ABOUT
About Us
We are a Buddhist meditation retreat center on 45 acre beautiful redwood forest in Los Gatos Mountains with giant redwood trees, running creeks, small waterfall and natural spring (our water source). Easy commute with only 30 min to the heart of Silicon Valley (Apple and Google), 30 min to the Santa Cruz beach, and 1 hour to San Francisco.
Wether you're new to meditation or a seasoned meditator, you will learn something new here, either starting your practice from scratch or advancing your practice to the next level, and there is no limit to it! Just as no one medicine can not cure all the diseases, no one mediation is "one size fits all" as every person is different. Meditation can be easy and yet illuminating, as long as you find the right one or the best one for you, at this stage of your practice.
We teach a very rich variety of different meditation techniques, from Mindfulness meditation, to Compassion meditation, Mantra meditation, Shamatha meditation and Vipassana meditation etc. We are of the Nyingma Tibetan Buddhism lineage, from the largest Buddhist Buddhist Institute in the world Larung Gar in eastern Tibet.
We offer various programs, from beginner's 4 week classes, 1 year class, to multi-year program for serious and advanced practitioners, and retreats of various lengths from one day to months.
Luminous Wisdom Meditation is 501(c) (3) non profit organization, EIN 83-3386447.
Jessica Huai
Jessica worked in the high tech industry for over 20 years and her experiences include Senior Engineering Manager at Apple, Walmart Labs, Paypal and Yahoo etc, mainly on large scale internet and cloud systems, e-commerce and machine learning. She got her M.S. in Computer Science from Purdue University,
She has been meditating since 2013 with various meditation techniques accumulating over 6000 hours of meditation by 2021, gaining enormous benefits in terms of physical health, mental strength, career development, true happiness and wisdom cultivation.
She has been under the direct guidance of two renowned meditation masters from the world's largest Buddhist Institute Larung Gar (in Tibet) Khenpo Tsultrim Lodro and Khenpo Sodargye, who were invited to US to give talks at Google, Apple, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Yale, Columbia etc in the last few years, as well as many meditation and Buddhist centers.
She is trained rigorously in the meditation program taught by Khenpo Tsultrim Lodro who visited the San Francisco bay area annually from 2015 to 2018.
She has finished Khenpo Sodargye's 4-year Program and is in the 5-year Advanced Program.
She founded Luminous Meditation in 2018 and co-founded Luminous Wisdom Meditation Retreat Center in 2020. She also co-founded the Apple Buddhist Community in 2016 when she worked at Apple.
More on Jessica at Unbelievable Journey - Jessica's Meditation Story
Bryant Liu
Bryant started meditation in 2015 and exhibited quite some talent in meditation practice and understanding of the Buddha dharma.
In April 2016 he met Khenpo Tsultrim Lodro for the first time when Khenpo Tsultrim Lodro came to the San Francisco bay area to give teachings. Khenpo gave him guidance on meditation and the dharma name of Yuan Zheng which means Dzogchen (great perfection) enlightenment. In three years he accumulated one million times of the Manjushri (wisdom) mantra. He has been practicing meditation for half an hour a day since 2015 and over 1000 hours in total.
In Dec of 2016 Bryant went on his first pilgrimage in Tibet to visit the Larung Gar Buddhist Institute. He met with both Khenpo Tsultrim Lodro and Khenpo Sodargye at Larung Gar and received teachings.
In Dec of 2017 Bryant went back to Tibet again, visited both Larung Buddhist Institute and Yarchen Gar Monastery which is the largest Buddhist meditation retreat center. He met with many high lamas at both places and received teachings and empowerments.
In 2020 he cofounded the Luminous Wisdom Meditation Retreat Center.
In 2021 he founded the MindstreamX.
Lineage
Khenpo Tsultrim Lodro is a venerable contemporary Nyingma teacher of Tibetan Buddhism based at Larung Gar, where he serves as a standing Vice Principal in charge of teaching for all the Tibetan monks and nuns, tens of thousand of them. Over the last two to three decades he has trained a large cohort of outstanding monastic students, many of whom are now teaching all around the world.
Khenpo’s teachings is well structured and organized, easy to understand yet with profound meanings. Khenpo is really good at referring to scientific studies and examples, explaining arcane dharma theories using languages and terminologies modern people are familiar with, hence Khenpo is very popular among the intellectuals. Khenpo also put equal emphasis on both theories and practices, always coupled the explanation of theories with corresponding guidance for practices.
In terms of his own practice and realization, Khenpo started practicing the highest level of Nyingmapa tantra meditation since he was 24, and his practice achievements and realization were recognized and verified three times on a one by one basis personally by his master H.H. Jigme Phunstok Rinpoche, who founded the Larung Gar and passed away in 2004.
Khenpo also has many publications in Tibetan and Chinese, and some have been translated into English. Among all the publications, the 10-volume series "Luminous Wisdom" is acclaimed as a Buddhism masterpiece which can stand the test of time, from theory to practice, with rigorous sequencing, and encompassing both sutra and tantra in harmony. The content of the series is very practical, the language is concise yet penetrating, tailoring to the needs of the modern audience and practitioners, hence becoming widely accepted and very popular.
Since 1990 Khenpo took further research into western science, philosophy, psychology etc. In the last few years Khenpo has also responded to invitations to take part in academic dialogues and give talks at tertiary institutions including Harvard University, University of Oxford, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Columbia University, George Washington University, University of Virginia, Toronto University, University of Auckland, University of Sydney and University of Melbourne. He has also accepted invitations from companies like Google and Apple to take part in activities alongside experts and scholars of science, philosophy and psychology to discuss topics central to science and Buddhism that probe the mysteries of life and mind.
Google Talk - Khenpo Tsultrim Lodro & David Presti: "The Scientist & the Monk”
Khenpo Sodargye
Khenpo Sodargye has become one of the most eminent contemporary Buddhist masters. As a Tibetan lama, a Buddhist scholar and teacher, a prolific translator into Chinese, and a modern Buddhist thinker, he is renowned across Asia and the west for his interest in the integration of traditional Buddhist teachings with global issues and modern life.
Khenpo studied the traditional course of philosophical treatises and also received the entire corpus of Tibetan esoteric Buddhist transmissions. He also served as H.H. Jigme Phuntsok Rinpoche’s main translator for Chinese disciples and was assigned by Rinpoche as the head of Chinese division at Larung Gar and in charge of teaching the Chinese deciples, including thousand of monks and nuns at Larung Gar and tens of thousands Chinese lay students in mainland China.
Khenpo has lectured extensively across China and other parts of East, South, and Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand as well as Europe and North America. He has recently given talks at a number of prestigious Universities including Peking University, Tsinghua, Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, University of Toronto, McGill University, University of Auckland, Melbourne University, National University of Singapore, National Taiwan University, University of Hong Kong and University of Gottingen.
