Introduction Dudjom Rinpoche was born in
Kham, southern
Tibet, in a region named
Pemakö which is regarded as a
beyul () or 'hidden land' to Tibetans. When he was born, he was given a
Sanskrit name
Jñāna which means "Yeshe" () in Tibetan. Born into a family of Nyingma school practitioners, his father was Kathok Tulku Norbu Tenzing, a famous
tulku in the Pemakö region, who had trained at
Katok Monastery. His mother was Namgyal Drolma, a descendant of
Ratna Lingpa. Dudjom Rinpoche was also a descendant of the 9th Tibetan king Nyatri Zangpo, and of Powo Kanam Depa, the King of Powo. Known as the Second Dudjom Rinpoche, the name 'Dudjom' is translated from Tibetan as 'demon tamer'. His formal name includes Jigdral Yeshe Dorje; Jigdral (). He was also regarded as fearless by many. This was a name given to him by
Khakyab Dorje, the Fifteenth Karmapa. As detailed in written texts of revealed
tantras and in ancient prophesies, during the time of the Buddha Pranidhanaraja, Dudjom Rinpoche's earlier incarnation was the yogin Nuden Dorje Chang. This yogin has vowed to reappear as the thousandth and the last Buddha of this Eon, as the Sugata Mopa Od Thaye. Based on the biography of Dudjom Rinpoche by Wogmin Thubten Shedrup Ling, a
Drikung Kagyü monastery, a partial list of his other previous and highly notable incarnations includes
Śāriputra who was one of the foremost disciples of
Gautama Buddha in India;
Saraha who was the first and greatest of the eighty-four
mahāsiddhas of India; and also Humkara, who was also a
mahāsiddha. The Nyingma school's lineage can be traced to the great Vajrayana revealer and Second Buddha,
Guru Padmasambhava, as well as to
Yeshe Tsogyal and to her recordings of Padmasambhava's teachings. Drokben Lotsawa, among Padmasambhava's twenty-five students, is also an earlier incarnation. The
Dzogchen lineage in the Nyingma school can be traced to
Guru Padmasambhava and to
Garab Dorje. The Dudjom Rinpoches are widely regarded as Padmasambhava's regents. Within the
Dzogchen lineage, or the "Great Perfection", the
14th Dalai Lama is also a lineage holder. He had received Dzogchen teachings from two teachers, namely
Dilgo Khyentse and
Trulshik Rinpoche. Both of them were students of the Second Dudjom Rinpoche, and both were holders of the Dzogchen lineage. Through Tibet's history, the Nyingma school never positioned itself in the role of the political leader of Tibet's nation, nor did the Nyingma school have a representative centralized leader. After Tibet's invasion by China caused a mass exodus of Tibetans escaping to India, efforts began to protect the Tibetan Buddhist teachings and the culture in exile. The
14th Dalai Lama and the
Central Tibetan Administration requested that the Nyingma school select a representative leader, and Dudjom Rinpoche accepted this role in order to help preserve the Vajrayana vehicle of Tibetan Buddhism, and the Nyingma lineage. Due to concerted efforts by Dudjom Rinpoche and many other Tibetans, all of the texts of the Nyingma school's
Kama lineage and
Terma lineage were recovered. He also helped locate missing texts and transferred them out of Tibet, thus saving the
Tibetan Canon during the initial invasion of Tibet and during China's later
Cultural Revolution in Tibet. Dudjom Rinpoche was revered by many as an exceptional scholar in various fields, including
sūtra,
tantra, prose literature, poetry, and history, all of which are in the Five Sciences curriculum of Tibetan monastic shedra programs. He also wrote about the history of the Nyingma school. All twenty-five volumes are deemed as official accounts. Therefore, Dudjom Rinpoche was a poet, author, scholar and Vajrayana Master. He also organised the building of monasteries and retreat centers, and gave teaching in India to where he first moved, in Nepal to where he later moved, in Bhutan, and in several western countries. In 1988, a year after his death, Dudjom Rinpoche's body was moved from
Dordogne,
France to
Kathmandu,
Nepal, and placed in his
stūpa at Orgyen Do Nyak Choling, the monastery which he had built in
Boudhanath, Nepal. In a letter, Dudjom Rinpoche appointed the Dzogchen Master
Chatral Sangye Dorje (1913–2015) as his Vajra Regent.
Birth Dudjom Rinpoche was born on July 22, 1904, according to the Western (
Gregorian) calendar—the year 2444 after Buddha's passing into parinirvana, the year 2440 after the birth of Padmasambhava, and the year 2031 counted from the inception of the Tibetan monarchy. According to the astrological sixty-year cycle it was year of the Wood Dragon, sixth month, tenth day. The month and day also correspond to the birth date of Padmasambhava. Rinpoche was born into a noble family in the south-eastern Tibetan province of
Pema Ko, which is one of the
beyul ("hidden lands") of
Padmasambhava. He was recognized as the incarnation of
Traktung Dudjom Lingpa (1835–1904), a famous
tertön or discoverer of concealed "treasures" (
terma), particularly those related to the practice of
Vajrakīla (
rdo rje phur pa). Dudjom Lingpa had intended to visit southern Tibet to reveal the sacred land of Pema Kö, but as he was unable to do so, he predicted that his successor would be born there and reveal it himself.
Dharma activity In his youth, Dudjom Rinpoche studied with some of the most outstanding masters of the time. He began his studies with Khenpo Aten in Pema Kö, before attending some of the great monastic universities of Central Tibet, such as
Mindrolling,
Dorje Drak and
Tarjé Tingpoling, and of East Tibet, such as
Kathok and
Dzogchen. Mindrolling was the monastery to which Dudjom Rinpoche returned to perfect his understanding of the Nyingma tradition. Foremost among his many teachers were Phungong Tulku Gyurmé Ngedön Wangpo, Jedrung Trinlé Jampa Jungne, Gyurme Phendei Özer, and Minling Dordzin Namdrol Gyatso. Unique in having received the transmission of all the existing teachings of the Nyingma tradition, Dudjom Rinpoche was especially renowned as a great tertön, whose
termas are now widely taught and practiced, and as a leading exponent of Dzogchen. He was regarded as the living embodiment and regent of Padmasambhava and his representative for this time. Dudjom Rinpoche taught many of today's masters. Amongst the most widely read of his works are
The Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism, Its Fundamentals and History; which he composed soon after his arrival in India as an exile and which is now available in English translation. This history of the Nyingma School presents a great deal of new material on the development of Buddhism in Tibet. At the invitation of the Dalai Lama, Dudjom Rinpoche also wrote a history of Tibet. Another major part of his work was the revision, correction, and editing of many ancient and modern texts, including the whole of the Canonical Teachings (
kama) of the
Nyingma School, a venture he began at the age of seventy-four. His own private library contained the largest collection of precious manuscripts and books outside Tibet. After leaving Tibet, Rinpoche settled first in
Kalimpong, in India. He gave extensive teachings in Kalimpong and
Darjeeling, including giving the
Vajrasattva sādhanā to
Sangharakshita. During a train ride back to Kalimpong from Dharamsala in the 1960s, the head lama of Kathok Monastery, Kathok Öntrul Rinpoche, believed able to do mirror divination, said that he saw a Padmasambhava statue wrapped in barbed wire. Dudjom Rinpoche was with him, and asked for that divination. The train had a stopover in
Siliguri. According to Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal, enemies of Dudjom Rinpoche told Indian intelligence that Rinpoche was collaborating with the Chinese Communist party and was receiving a salary from them; the police put him under house arrest. ''As the news of this spread, his disciple were shocked and saddened. They'd also heard that authorities were going to transport His Holiness by train from Siliguri to Panchimari, the site of a prison for Tibetans detained for political reasons. Many students from Sikkim, Darjeeling, Bhutan, and Kalimpong planned to prevent the train from leaving by lying on the railroad tracks. But by then His Holiness the
Dalai Lama and his officials, the king of Sikkim, and the king, queen, and ministers of Bhutan, and important figures from India and Nepal, as well as thousands of students, had already written letters to Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India. After a few days His Holiness was released from house arrest in Siliguri and returned to his home in Kalimpong.'' He played a key role in the renaissance of Tibetan culture amongst the refugee community, both through his teaching and his writing. He established a number of vital communities of practitioners in India and Nepal, such as Zangdok Palri in Kalimpong, Dudal Rapten Ling in Orissa, and the monasteries at Tsopema and Boudhanath. He actively encouraged the study of the Nyingma Tradition at the
Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies in
Sarnath, and continued to give teachings according to his own terma tradition, as well as giving many other important empowerments and transmissions, including the Nyingma Kama, the Nyingma Tantras and the
Treasury of Precious Termas (
Rinchen Terdzo). When Dudjom Rinpoche was eight years old, he began to study
Shantideva's
Bodhicharyavatara with his teacher Orgyen Chogyur Gyatso, a personal disciple of the great
Patrul Rinpoche. When they had completed the first chapter, his teacher presented him with a conch shell and asked him to blow it towards each of the four directions. The sound it made to the East and to the North was quite short, in the South it was long, and in the West longer still. This was considered to be an indication of where his work in later times would be most effective.
Kham, in the east of Tibet, had been the birthplace of Dudjom Lingpa, who had already been very active in that region. In the South, throughout the Himalayan regions of
Bhutan,
Sikkim,
Nepal and
Ladakh, Dudjom Rinpoche had many thousands of disciples; when, on one occasion, he gave teachings in Kathmandu intended only for a few lamas, between twenty-five and thirty thousand disciples came from all over India and the Himalayas. In the final decade of his life, in spite of ill-health and advancing years, he devoted much of his time to teaching in the West, where he successfully established the Nyingma tradition in response to the growing interest amongst Westerners. He founded many major centres including Dorje Nyingpo and Orgyen Samye Chöling in France, and Yeshe Nyingpo, Urgyen Chö Dzong and others in the United States. During this period, he tirelessly gave teachings and empowerments, and under his guidance a number of Western students began to undertake long retreats. Dudjom Rinpoche also traveled in Asia, and in Hong Kong he had a large following, with a thriving center which he visited on three occasions. In the 1970s, Dudjom Rinpoche conducted a few teachings in the United States and London and then some retreats at Urgyen Samye Chöling in France. Eventually, "the wanderer, Dudjom", as he sometimes used to sign himself, settled with his family in the Dordogne area of France, and there in August 1984 he gave his last large public teaching. He died on January 17, 1987. == Dudjom lineage ==