About

Orgyen Yenten Dorje

A lay practitioner in a working life.

My refuge name is Orgyen Yenten Dorje. I took it in Nepal in September 2011, in the same week I first met His Eminence Dzogchen Kenpo Choga Rinpoche. He gave it to me. I sign it at the bottom of everything on this site.

Civil name Ilya Kravtsov. Forty. Based in Barcelona. On rotation as captain of a private motoryacht in the Mediterranean. Baltic sailing boats first, then commercial deck work, then mate, then chief officer, then captain's ticket in 2014. Twelve years in command. Also, in parallel, doing a master's at the University of South Wales.

The practice, briefly

I began at twenty-four, in 2010, on the Buddhist Leadership Exchange Program in Thailand. Theravada immersion. From there I went to India — ashrams, yoga, sitting practice — and started travelling to the places the tradition names. Mongolia. Buryatia. Altai. Tibet more than once, including Lhasa and the Dzogchen Valley. Nepal many times. Burma, Cambodia, Borobudur in Java, India again and again. The four sacred places of the Buddha — Lumbini, Bodh Gaya, Kushinagar, Sarnath — I sat quietly at each, on my own.

I met Rinpoche in September 2011, took refuge with him in that week, and have seen him roughly thirty times in the fifteen years since — in retreat, on pilgrimage in Nepal, India, Bhutan and Taiwan, and in the plain sitting-with that a real teacher-student relationship is mostly made of.

I have studied across levels. Theravada groundwork first, Mahayana sutras and Śāntideva next, then the Nyingma preliminaries under Rinpoche. The traditions themselves teach that these are graded expressions of one intention; that is my working understanding, and no work I have done in any of the three has contradicted it. I am currently inside the Longchen Nyingtik Ngöndro — outer accumulations complete, inner accumulations underway — and I aim to finish the inner in the next two years.

What this site is

A place for personal writing on the practice. Some pieces are biographical — about my teacher and the lineage. Some are practical — sutrayana-level notes on how the traditions hold up under contact with a working life. Some are reading lists and reflections.

Nothing on the site is instruction in Vajrayana or Dzogchen practice. That is deliberate. Those teachings are transmitted person to person, under specific conditions, and it is not my place to write about them in public. What you will find here is the sutrayana layer — the four thoughts, patience, the six pāramitās, mindfulness, breath — the layer that any Buddhist tradition holds in common, and the layer that has done the most concrete work in me over fifteen years.

Everything is offered freely. Nothing here substitutes for direct instruction from a qualified teacher — a point Rinpoche makes tirelessly. If a paragraph draws a reader toward the primary texts, the lineage, or the actual practice, it has done its work.

Editorial notes

• Where an essay describes my teacher, I try to separate what I have verified from what I have received as a claim of the tradition, and to name the difference.
• Doctrinal points are anchored to primary texts — most often the Dhammapada, Śāntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra, Patrul Rinpoche's Words of My Perfect Teacher, and Gampopa's Jewel Ornament of Liberation.
• Translations of Sanskrit and Tibetan terms follow the conventions I have received in my own study; other schools use other conventions.
• Anecdotes from my seafaring years, when they involve people, come from the mate and chief-officer years. The captain years are described in the register of weather and machinery, out of respect for the confidentiality every command owes.
• The site is offered under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0. Quote and share freely; commercial republication needs a note.

Contact

For correspondence about a specific article, or a factual correction, the easiest route is through the contact page on my civil site, ilya-kravtsov.com.

May whatever merit arises from these writings ripen for the long life and undiminished activity of all authentic holders of the wisdom lineages, and for the swift awakening of all beings without exception.