About
Fionnuala Shenpen Daffy has studied Tibetan Buddhism since 1999 under Mingyur Rinpoche, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and other Nyingma and Kagyu teachers. She completed a three-year retreat at Chanteloube, France, under Tulku Pema Wangyal Rinpoche from 2008 to 2012. From 2013 to 2020, she established and directed Tsoknyi Gechak School for school-aged nuns at Tsoknyi Gechak Ling Nunnery in Kathmandu. She has been involved with Tergar and co-founded a practice group there. She is currently based in Ireland and continues her work with Tergar and community practice development.
Teaching focus
Daffy'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. Daffy 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, Daffy teaches in in-person, 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
Fionnuala Shenpen Daffy has studied Tibetan Buddhism since 1999 under Mingyur Rinpoche, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and other Nyingma and Kagyu teachers. She completed a three-year retreat at Chanteloube, France, under Tulku Pema Wangyal Rinpoche from 2008 to 2012. From 2013 to 2020, she established and directed Tsoknyi Gechak School for school-aged nuns at Tsoknyi Gechak Ling Nunnery in Kathmandu. She has been involved with Tergar and co-founded a practice group there. She is currently based in Ireland and continues her work with Tergar and community practice development. Fionnuala Shenpen Daffy first met Mingyur Rinpoche and Tsoknyi Rinpoche in Kathmandu in 1999. Since then she has studied and practiced Tibetan Buddhism under both of them as well as other Nyingma and Kagyu masters. She completed a three retreat at Chanteloube France under Tulku Pema Wangyal Rinpoche 2008- 2012. From 2013 to 2020 she set up and ran Tsoknyi Gechak School for the school aged nuns at Tsoknyi Gechak Ling Tibetan Buddhist Nunnery Chobhar, Kathmandu. During this time she got involved with Tergar and with friends began running a practice group. She has now returned home to Ireland and is continuing her involvement with Tergar and creating community there. Daffy'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 Daffy'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 Daffy'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
Daffy teaches within the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition with its layered approach to sutra and tantra. Source notes mention training with Mingyur Rinpoche, Tulku Pema Wangyal Rinpoche. Current affiliations include Tergar. The lineage shows up less in titles than in the way Daffy 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 Daffy, you can expect grounded instruction in shamatha, with space to ask questions and bring whatever's actually showing up in your practice. Group settings have a community feel without becoming social. People sit, listen, and check in. The teaching voice is steady. Daffy 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.
