Wisdom Beyond

Journey to Bhutan

The Living Exchange

Now confirmed: Khendrup Rinpoche travels with us

Tentatively Full · Waitlist Open

Dates
Nov 2 to 10, 2026
Duration
8 nights · 9 days
Cohort
12 travelers

"The nature of mind is the light of all lights."~ Longchenpa

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The Invitation

We warmly invite you to journey with us to Bhutan, a living exchange of transmission and return.

We each come for our own reasons. Some of us are called to be changed so that what we build in the West, at the frontier of AI, can arise from a deeper ground. Some of us are called by the lineage itself, the living Dzogchen transmission and the pull of practice in the land where it was composed. Some of us simply feel the call before we can name it. All of these reasons are true, and all of them are connected: the inner recognition, the lineage, and the work we bring back to the world are one movement seen from different angles.

Some places change us. Bhutan is one of the last places on Earth where the original transmission of Buddhist wisdom remains fully intact, carried in an unbroken lineage from the ancient masters to the monks practicing in its mountain monasteries today. Nothing lost, nothing left behind. To walk this land is to receive what it has been holding for twelve centuries, and we go trusting that what we receive there will change who we are. That change is the point. We return home re-tuned, and the way we build, the impact we make, arises from that deeper place.

A journey like this is rarely possible. Bhutan holds its sacred sites closely, and through the sponsorship of our root lineage connection, Khendrup Rinpoche, and the loving preparation of his wife Chonying, we are welcomed beyond that threshold: into 1,200-year-old lhakhangs, the caves and transmission sites of the ancient masters, the valleys where Longchenpa composed the Trilogy of Rest, and residence within the monastery itself. We travel as guests of the lineage. Khendrup Rinpoche has confirmed he will travel with us along our journey across Bhutan, a rare blessing.

And what we receive, we return. At Sangchen Ogyen Tsuklag Monastery, in collaboration with the Dharma Design Lab, we enter a true exchange with the monks who carry this tradition: we offer what we know of AI and contemporary technology, and they offer what they know of engaging with anything, technology included, from the ground of spiritual practice. Each teaches what the other is reaching for. Receiving and giving, learning and teaching, East and West, the spiritual and the technological: this is the cycle the pilgrimage turns on. We believe this meeting place, where spirit meets technology, is the edge of the new paradigm. What might we co-create in the world from that integration?

We go to be changed, so that we may change the world.

Taktsang, the Tiger's Nest monastery, held on its cliff face in golden morning light above the Paro valley.
Taktsang · Tiger's Nest · Paro Valley
Journey Overview

The Call of Bhutan

This is a nine-day journey of reciprocal transmission offered in one of the most sacred landscapes in the Himalayas. Guided by Longchenpa's Dzogchen teachings and the Trilogy of Rest, this pilgrimage creates space to deepen our presence and perspective through practice and the living transmission of place, and from that ground we create for the world.

Two boats leave the same shore one degree apart and make landfall on different continents. So it is with us. A small change at the source changes everything that follows from it. You create only from the frequency you are at, and when that frequency shifts, what you create arrives somewhere entirely new. These nine days are that one degree.

Days 3 and 4 are given to the Dharma Design Lab at Sangchen Ogyen Tsuklag Monastery, the home monastery of Khendrup Rinpoche, a teacher and root lineage connection for Wisdom Beyond. There we enter a living exchange with the resident monks, receiving their way of meeting technology through a spiritual lens and offering, in return, a practice of technology in service of awakening. We say more of this further on.

As we move through Bhutan's mountains, monasteries, and living spiritual culture, the outer journey becomes a support for the inner one: an invitation to rest more fully in awareness, and to let body, perception, relationship, and sacred place become part of the path of realization.

Bhutan is unlike anywhere else. A country that measures its prosperity in happiness, where monasteries still hum with living practice, where the mountains feel like presences. Over nine days, we will move through Thimphu, Trongsa, the Phobjikha valley, and Paro, staying in mountain resorts and valley lodges, meditating in 1,200-year-old lhakhangs, trekking to Tiger's Nest, and sharing meals with local farming families.

This is a small and intentional group: twelve travelers held by three facilitators. We welcome both those who have traveled inward with us before and those arriving for the first time.

About Longchenpa

Longchenpa (1308–1364) is considered one of the greatest scholars, philosophers, and yogis in Tibetan history. Revered as the "Second Buddha" within the Nyingma school, he is best known for his profound systematization of Dzogchen, the Great Perfection. The valleys we will walk through are the very valleys where Longchenpa composed the Trilogy of Rest during his years of exile, giving form to the most direct pointing instructions in the entire Dzogchen lineage: that our nature is already awake, already luminous, already free, and that practice is a resting into what has never been absent. The teachings he composed there form the living heart of what we now call the Heart Essence, or Nyingthig: the most direct transmission of Dzogchen, the recognition of mind's primordial nature.

A dzong resting on a forested hilltop as morning mist holds the valley below.
Morning mist holds the valley
The Journey

Day by Day

Each day rests in one movement of the Trilogy of Rest

The theme of rest in this journey is the most radical act available to us: resting into the vast intelligence already streaming through us, the primordial awareness that Longchenpa described as the light of all lights, the ground from which all creation arises and into which it naturally returns. Wisdom Beyond specializes in supporting people to work through their limiting beliefs and open their energetic fields, so that transmission can actually land, allowing wisdom to permeate all that we do.

This is why we slow down to speed up. It is in stillness, not in striving, that insight tends to arrive. When the effortful, focused mind quiets, the brain's default mode network comes forward, the same network research links to creativity, integration, and the sudden clarity of an insight. The rest of these days is not a pause from the work. It is the condition that makes the deepest work possible.

So the days hold two movements as one. We rest, and we create. We follow the Trilogy of Rest inward through body, mind, perception, emotion, and relationship, and at the monastery we turn that same presence outward into the Dharma Design Lab, where the technical and the spiritual, the analytical and the intuitive, meet and inform each other. The integration is the point.

Day 1 · Nov 2 · Paro → Thimphu

Arrival and Orientation

Entering the pilgrimage field

Overnight · Himalayan Keys Forest Resort (4★)

The journey begins the moment you land. We arrive into Paro and transfer to Thimphu. The day is spacious, intended for settling after travel and meeting the land. In the evening we gather as a group, orient to the nine days ahead, and introduce the practice frame: outer travel in service of inner arrival.

Paro International Airport
A dramatic mountain approach and gateway to Bhutan's serene valleys.
Thimphu
Bhutan's cultural and administrative heart, blending tradition with gentle modernity.
Buddha Dordenma
Monumental bronze-gilded statue offering sweeping valley views.
Day 2 · Nov 3 · Thimphu → Trongsa via Dochula Pass

Resting in Body

Letting the body become a ground for practice

Overnight · Yangkhil Resort

We drive east to Trongsa, crossing the Dochula Pass at 3,100m with its 108 chortens and Himalayan views. A walking meditation pause at Lamperi Park. We arrive at Sangchen Ogyen Tsuklag Monastery and settle into monastic rhythms for the next three nights.

Dochula Pass
A ridge of 108 chortens; crystalline views of the Himalayan peaks on clear days.
Sangchen Ogyen Tsuklag Monastery
The home of Khendrup Rinpoche, a root lineage connection for Wisdom Beyond.
Day 3 · Nov 4 · Trongsa · The Monastery

Resting in Mind

Seeing thoughts without following them

Overnight · Willing Resort

Our first full day at the monastery of Khendrup Rinpoche, and the beginning of the living exchange. We work alongside the resident monks in the Dharma Design Lab, bringing our technical and creative skill into their world while they bring us theirs: centuries of practice in carrying wisdom outward through form. The making and the resting are one rhythm. Practice sessions open the first movement of meditation, short sits guided toward seeing the activity of mind without following it, so that what we then create arises from a quieter, clearer ground.

Day 4 · Nov 5 · Trongsa · The Monastery

Resting in the Nature of Mind

Direct recognition of awareness itself

Overnight · Willing Resort

The deepest day of the exchange. In the Dharma Design Lab, the work moves into creation: each project takes shape from the ground of practice rather than apart from it, the technical and the contemplative meeting in the same act. We also keep a day of mostly silence and very simple practice. We hold a meditation session in the 1,200-year-old Lhakhang. The invitation is to look for the one who is aware, and then rest in what cannot be found as an object. There is nothing to achieve here. There is only recognition, and from that recognition, what we make changes too.

Day 5 · Nov 6 · Trongsa → Phobjikha Valley

Resting in Perception

Letting appearances self-liberate

Overnight · Phuntsho Yangkhil Resort

We travel to the Phobjikha valley, stopping to visit the green tea plantation. Upon arrival, we offer butter lamps at Gangtey Goemba and visit the Black-necked Crane Centre. The valley's open landscape and living monastery traditions are themselves the field of practice.

Gangtey Goemba
A prominent Nyingma monastery closely associated with Bhutan's Pema Lingpa lineage.
Black-necked Crane Centre
Conservation site dedicated to the elegant migratory cranes, symbolic of Bhutan's wildlife stewardship.
Day 6 · Nov 7 · Phobjikha Valley

Resting in Emotion

Making room for joy, grief, devotion, and longing

Overnight · Namgayling & Kichu Resorts

Emotion is part of the path. A slow, open day in the valley. We walk the Gangtey nature trail and visit the ancient Ngenglung Drechagling Lhakhang, one of Longchenpa's eight sacred sites in Bhutan. We share lunch at a local farm home and take part in shared contemplative practice.

Gangtey Nature Trail
Approximately 3 km round-trip across the valley (altitude 2,900–3,000 m). Easy, mostly flat, deeply scenic.
Ngenglung Drechagling Lhakhang
A small, ancient lhakhang identified as one of Longchenpa's eight Lings, carrying the full weight of his 14th-century footprint in Bhutan.
Day 7 · Nov 8 · Gangtey → Paro

Resting in Relationship

Pilgrimage as a shared field

Overnight · Tenzinling & Metta Resorts

Today we explore how awareness lives in community. The drive back to Paro is itself a practice, noticing how presence shifts when held alongside others. In the evening, we gather for brief pair sharing followed by a collective sit: offering one another the same quality of listening we have been bringing to the land, spacious, unhurried, letting what arises in the other be complete as it is.

Day 8 · Nov 9 · Paro · Taktsang Trek

Resting in Sacred Place

The land and lineage as teachers

Overnight · Tenzinling & Metta Resorts

We trek to Taktsang, Tiger's Nest, the 17th-century monastery perched on a cliff face above the Paro valley, Bhutan's most revered pilgrimage site. The climb is approximately three hours round-trip, held as a walking meditation. We enter the sacred cave beneath the monastery, where Guru Rinpoche practiced. We sit in silence and receive the transmissions. We offer butter lamps.

Day 9 · Nov 10 · Paro · Departure

Integration and Return

Bringing rest home

The deepening continues as you board your flight. We gather one last time before departure to make a dedication. Each person names one quality, one taste, one recognition, one softening they wish to carry forward and bring back to their work.

"Vast! Spacious! Released as it stands!
With neither realization nor non-realization; experience consummate!
No mind! It is open to infinity." ~ Longchenpa
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Monks walk a monastery courtyard past a long row of painted prayer wheels in terracotta and rust.
Prayer wheels · the original technology
Days 3 & 4

The Dharma Design Lab

Technology is anything that magnifies human intent.

Prayer wheels, prayer flags, sacred art have always been technologies, carrying devotional energy outward into the world. The Dharma Design Lab asks whether the tools of our contemporary moment can be held in that same spirit.

Nestled within a living monastic community in Bhutan, the lab is a rare experiment at the edge of two worlds. The monastery is home to monks from their teens to their thirties, young practitioners rooted in an unbroken lineage of Dzogchen wisdom and equally present in the digital world. The lab sees that presence as a creative opening. Drawing on centuries of visual and ritual art as living transmission technology, it explores how new expressions can be generated from that deep root, and how the tools of our age can become vehicles for moving wisdom outward with purpose and integrity.

Creating from the Dharma, for the Dharma

On Days 3 and 4, we work alongside the resident monks of Sangchen Ogyen Tsuklag Monastery through the Dharma Design Lab, an initiative founded by Mikey Siegel to support monastic communities with creative and technical projects. A rare chance to give to a living lineage while deepening our own practice in the place where that lineage breathes.

Before arrival, participants meet for two or three preparatory calls to develop project ideas together. The work itself is framed as an extension of practice: digital media and AI-supported design tools are brought into conversation with what the monks already carry: texts, prayers, rituals, duties, lived experience. Each session opens with prayers and the Heart Sutra. The technology serves the practice.

The first day orients everyone together. The second moves into creation: each monk develops a creative direction rooted in their own practice or lineage, working toward a meaningful digital artifact or the beginning of a Dharmic AI agent trained on the monastery's own texts. A core cohort of 12 monks works alongside retreat participants across 6 computers. A portion of tuition flows directly back to the monastery.

This gathering is for those who hold both worlds, working at the intersection of technology, AI, and contemplative practice, and sincerely asking what genuine integration looks like. Something new: rooted in a living lineage, fully fluent in contemporary life.

The Dharma Design Lab is a living experiment in what becomes possible when contemplative wisdom and contemporary tools meet in genuine partnership. We are bringing curiosity, skill, care, and an openness to learn in true exchange.

This is the practice of interbeing and mutual reciprocity, the recognition that nothing exists in isolation, that every act of receiving is at once an act of giving. We become part of a living exchange in which technology, spiritual practice, land, lineage, and people are mutually arising, mutually sustaining one another.

"Whatever you do, always apply three essential points: undertake the action with the intention of doing so for the good of all beings; execute it with perfect concentration, free of attachment to concepts of subject, object, and action; and dedicate the merit you have created to the enlightenment of all beings." ~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
The Cohort

Who This Is For

  • You are a leader, visionary, researcher, technologist, innovator, or system designer, drawn to cross-pollinate and learn from one another's diverse brilliance.
  • You live at the meeting place of ancient wisdom and paradigm-shifting inquiry, drawn to the questions being asked of us as we discover what it means to be truly human in these times.
  • You dwell at the nexus of impact, technology, and spirit, and feel called to bring these into deeper alignment.
  • You are drawn to genuine exchange, to give and receive from the land and the monastery, and to be changed in the process.
  • You are called to become the next version of who you are, and the next version of the collective, to create aligned impact in the world.

The journey includes the ascent to Taktsang, the Tiger's Nest, so a degree of fitness for walking at altitude is needed. Before we travel, we gather for two or three preparatory calls, so that we arrive already in relationship.

The Return

What You'll Carry Home

A journey like this is not measured by the distance traveled, but by who returns. You set out as one version of yourself and come back as another, carrying what the land and the monastery worked into you, and ready to let it move through your life.

Awakening in service of technology, technology in service of awakening

We receive, from the land and the monastery, the transmission of how to approach technology through a spiritual lens. We offer, in return, the capacity for technology to become a conduit for spiritual awakening. You return able to build and create from this meeting, with a clearer lens and a steadier, more integrated ground beneath it.

A deeper recognition of mind

Days of practice in the valleys where Longchenpa composed the Trilogy of Rest leave a felt sense of the awareness that was always present, one you can return to long after you come home.

A lineage that reshapes you

To be welcomed as a guest into an unbroken transmission, into its lhakhangs, caves, and monastery life, changes how you understand yourself. It becomes part of who you are, quietly reorienting how you move and what you give to the world.

A deeply connected cohort for continued impact

You return woven into a group of brilliant, diverse people who met you in the same depth, and who keep deepening and creating alongside you long after. A living field, an ongoing collaboration, that you continue to make meaningful work from, together.

You arrive with questions.You return with ancient wisdom informing fresh perspectives.

Crossing a suspension bridge over a turquoise river in the Bhutan valley
Crossing the threshold
Investment

Your Journey

Nine days held completely. To give and to receive are one movement here.

November 2 to 10, 2026 · 8 nights, 9 days in Bhutan

Journey Total

Shared accommodation · $9,900 per person two per room

Private accommodation · $12,800 per person Limited Availability

A $5,000 deposit reserves your cohort spot. Given the nature of the bookings in Bhutan, the deposit is non-refundable. The balance is due September 1, 2026, and interest-free payment plans are available.

Included in Your Journey

Nine days of comprehensive facilitation, integrated practice sessions, and the Dharma Design Lab
Included
All accommodation
Mountain resorts and valley lodges across Thimphu, Trongsa, the Phobjikha valley, and Paro
Included
All meals throughout the journey
Farm lunches, monastery hospitality, and shared tables
Included
Private guides, private drivers, and transportation throughout
Included
All entry fees, monastery permits, and visa
Included
All practice refreshments, picnics, and butter lamps
Included

Arranged Separately, at Cost

International airfare to Bangkok
Arranged independently from anywhere in the world; we can help coordinate
At cost
Group flight Bangkok to Paro
Roundtrip, arranged together as a group by our local guide
At cost
Bhutan Sustainable Development Fee
Arranged together as a group by our local guide · $100 per night
At cost

Laundry, spa, and gratuities are arranged individually.

Scholarships and Work Trade

We believe in opening the way for those special beings making aligned impact in the world, and we do not want cost to be what holds you back. A limited number of partial scholarships and work-trade arrangements may be available. If finances are a barrier for you, we warmly invite you to be in touch so we can explore what might be possible together.

And if you feel moved to help others join, you are welcome to contribute to the scholarship fund. Every contribution widens the circle of who can be here, and what we give comes back to us. To contribute, donate here through our fiscal nonprofit sponsor, Coven. Donations are 501(c)(3) tax-deductible.

To ask about a scholarship or work trade, reach us at connect@wisdombeyond.com.

All travel details for the 8 nights and 9 days have been lovingly prepared for us by Chonying, wife of Khendrup Rinpoche.

Raiya, Kristen, and Raina among the redwoods
Raina · Raiya · Kristen
The Facilitators

Led by the Wisdom Beyond co-founders

This journey is led by Raiya, Kristen, and Raina, three facilitators with five decades of combined experience in transformational practices, collective intelligence methodologies, and pioneering work in AI and living systems, including founders and lead facilitators of the Luminous Awareness Institute, and the head of AI/ML Strategy and Research Collaboration at Google X.

Read the facilitator biographies

The Threshold

We go to be changed,
so that we may change the world.

The cohort is tentatively full. If you feel the call, we warmly welcome you to join the waitlist, and we will be in touch the moment a spot opens. We trust that the right beings are joining us on this journey.

Join the Waitlist