Q&A: Venerable Losang Gendun on In-Depth Meditation Training

In this Q&A session, Venerable Losang Gendun introduces his new teaching series—a unique course that offers in-depth training in Mahayana insight meditation—beginning Fall 2023. Click here to learn more about his new series, IDMT.

This four-year online course will provide students with an opportunity for long term, in-depth support in their meditative development. Students will actively train in both shamatha and vipassana, gradually investigating the nature of self and phenomena. The class will explore how we project layers of ignorance onto our perception and how to challenge these through reasoning and direct insight. Above all, this course is a practical one; it aims to help students navigate their meditative lives successfully, both on and off the cushion. 

Recording of Q&A Session

Ven. Losang Gendun of IDMT introduces the series and answers people’s questions.

Short Videos

Short Video: Focus of In-Depth Meditation Training
Ven. Losang Gendun of IDMT discusses the power of shamatha (calming/enhance the mind) and vipassana (seeing directly) in helping to liberate us from suffering. He also talks about the benefits, limitations, and roles of Buddhist scriptural tradition and reasoning on the path to enlightenment.

Short Video: What is Meditation – Really?
Ven. Losang Gendun of IDMT shares how meditation on and off the cushion create a beautiful cycle that helps us learn how to see the world anew, with curiosity and delight.

Recording of Ven. Gendun's Teaching from Jun 2023

And if you would like to listen to Venerable Gendun’s teaching on “The Life of the Buddha According to the Sutras,” please click here.

About the Teacher

Buddhist teacher Ven. Losang Gendun is a Dutch monk.

He previously worked in IT, refugee organisations and commercial management. After having practiced mainly Theravada Buddhism for twenty years, he became a monk in the Tibetan tradition in 2006.

At Nalanda monastery in France, he studied Buddhist philosophy for nine years, and practised under the guidance of several teachers, such as H.H. the Dalai Lama, Geshe Losang Jamphal, Ganden Tripa Lobsang Tenzin Rinpoche and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. In total, Ven. Gendun spent over four years in retreat, and he specialises in Tibetan Lojong and Mahamudra methods, alongside Vipassana-shamatha meditation as taught in the Theravada Forest Tradition.

Ven. Losang Gendun has been teaching for fifteen years in the Netherlands, France, Monaco, the US and UK. He is active in the area of interreligious communication, and collaborates closely with a number of Benedictine monasteries and a Turkish Mevlânâ Sufi organization.

His main aim is the translation of traditional methods in contemporary terms, to make them accessible for a Western audience. For that purpose, he founded The Buddha Project, an initiative to provide meditators with personal guidance and long-term support, in collaboration with a group of international researchers to investigate perceptional and semiotic evolution induced by contemplative practices. 

Currently, he is the resident teacher at the Maitreya Institute Amsterdam and visiting teacher of Jamyang Buddhist Centre Leeds.