The Freedom Place podcast is a platform for distributing the teachings of Traktung Khepa. Spiritual adept, visionary, poet, farmer, Traktung Khepa is an American-born sage who has taught students in America, Europe, and Cuba since 1990. For 30 years he has guided Tsogyelgar, a contemplative community outside Ann Arbor, Michigan. Equally able to explore the most esoteric aspects and methods of the Tantric path or discuss Existentialism, Santeria, Alchemy, Political Philosophy, or Art History, t.k.’s style of teaching is immediate and relevant.
As a child, t.k. traveled with his parents from Marrakesh to Istanbul exploring modern and ancient cultures, museums, churches, whirling dervishes, gypsy caves, healers in the Black Forest, and mysteries of Greek ruins. As a teen he had encounters with spiritual aspirants and adepts of every sort from Jesuit priests and Franciscan monks to Krishnamurti, 32nd degree Freemasons, Sufi and Zen masters and more. At the same time he picnicked on the White House lawn with Reagan and joked with Nixon and Kissinger as they played Happy Birthday for his mother on the piano.
t.k’s lifelong passion for exploring spiritual traditions and life’s meaning has seamlessly melded with his profound realization accomplished through the non-monastic Tantric path. The Adept Thinley Norbu Rinpoche repeatedly encouraged him share his wisdom and realization to, “Help Westerners clarify the inner meanings of Tantra without distortions.”
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The Freedom Place podcast is a platform for distributing the teachings of Traktung Khepa. Spiritual adept, visionary, poet, farmer, Traktung Khepa is an American-born sage who has taught students in America, Europe, and Cuba since 1990. For 30 years he has guided Tsogyelgar, a contemplative community outside Ann Arbor, Michigan. Equally able to explore the most esoteric aspects and methods of the Tantric path or discuss Existentialism, Santeria, Alchemy, Political Philosophy, or Art History, t.k.’s style of teaching is immediate and relevant.
As a child, t.k. traveled with his parents from Marrakesh to Istanbul exploring modern and ancient cultures, museums, churches, whirling dervishes, gypsy caves, healers in the Black Forest, and mysteries of Greek ruins. As a teen he had encounters with spiritual aspirants and adepts of every sort from Jesuit priests and Franciscan monks to Krishnamurti, 32nd degree Freemasons, Sufi and Zen masters and more. At the same time he picnicked on the White House lawn with Reagan and joked with Nixon and Kissinger as they played Happy Birthday for his mother on the piano.
t.k’s lifelong passion for exploring spiritual traditions and life’s meaning has seamlessly melded with his profound realization accomplished through the non-monastic Tantric path. The Adept Thinley Norbu Rinpoche repeatedly encouraged him share his wisdom and realization to, “Help Westerners clarify the inner meanings of Tantra without distortions.”
In this recording, Traktung Rinpoche graciously discusses nothingness as the essence of reality.
We are blessed to have yet another sublime teaching to enlighten our minds. Enjoy!
One way that we approach the understanding of nothingness from a Western religious context is the conversion of St. Paul on the road to Damascus where he fell down and was blinded by brilliant light. Meister Eckhart’s description of this gives us some crucial insight into this Divine mystery:
"Paul rose from the ground and with open eyes saw nothing. I think this text has a fourfold sense. One is that when he rose up from the ground with open eyes, he saw Nothing, and the Nothing was God; for when he saw God, he calls that Nothing. The second: when he got up, he saw nothing but God. The third: in all things he saw nothing but God. The fourth: when he saw God, he saw all things as nothing."[1]
These four statements about what St. Paul meant are all correct and true simultaneously. This is what is meant and understood by Divine nothingness. [1] Meister Eckhart, The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, trans. Maurice O’C. Walshe (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2009), 137.
The Freedom Place
The Freedom Place podcast is a platform for distributing the teachings of Traktung Khepa. Spiritual adept, visionary, poet, farmer, Traktung Khepa is an American-born sage who has taught students in America, Europe, and Cuba since 1990. For 30 years he has guided Tsogyelgar, a contemplative community outside Ann Arbor, Michigan. Equally able to explore the most esoteric aspects and methods of the Tantric path or discuss Existentialism, Santeria, Alchemy, Political Philosophy, or Art History, t.k.’s style of teaching is immediate and relevant.
As a child, t.k. traveled with his parents from Marrakesh to Istanbul exploring modern and ancient cultures, museums, churches, whirling dervishes, gypsy caves, healers in the Black Forest, and mysteries of Greek ruins. As a teen he had encounters with spiritual aspirants and adepts of every sort from Jesuit priests and Franciscan monks to Krishnamurti, 32nd degree Freemasons, Sufi and Zen masters and more. At the same time he picnicked on the White House lawn with Reagan and joked with Nixon and Kissinger as they played Happy Birthday for his mother on the piano.
t.k’s lifelong passion for exploring spiritual traditions and life’s meaning has seamlessly melded with his profound realization accomplished through the non-monastic Tantric path. The Adept Thinley Norbu Rinpoche repeatedly encouraged him share his wisdom and realization to, “Help Westerners clarify the inner meanings of Tantra without distortions.”
