In 1979, at the age of thirty-three, His Holiness the Gyalwa Karmapa sent Beru Khyentse Rinpoche as his personal representative to Australia and New Zealand to spread the Dharma. Rinpoche stayed in Australia for about seven months, during which he gave refuge and bodhicitta vows, Mahamudra teachings, instructions related to the Nyungne fasting practice of the thousand-armed and thousand-eyed Avalokiteshvara, empowerments, and oral transmissions of various yidams. During his stay, Rinpoche founded two new Karma Kagyu Dharma centers in Australia: Karma Tashi Chöling in New South Wales, and Kagyu Evam Chöling in Melbourne, which was under the guidance of the Venerable Traleg Rinpoche. There was already an existing Kagyu center in Sydney, which the Karmapa had named Kagyu Dongak Chöling. Rinpoche completed the necessary legal formalities for this center and officially established the foundation.

In New Zealand, a Dharma center was already operating under the name Karma Kagyu Tse Dzong Chöling, a name given by the Gyalwa Karmapa. This center had been offered to the Karmapa by a disciple of the Venerable Karma Trinle Rinpoche. His Holiness the 16th Karmapa was the founder of this center, with Beru Khyentse Rinpoche serving as its spiritual director. In this capacity, Rinpoche sent two lamas from the Mainpat Monastery to the center.

Rinpoche gave numerous teachings and introduced many people to Buddhism. Later that same year, he visited Kuala Lumpur and the Malaysian Kagyu Center to bestow Kagyu lineage empowerments and teachings, beginning with chanting the sadhanas. He also established a new center near Kuala Lumpur (in Seremban) and traveled throughout the country, teaching the Dharma to both new and long-time students.

At the request of the Sakya Dharma Center in Singapore, Rinpoche gave various empowerments, oral transmissions, instructions, and teachings. At that time, a monk named Tashong, who came from a Mahayana monastery, invited Rinpoche to visit his temple. Rinpoche accepted the invitation and gave empowerments, oral transmissions, guidance, and teachings according to the Karma Kagyu tradition, thereby introducing the Vajrayana path to many students. At Tashong’s request, Rinpoche established the first Karma Kagyu center in Singapore, naming it the Karme Chöde Dharma Center. Tashong himself was also a Vajrayana practitioner, as his teachers had received teachings from the previous Beru Khyentse Rinpoche and the late Bo Gangkar Rinpoche when they visited China. Later, His Holiness the Gyalwa Karmapa, Kyabje Shamar Rinpoche, and many other Kagyu lamas visited the Karme Chöde Center, which has since grown into a large and renowned institution devoted to spreading the Dharma according to the Kagyu lineage. The current resident abbot, the Venerable Sangpa Rinpoche, serves under the guidance of Kyabje Shamar Rinpoche.

After completing these many Dharma activities, Rinpoche returned to New Delhi at the end of 1979, where he met with the Gyalwa Karmapa and reported on his Dharma activities, especially regarding the establishment of new Dharma centers. His Holiness listened with great joy and praised Beru Khyentse Rinpoche for his accomplishments.

A few weeks before the foundation stone was to be laid for the new monastery in New Delhi, the Gyalwa Karmapa’s previous illness worsened, and he had to be hospitalized. His Holiness recovered slowly.

When Rinpoche returned to Mainpat, he found that the new monastery he had begun constructing before traveling to Australia had been completed. Rinpoche had long aspired to build a Kagyu monastery in Bodhgaya. In 1977, he applied to the central government of India and the government of Bihar for permission to purchase two hectares of land. After five years, in 1982, Rinpoche received the necessary approvals and documentation from the local authorities. That same year, when His Holiness the Dalai Lama visited Bodhgaya, he went to the site of the new monastery and, at Rinpoche’s request, performed the consecration ceremony.

In 1982, at the age of thirty-six, Rinpoche visited Tibet to meet his relatives and give teachings. When he first met his family members in Lhasa and Nyethang, they barely recognized each other and had to introduce themselves. Emotions of joy and sorrow mingled. Upon arriving in Kham Nangchen, Rinpoche recognized the landscape, but not the monks or local residents. That same year, Rinpoche requested permission from the Chinese government to rebuild the Tashi Gang Monastery in Nyethang and the Thardze Monastery in Nangchen. To prepare the monks for the traditional three-year, three-month retreat, Rinpoche gave them numerous empowerments, oral transmissions, and teachings.

In 1983, Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche bestowed the entire Rinchen Terdzö (the treasure teachings of Jamgon Kongtrul) to the Kagyu Gyalwa Gyamtso and many other rinpoches, lamas, monks, and lay practitioners in Sonada, Darjeeling. Rinpoche was present and received all the empowerments. In 1985, he returned to Tibet and gave further empowerments and oral transmissions to the first group of Nangchen monks who had begun their retreat in 1984. Since then, new retreat groups have been continuously organized. That same year, Rinpoche received permission from the Chinese government to rebuild both monasteries. He brought with him numerous statues, thangka paintings, and the full collections of the Kangyur (103 volumes) and Tengyur (215 volumes), personally funding the entire reconstruction.

That same year, the Bodhgaya monastery was completed, along with a 3.5-meter-tall gilded Buddha statue. The monastery’s walls were covered with life-sized depictions of the twelve deeds of Shakyamuni Buddha. Rinpoche officially invited His Holiness the Dalai Lama to bless the monastery and the statues and to lead the consecration ceremony. His Holiness graciously accepted, gave teachings from Gampopa’s Jewel Ornament of Liberation, and offered his blessings. Rinpoche made mandala offerings of statues, Dharma texts, and stupas to pray for the long life of His Holiness and for the turning of the Dharma wheel for the benefit of all sentient beings.

In 1987, construction began on the new Nangchen Monastery and a nunnery. Currently, about forty nuns live at the Thardze Monastery, where they regularly practice the Nyungne fasting retreat. Some of them have completed two or three such retreats. Rinpoche has fully supported the monastic community financially.

The President of India inaugurated Beru Khyentse Rinpoche’s Bodhgaya monastery on December 23, 1988. Attendees included the Governor and Chief Minister of Bihar and representatives of all Bodhgaya monasteries and institutions. The inauguration lasted three days, from December 23–25. Rinpoche delivered the opening speech, briefly recounting the history of Buddhism in India and Tibet, the Kagyu lineage, the monastery’s significance, and its objectives. He presented the President of India and other guests with a thangka, a statue of Shakyamuni Buddha, and a khatak as commemorative gifts. In return, the President personally donated a sum of money to the monastery and, on behalf of the Indian government and people, gifted two solar energy systems. On this occasion, His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche sent a handwritten letter praising Rinpoche’s Dharma activities.

The monastery was fully completed in 1986. Since then, many great masters from all Tibetan Buddhist traditions have visited to offer prayers, teachings, empowerments, and oral transmissions, making it a major hub for various Dharma activities. Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche also spent his winters at the monastery from 1986 to 1989, conducting the great Mönlam prayer gathering beneath the Bodhi Tree, where the Buddha attained enlightenment. He passed the entire Shangpa Kagyu lineage teachings and empowerments to Beru Khyentse Rinpoche, including the Six-Armed Mahakala empowerment. During this period, Kalu Rinpoche also organized the first translators’ committee at the Kagyu Monastery in Bodhgaya, overseeing the English translation of the Sheja Kunjab (The Treasury of Knowledge), a work by Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche.

His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche, and His Eminence Beru Khyentse Rinpoche gathered at the main entrance of the Bodhgaya monastery in January 1989.

Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche also regularly visited the Bodhgaya monastery during winters from 1985 to 1990. At Rinpoche’s request, he gave teachings and led prayer ceremonies. Together with other high lamas and monks, they performed the prayer rituals of the Hundred Peaceful and Wrathful Deities and conducted a great drupchen to prepare Dharma medicines. Beru Khyentse Rinpoche received many teachings from Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, including the complete empowerments of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo’s Kabum, oral transmissions of the secret tantras, the complete teachings of Katsum Ösel Nyingthig, the preliminary practices of the Longchen Nyingthig, and The Seven Treasuries of Longchen Rabjam. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche also composed a long-life prayer for Beru Khyentse Rinpoche.

Rinpoche’s rural Nepalese Manang Kagyu Monastery is located near Milarepa’s cave and the snow-covered Gangapurna mountains. Rinpoche suggested that a retreat center be built there in the coming year to accommodate three-year retreats for both monastics and lay practitioners.

Rinpoche’s monastery in Boudhanath, Nepal, includes rooms for monks and guests and is just a five-minute walk from the Boudhanath Stupa. Construction began in 1987 and was completed by 1993. The six-story temple includes separate quarters for monastics and visitors, completed in 1990.

In both 1990 and 2002, Rinpoche and his family, along with his attendants, went on pilgrimage across Tibet. They visited sacred places such as Samye Monastery, the Chemphu Cave, holy sites in the Yarlung Valley, the Gyantse Palcho Stupa, Tashi Lhunpo Monastery, Sakya Monastery, Mount Kailash, Gang Rinpoche, Lake Manasarovar, the hot springs of Pretapure, and the sacred land of Purang Karchang Jowo. In the southern region of Lhodrak near Lhasa lies Marpa Lotsawa’s original residence, where a nine-story palace still stands—built over 800 years ago by Milarepa under the guidance of his guru. Rinpoche visited all these sacred places and also returned to his birthplace in Nyethang.

Due to the Cultural Revolution, the historically significant Tashi Gang Monastery suffered great damage. It was built 739 years ago by Chögyal Phagpa of the Sakya school. Although most of its treasures were destroyed, one sacred object survived: a half-meter-high stupa known as the Kadam Stupa, hidden by a family who survived the Cultural Revolution. Rinpoche purchased the stupa from them during his first visit to Tibet in 1982 and entrusted it to a relative for safekeeping. The stupa was returned to Tashi Gang Monastery when the Chinese government authorized its reconstruction in 1990. Due to lack of funds, restoration could not be completed. Rinpoche later supported the rebuilding efforts. Though two floors of the temple had survived, the building needed repainting, and statues were missing—everything had to be rebuilt. Rinpoche added one more floor and built living quarters for monks, a library, a kitchen, a guesthouse, and…