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LOPÖN TENZIN NAMDAK RINPOCHE
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Personal background:
Lopön Tenzin Namdak Rinpoche was born in Kyungpo Karu, in the district of
Chamdo in Kham in 1926, into a family known for thanka painting.
At the age of seven he entered the local monastery, from where he was sent,
at the age of twelve, to the Bön Yungdrung monastery in central Tibet to
begin his formal studies. When nineteen, he led the life of a hermit for five
years on an island together with his revered teacher Tsultrim Gyaltsen,
an extremely erudite man who had previously been Master of Studies
(Lopön) . In 1950 he returned to Menri Monastery and in ‘53 obtained the
Geshe degree. He then himself became Lopön at Menri, a position he held
for four years, after which he went to pursue meditation in strict retreat. |
In 1960, following the Chinese takeover, Rinpoche was arrested, and
after having spent ten months in
Chinese prison, he escaped to Nepal via Mustang. In 1961 he was invited
as a visiting scholar to London
and Cambridge Universities in England, where he stayed for three years.
In collaboration with professor
David Snellgrove he published an authoritative work on Bön in
English, ‘The Nine Ways of Bön’. In 1964
he returned to Delhi, where he worked as a Tibetan expert and published
Bön texts. Then, in the late
sixties, he was a visiting scholar in Munich for one year where he
contributed to a German-Tibetan
dictionary.
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In the following years he began the search for a site to re-establish a Bön monastery, which was set up
under his guidance at Dolanji, near Solan in Himachal Pradesh, India. Also he engaged in teaching,
writing and publishing several texts, including many for the curriculum of the Dialectic School.
In the course of his staying at Dolanji, the newly established Menri Monastery in Exile, many young
students were able to complete the nine-year training and finish with a Geshe degree.
In 1986 Rinpoche was able to travel to Tibet, but was not allowed to visit all the regions he intended to.
One of the places he was allowed was Menri monastery, and on that occasion he gave many teachings
to the few remaining monks, and in some regions exchanged some lineages and rare transmissions.
As a whole Rinpoche described the situation as ‘not good: although exteriorly some improvements of
facilities were made, there are lots of causes for unhappiness’.
Upon returning from Tibet, Rinpoche began with the construction of Triten Norbu Tse, the Bön monastery
near the stupa of Swayambunath, Nepal. This is now his present residence and monastery, and where
he supervises a very strict routine of study programs, rituals and meditation.
Since then Rinpoche has been invited several times to the West, visiting among others England, USA,
Austria, Holland, France, Italy and Germany. In 1993, his ‘Heartdrops of Dharmakaya’ was published in
English, a commentary on Shardze Tashi Gyaltsen Rinpoche’s 'Handbook on Dzogchen'.
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