His Eminence Chogye Trichen Rinpoche
His Eminence Chogye Trichen Rinpoche was head of the Tsarpa branch of the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism and the most senior living Sakya Lama until his death in 2007. The Tsarpa school was founded by Tsarchen Losal Gyatso in early sixteen hundred. For more than five hundred years the Tsarpa lineage holders have nurtured and maintained a truly unique combination of advanced yogic and scholarly Buddhist practice.
His Eminence was the twenty-sixth patriarch of Nalendra monastery, one of the main monasteries of Tsarpa. Located just north-east of Lhasa in cental Tibet, Nalendra itself was founded in 1435 by another of the great masters of the Sakya Tradition, Rongton Sheja Khunrig. Rinpoche was a member of the blessed Che clan and his ancestors were among the disciples of Guru Padmasambhava who first brought Buddhism to Tibet. Down through the ages the Che family as holders of the practice lineages of Tibetan Buddhism have produced countless siddhas (fully accomplished masters) right down to the present day.
His Eminence was born in Shigatse in the Tsang province of central Tibet in 1919. At the age of nine he was recognised as the Eighteenth Chogye Trichen by the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, who later also gave Rinpoche his novice monastic ordination. During his childhood, His Eminence completed various retreats and studied under such great masters as Zhenphen Nyingpo, Zimog Rinpoche and Ngaglo Rinpoche, a close disciple of the previous Chogye Trichen. Until the age of thirty nine His Eminence remained at Nalendra monastery where he mastered all the monastic disciplines, as well as all the major meditation practice lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, completing meditation retreats of all the major deities of the four classes of Buddhist tantra. Rinpoche also pursued extensive studies of literature, history and metaphysics and was an accomplished master of traditional Tibetan Poetry. His Eminence has received rare and precious “whispered instructions” from some of the great masters of modern times.
After the communist invasion of Tibet in 1959, His Eminence and his Guru Zimog Rinpoche and others escaped to Mustang in Nepal. Rinpoche eventually established Monasteries at Lumbini the birth place of the Buddha and at the famous Bhoudanath stupa in Kathmandu. During his time in exile His Eminence worked tirelessly to preserve the teachings and practices passed down to him from his teachers. As well as his major building projects, and continuously giving teachings and intitations, Rinpoche worked as General Secretary of the Council of Religious Affairs for the Tibetan Government in Exile for seven years. Rinpoche also organised a series of three year retreats of Hevajra under his personal guidance and observation and has given major empowerments and teachings around the world. Lama Choedak Rinpoche is a graduate of the first of these retreats.
Considered by many as one of the greatest Buddhist masters of the twentieth century, His Eminence was a renowned Tantric yogi, an outstanding scholar, an eloquent poet, and an unsurpassed practitioner. Rinpoche was a respected teacher of both His Holiness the Dalai Lama and His Holiness Sakya Trizin. After many decades of devoted service to the Buddhadharma he was revered and cherished in the Tibetan world as a living jewel of the Tibetan tradition.
(For those who are inspired by this life story, a more detailed biography compiled by Rinpoche’s close disciple John Deweese can be found in His Eminence Chogye Trichen Rinpoche’s latest book, “Parting from the Four Attachments,” 2003, Snow Lion Publications.)