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Comings and Goings: Remarks on the Outer Life of Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche
Early years
Here is a brief account of how a boy from an inaccessible area of a remote country became the world-renowned teacher, scholar, and yogi: Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche.When he was two years old, his father died suddenly. Thereafter, his mother became deeply devoted to the Dharma. Being her youngest child, Sherab Lodro accompanied her on pilgrimages and to Dharma teachings and initiations, even staying by her side when she undertook extended retreats. By nature and nurture drawn to spiritual practice, the boy left home at an early age to train with his root guru, Lama Zopa Tarchin, a yogi and the first of his many teachers.
he had received. During these years he often lived in charnel grounds in order to practice and master "Chod", a skillful means to cut ego clinging, develop compassion, and realize deeper levels of emptiness.
Rinpoche spent the next nine years at the Buxador Tibetan Refugee Camp in North India. Though full of hardship, this period of his life was extremely productive: He studied and mastered the sutras, the tantras, and all four schools of Tibetan Buddhism; became renowned for his skill in logic and debate; and received a Khenpo degree from His Holiness, the 16th Karmapa, and the equivalent Geshe Lharampa degree from His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama.
the next ten years taught widely throughout Europe. Since 1985, Rinpoche has traveled extensively, completing annual world tours in response to invitations that flow in from Europe, the United States, Canada, South America, Southeast Asia, Africa and Australia. In 1986, he founded the Marpa Institute for Translators, in Boudhanath, Nepal, which offered intensive winter courses in language and scripture. Khenpo Rinpoche continued to supervise this annual event when it moved to Pullahari Monastery above Boudhanath. Though Rinpoche personally teaches less at Pullahari now, the program continues to draw students, both old and new, from all over the world.
formed a special relationship with the Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, whose many students particularly appreciate his fluent English and ease teaching in that language. Ponlop Rinpoche has founded the Nitartha Institute, one of whose missions is to collect, archive, and build a complete database of Khenpo Tsultrim Rinpoche's oral teachings. Moreover, Khenpo Rinpoche serves as spiritual advisor for Nalandabodhi, the teaching arm of Ponlop Rinpoche's Dharma activities.
yogi Milarepa, whom he resembles in both substance and style: Rinpoche has no fixed abode, few possessions; he has practiced for years in solitude, sometimes sealed in darkness. Like Milarepa, he is known for his dohas, spontaneous songs of realization that offer insight into genuine reality. Such dohas may emerge to answer a question, clarify a difficult point, or to expand or comment on one of Milarepa's own songs. The "autobiography" that follows is an example of one of Rinpoche's spontaneous songs of realization.