BIRTH AND MONASTERY OF ORDINATION

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In the southern land of snow mountains, past Rulak Tsang Lato, there is a village called Puku set in the entrance of a hidden realm in the Zar District of Tingkye State. Here Lama Tsondru was born at sunrise beside the Samten Chopuk Monastery on Friday, the fifteenth day of the fourth month of the Tibetan Earth Ox year, 1949.

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At Gonjang Samten Chopuk Monastery of the Upper Zar District in Tingkye of Tsang, Tibet, on an auspicious day when the Lama was seven years old, Kyabje Ngawang Yonten Gyatso performed his initial hair cutting ceremony. Lama Tsondru was then ordained at the age of eight.

 

 

EARLY EDUCATION

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The Lama began to learn to read and write when he entered Samten Chopuk Monastery at age eight. First he learned to recite the monastery's particular lineage prayer by heart. Then over an uninterrupted period of three years and four months, he trained in all the aspects of monastic education, including ceremonial chanting, cymbal playing and so on.

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As a youngster, he studied with great diligence and excelled. At the conclusion of these primary studies, he received the highest score on the exam and was given awards.

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In 1959, when eleven years old, he and his family were forced to flee Tibet to Nepal and India. They spent two years in a refugee camp at the Nepalese border and then traveled on foot for 27 days to the town of Darjeeling in northeastern India.

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In 1961, he joined the Central School for Tibetans and began to study English, mathematics, Indian history, science, geography and Hindi. He graduated in 1971, having completed tenth grade.

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Then in accordance with the wise counsel of Kyabje Terchen Jigdral Yeshe Dorje Dudjom Rinpoche, head of the Ancient Nyingmapa Vajrayana Sect of Tibetan Buddhism and regent of Guru Padmasambhava, Lama Tsondru enrolled in Varanasi Sanskrit University.

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There he studied both Indian and Tibetan religious works, focusing particularly on the philosophical traditions of the main masters of the Nyingma School. He remained there for six years, learning with great diligence and devotion.

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Speaking of this period, Lama Tsondru says "During my annual two month holiday, I patched the holes in my religious training, which had been interrupted by our escape from Tibet. I trained in ceremonial chanting, playing the cymbals, conch shell and gyaling horn, making tormas and effigies, mandala diagrams, religious dance and so on. Seven of the accomplished senior monks from my monastery in Tibet had come into exile, and from them I received the transmissions of our unbroken lineage. I was thus able to single handedly preserve and uphold all the philosophical doctrines and traditions of the earlier monastery in Tibet."

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RELIGIOUS TRAINING IN EXILE

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Previously in Tibet, one had to face tremendous hardship to receive an education. This was true for general secular studies, but particularly true for religious studies, for one often had to travel great distances over treacherous landscapes to encounter qualified masters. Great lamas, abbots, hidden yogis and scholars often lived far from each other in remote temples and isolated hermitages.

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After 1959, however, many of these great lamas, abbots and scholars fled to India as refugees and were clustered together in and around Sikkim, Darjeeling and Kalimpong. Suddenly, for the first time, they were not only readily accessible but had much leisure time, as none of them expected at that point to stay in India for very long.

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Lama Tsondru remembers this as a wonderful opportunity to receive whatever religious advice, empowerments, instructions, explanations and clarifications one wished, all catered to one's own personal capacity. For a few years it was like being in a land of precious jewels.

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He obtained general Buddhist teachings and many empowerments, explanations and instructions of the Ancient Luminosity Great Completion (Dzogchen) at the feet of many celebrated masters. "Looking back, I reflect on that period as one of tremendous joy."

Darjeeling is the western door of the hidden land of Sikkim, blessed as such by Guru Padmasambhava, the great master of Uddiyana. In 1968, Darjeeling was like a paradise on earth, possessed of every imaginable virtuous quality.

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It was here, from Drokben Kyiuchung Lotsawa Jigdral Yeshe Dorje Rinpoche, compassionate incarnation of the Great Terton Dudjom Lingpa, that he received the complete empowerments and transmissions of the entire canon of Nyingma Treasure Teachings (Ka Gong Phur Sum).

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Then from the brilliant master Kyabje Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche, he received instruction on the ngondro practices of Kunsang Lama'i Shalung and Triyik Yeshe Lama.

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In 1972, in Kathmandu, Nepal, amidst an assembly of more than 300 tulkus and nearly 10,000 monks gathered at Dudjom Rinpoche's Kudung Temple near the Great Stupa at Bouddhanath (Jarung Khashor), he received the complete cycle of Treasure Teachings of Dudjom Rinpoche's present and past incarnations.

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In the same year in Darjeeling, he received the complete empowerments and transmissions of the three cycles of Northern Treasure Teachings (Changter Drubkor Sum) from Kyabje Taklung Tsetrul Rinpoche. Later, he received the complete empowerments and transmissions of the Gongpa Zangtal of the Northern Treasure Teachings in Drakkar Taski Ding, Sikkim.

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In 1974, In Samtse, Bhutan, H.H. Dudjom Rinpoche performed an empowerment ceremony requested and sponsored by the Royal Mother of Bhutan, Queen Philntsok Chodron, in which lama Tsondru received the complete teachings of the Great Terton Tulku Pema Lingpa.

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Biography by Lama Tsondru Sangpo, Translated by Heidi Nevin