thinley Rinpoche formally enthroned Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche.

On one of his visits to H.H. the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa and to H.H. Sakya Trizen, the Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche invited each of them to visit the Dharma Centre of Canada, resulting in their first historic visits to the West. Several years later, Khen Rinpoche of the Nyingma School, visited him at his residence in Kinmount, Ontario, and recognized him as an emanation of White Manjusri.

Until his passing in 2003, Namgyal Rinpoche continued to travel throughout the world giving teaching in different countries, as well as at centres established by his students in North America, Great Britain, Europe, Japan, New Zealand and Australia. His dedication to the liberation of all that live, along with his interest in all formations, including this planet and its flora and fauna, was as tireless as it was vast. A master of Mahamudra, he was unique in his ability to encompass and bridge traditional and contemporary paths of liberation from suffering and the causes of suffering while transmitting the path of enlightenment in universal terms for the benefit of all beings and the world.

Namgyal Rinpoche’s teaching can be read in the publications by Bodhi Publishing, a non-profit, charitable organization dedicated to publishing books on universal awakening as transmitted by Namgyal Rinpoche for the benefit of all sentient beings.