Ep. 627 – The Extraordinary Family of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche with David Silver

Longtime friends David Silver and Raghu Markus discuss Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche and the legacy of Dzogchen maintained by his four sons. Grab a copy of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche’s memoirs, Blazing Splendor , for a deeper look into his magnificent life. This time on Mindrolling, Raghu and David have a discussion about: The life and teachings of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, one of the greatest Dzogchen meditation masters of the 20th century Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche’s sons and how they continue to spread Dzogchen wisdom to the West Core principles of Dzogchen philosophy, including the nature of mind and nondual awareness Understanding cognitive emptiness and the illusion of a solid identity Why contemplating death and impermanence can be a path to liberation Working consciously with loss and mortality before the end of life Not falling into the trap of believing this life is permanent Viewing dreams and meditation as parallel practices for awakening The patience and discipline required to form new spiritual habits Living fully while recognizing the inevitability of death Learn about dealing with the bardo of dying in the book In Love with the World by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche or hop into The Bardo Guidebook by Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche About David Silver: David Silver is the former co-host of the Mindrolling podcast. He is a filmmaker and director, most recently coming out with Brilliant Disguise . Brilliant Disguise tells the unique story of a group of inspired Western spiritual seekers from the 60s, who in meeting the great American teacher, Ram Dass, followed him to India to meet his Guru, Neem Karoli Baba, familiarly known as Maharaj-ji. Two days before he left his body, Maharaj-ji instructed K.C. Tewari to take care of the Westerners, which he did resolutely until the day he died in 1997. Silver’s charting MGM/UA/Warners film, “The Compleat Beatles” is the critically acclaimed biopic movie about history’s most famous band. The term ‘rockumentary’ was first applied to this two-hour movie. Rolling Stone recently described the film as a “masterwork.” Silver’s Warner Brothers’ feature film, “No Nukes” also started the whole trend of music/activism feature documentaries. “Urgyen and his sons and all Dzogchen people believe that dreaming is as important as meditating. Dreams are fluid, anything can happen in a dream. You can fly, you can walk through a wall. What Mingyur says is that is the perfect analogy for life itself; life is as fluid and as transparent as that dream, but we don’t know it because we think it’s solid because we can’t put our finger through our hand.” –David Silver See Privacy Policy at and California Privacy Notice at .

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Ep. 627 – The Extraordinary Family of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche with David Silver is an episode from Mindrolling with Raghu Markus by Mindrolling.

This episode is 01:06:05 long.

This episode was published on Jan 2, 2026.

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