About
Antonia Sumbundu is an instructor with the Tergar Meditation Community and a clinical psychologist. She has practiced meditation for over 35 years, beginning formally in 1988 after attending a talk by the Dalai Lama. Her primary teachers include the 3rd Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche, Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, Chokling Rinpoche, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and Mingyur Rinpoche. Since joining Tergar in 2002, she has worked as a facilitator and instructor, leading retreats and supporting practice groups internationally. She holds an MA from the University of Copenhagen and an MSt in MBCT from the University of Oxford. Her work integrates meditation practice with clinical psychology and mental health.
Teaching focus
Sumbundu's core teaching draws on shamatha, analytical meditation, deity practice. The frame is the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition with its layered approach to sutra and tantra, but the language stays plain. Sumbundu doesn't lecture from height. The talks tend to think alongside whatever's actually present in the room. Recurring themes include bodhicitta, emptiness, and tonglen. None of those get presented as abstract ideas. They're worked into the body, into ethics, into how a practitioner shows up in family life or at work, so that the dharma stops feeling like a separate compartment. There's a steady invitation in the talks to keep practice human-sized. Sit when you can, return when you've drifted, and trust that small consistent attention does more over the years than dramatic breakthroughs. Format-wise, Sumbundu teaches in in-person, retreat, group, and the tone moves easily between guided sittings, dharma talks, and Q&A. Questions tend to get answered the way they were asked, without being reframed into something cleaner. That alone tells you a lot about how the room feels.
Background
Antonia Sumbundu is an instructor with the Tergar Meditation Community and a clinical psychologist. She has practiced meditation for over 35 years, beginning formally in 1988 after attending a talk by the Dalai Lama. Her primary teachers include the 3rd Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche, Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, Chokling Rinpoche, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and Mingyur Rinpoche. Since joining Tergar in 2002, she has worked as a facilitator and instructor, leading retreats and supporting practice groups internationally. She holds an MA from the University of Copenhagen and an MSt in MBCT from the University of Oxford. Her work integrates meditation practice with clinical psychology and mental health. Antonia Dorthea Sumbundu is an instructor for the Tergar Meditation Community, dharma teacher, clinical psychologist, and mental health specialist. She has been practicing meditation for over 35 years. Antonia was first inspired to become a meditator after seeing a segment fromThe Lion’s Roar, a film about the 16th Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, but it was in 1988 after attending a talk by the Dalai Lama that she began practicing formally. Antonia’s first Buddhist teacher was the 3rd Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche. Following his death in 1992, she studied with a variety of teachers, including Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, Chokling Rinpoche, and Tsoknyi Rinpoche. In 2002 she met Mingyur Rinpoche and began to receive teachings from him. Since the inception of Tergar, Antonia has been engaged in the community first as a facilitator and since 2016 as an instructor. She leads meditation retreats, teaches, and supports practice groups and dharma students internationally. Antonia is also Program and Clinical Director for a series of Accredited Psychotherapy Training Programs and Chair of the Board of Directors for a women’s shelter. Antonia’s long-term interest in dharma, psychology, and the application of meditation to enhance mental health and flourishing has led to her passion for bridging worlds: dharma and psychology; Buddhist wisdom and contemporary science; and meditation, spirituality, and collective trauma to name a few. She holds an MA from the University of Copenhagen and an MSt in MBCT from the University of Oxford (Oxon). Sumbundu's teaching home is Tergar, where the practice community shapes the rhythm of retreats, sittings, and dharma talks. That work sits within the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition with its layered approach to sutra and tantra, and the recurring concerns of Sumbundu's teaching, ethical foundation, steady attention, and the slow softening of habitual reactivity, echo the older texts without sounding distant from a 21st-century practitioner's life. What stands out across Sumbundu's talks isn't a single technique but a steadying tone. Practice is treated as something built slowly, in ordinary life, with care. There's room for the difficulties practitioners actually bring into the room, grief, restlessness, the body's complaints, family obligations, and the encouragement is consistent without being pushy.
Lineage
Sumbundu teaches within the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition with its layered approach to sutra and tantra. Current affiliations include Tergar. The lineage shows up less in titles than in the way Sumbundu talks about practice, with steady reference to the older Buddhist vocabulary while keeping the door open for people who've never read a sutra. Whether that framing lands as monastic or lay depends on the specific talk, but the consistent thread is care for the form without letting the form become the point.
What to expect
Sitting with Sumbundu, you can expect grounded instruction in shamatha, with space to ask questions and bring whatever's actually showing up in your practice. On retreat the structure follows a classical rhythm of sittings, walking practice, and dharma talks, with silence held between sessions. Group settings have a community feel without becoming social. People sit, listen, and check in. The teaching voice is steady. Sumbundu won't push you past your edge, and there's a clear preference for slow, sustainable practice over breakthrough chasing. Bring a notebook if you like, or don't. Either way, you'll be met where you are.
