Dudjom Jigdral Yeshe Dorje
Kyabje Dudjom Rinpoche Jigdral Yeshe Dorje was known simply as Dudjom Rinpoche. He is considered by many Tibetan Buddhists to be from an important Tulku lineage of Terton Dudul Dorje, and was recognized as the incarnation of Terton Dudjom Lingpa, a renowned treasure revealer. He was a direct incarnation of both Padmasambhava and Dudjom Lingpa. He was a Nyingma householder, a yogi, and a Vajrayana and Dzogchen master. According to his secretary Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal and many others, he was revered as "His Holiness" and as a "Master of Masters".
In order to protect and preserve Tibetan Buddhist teachings and continue Tibetan culture in exile, Dudjom Rinpoche was appointed as the first head of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism, by the 14th Dalai Lama and the Central Tibetan Administration in the early 1960s, in India. He gave important Nyingma lineage empowerments and teachings at his monasteries Zangdok Palri and Jangsa Gompa in Kalimpong, and at Tso Pema in Rewalsar which were attended by thousands of people. In 1965, Dudjom Rinpoche organized a conference for participants to discuss the preservation of teachings of the Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya and Gelug schools.
In Tibet by 1955, Dudjom Rinpoche had travelled extensively to teach and was revered as a highly realized master by renown lamas, such as Zhechen Kongtrul and Tulku Urgyen, as well as by Tibetan Buddhist laypeople. They still consider him to be the "Greatest Terton of Our Time", and a holder of all the teachings of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism, as well as that of the Kagyu, Sakya and Gelug schools. Dudjom Rinpoche was also a prolific author. The treatise The Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism: Its Fundamentals and History, was written by him in 1962 and 1996. Translated into two volumes, it is considered as a source of authority. He also authored the Political History of Tibet in 1979, and the History of the Dharma. Teachers from various schools confirmed that the terma texts revealed by Dudjom Rinpoche are still being used as practice texts.
In addition to the above, Rinpoche also reconstructed monasteries in Tibet, and built numerous monasteries in India and Nepal after his exile from Tibet in 1957. In his lifetime, Dudjom Rinpoche continued travelling throughout the world to give teachings. He had a center in Hong Kong, and established centers both in France and in the United States. His activities and dharma centers brought the Vajrayana and the Nyingma teachings to the western worlds. Khenpo Dongyal credit this Great Master as being responsible for a "renaissance in Tibetan studies".
Biography
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 as his Vajra Regent.
Birth
Dudjom Rinpoche was born on July 22, 1904, according to the Western 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 of Padmasambhava. He was recognized as the incarnation of Traktung Dudjom Lingpa, a famous tertön or discoverer of concealed "treasures", particularly those related to the practice of Vajrakīla. 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 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.
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.