Lama of Lamas (The Life of the Vajra- Master Chogye Trichen Rinpoche in Set of 2 Volumes)

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Lama of Lamas is the inspiring and amazing life story of a modern buddha. Born in Tibet in 1919 into a venerable family of religious nobility, Chogye Trichen Rinpoche was enthroned as abbot of Nalendra Monastery when he was still just a teenager. After leaving his homeland as a refugee in 1959, he would eventually become in India and Nepal the revered guru of many of the greatest masters of Tibetan. Buddhism.

"Khyabje Chogye Trichen Rinpoche was a very great master and important lineage holder in the Sakyapa tradition. He was a highly respected teacher, not only for me, but also for tens of thousands of devoted disciples throughout the world. His influence extended far beyond the Sakyapa tradition.

Recognizing his excellent good qualities, the greatest masters of our time from every tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama himself, requested Chogye Trichen Rinpoche to bestow empowerments and teachings upon them. He is one of my most important root gurus, as I received the entire Collections of Tantras empowerments, teachings and transmissions from him. He is still revered and supplicated even after his parinirvana in 2007.

Khyabje Chogye Trichen Rinpoche was a pure holder of the Vinaya, a true bodhisattva and a great Vajrayana master. He developed these qualities to a high degree of realization through years of retreat. To preserve the Dharma and create opportunities for others to practice, he also established several monasteries and retreat centers.

David Jackson has carefully written a fine and wonderfully illustrated account of Khyabje Chogye Trichen Rinpoche's life which will preserve the amazing facts of his holy life for future generations and inform and inspire all who read it. May all who come in contact with this book receive the blessings of this incomparable master."

-His Holiness Sakya Trizin

The author, D. Jackson, had the privilege of knowing Chogye Rinpoche for many years. A long-time historian of Tibetan Buddhism, he previously published the hagiography of Dezhung Rinpoche, A Saint in Seattle.

The late Chogye Trichen Rinpoche (1919-2007) was an incomparable lama. He was an outstanding monastic teacher, a compassionate bodhisattva, and a deep practitioner of tantric meditation-a veritable ocean of realization.' How could an ordinary person like me do justice to even a tiny fraction of his life?

Still, something urged me to try. Chogye Rinpoche was truly a peerless teacher who left his gracious mark on everyone he met. As both one of his earlier Western students (I first met him in 1972) and a historian of Tibetan Buddhism, I could not avoid becoming fascinated by the story of his long, multifaceted, and extraordinary life. So I decided to try to record his life story as accurately as I could, to pay homage to him in my own limited way. Writing down his story helped me clarify many of my own memories of him. I hope the story that I present here will also inspire and benefit his still-living disciples and future generations.

When I began compiling the story twenty years ago, the time was not yet ripe-so much more of Chogye Rinpoche's life story had yet to unfold. Yet in 2005 a few of his close disciples in Kathmandu urged me to try to write down as much as I then could, even if it was just a very rough draft. Though in interviews he almost never discussed his spiritual inner experiences when asked about them, by then a few extraordinary inner experiences had been revealed.

For telling the story of Chogye Rinpoche's earlier life, especially for the years up to the mid-1980s, my primary written sources were his own autobiographical writings. (Those writings were first published as individual works, and they were then made available again in 1998 in a more definitive edition of his collected writings, published by Lama Guru.)2 His unpublished personal letters to me also helped a lot; I used nearly forty of them that I had saved from the 1970s and 1980s in which he summarized recent events. I also used twenty letters that his attendant Lama Thubten Choedak had sent me in the 1970s. Another precious written source was the unpublished autobiography of H.H. the Sakya Trizin, who kindly sent me a hand-corrected printout that tells his life story down to October 1995.3 I extracted from it all references to Chogye Rinpoche. Also invaluable were the written recollections of Cyrus Stearns, who generously noted down for me memories of experiences with or teachings from Rinpoche during the 1980s and 1990s and also kindly extracted many passages from diaries. I excerpted a number of interesting episodes from the brief biography presented in Chogye Rinpoche's book on the Parting from the Four Attachments (Chogye Trichen Rinpoche 2003, Biographical Introduction, pp. 19-49). I was also helped and inspired by the sixty verses of posthumous homage written by Lama Thubten Choedak, "The Songs of a Nightingale's Gratitude," which were published by the Vajrayana Sakya Manjushri Center in Taiwan in 2011 in a memorial volume entitled My Revered Guru-with many wonderful photographs and Chinese and English text edited by Ani Jamyang Wangmo.

Khyabje Chogye Trichen Rinpoche was a very great master and important lineage holder in the Sakyapa tradition. He was a highly respected teacher, not only for me, but also for tens of thousands of devoted disciples throughout the world. His influence extended far beyond the Sakyapa tradition.

Recognizing his excellent good qualities, the greatest masters of our time from every tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama himself, requested Chogye Trichen Rinpoche to bestow empowerments and teachings upon them. He is one of my most important root gurus, as I received the entire Collections of Tantras empowerments, teachings and transmissions from him. He is still revered and supplicated even after his parinirvana in 2007.

Khyabje Chogye Trichen Rinpoche was a pure holder of the Vinaya, a true bodhisattva and a great Vajrayana master. He developed these qualities to a high degree of realization through years of retreat. To preserve the Dharma and create opportunities for others to practice, he also established several monasteries and retreat centers.

David Jackson has carefully written a fine and wonderfully illustrated account of Khyabje Chogye Trichen Rinpoche's life which will preserve the amazing facts of his holy life for future generations and inform and inspire all who read it. May all who come in contact with this book receive the blessings of this incomparable master.

**Contents and Sample Pages**