Sogyal Rinpoche

Sogyal Rinpoche (1947-2019) was a Tibetan Dzogchen teacher whose 1992 bestseller The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying became one of the most widely read introductions to Tibetan Buddhism in the West, selling millions of copies.

Drawing on the bardo (intermediate-state) teachings of the Tibetan tradition, the book presents the recognition of the “nature of mind”—the innate, sky-like awareness beneath thought—as the key to living well and dying consciously.

Sogyal popularized the Dzogchen pointing-out of pure awareness (rigpa) for a mass audience, alongside practices for navigating death and the after-death states with lucidity rather than fear. (His later years were marked by serious misconduct allegations that led to his resignation; the teachings he transmitted nonetheless reached an enormous readership.) For the mind-power lineage, Sogyal is significant as the figure who carried the Tibetan “nature of mind” and bardo-awareness teachings furthest into mainstream Western consciousness.

The core message—that beneath ordinary thought lies a luminous, ever-present awareness that one can recognize and rest in—feeds directly into the modern “you are awareness / the witness behind thought” current shared with nondual teachers.

His emphasis on consciously navigating the dream-like bardo states, where mind’s projections appear vividly real, reinforces the lineage theme that experienced reality (in life, dream, and death alike) is a display of mind to be met with trained, lucid awareness rather than passively undergone.