Chogyal Rinpoche
Embodied wisdom, lived compassion.
From Early Vows to Recognized Tulku
Chogyal Rinpoche was born in Nepal in 1985 and spent his early years in Kathmandu. S.H. Jigdal Dagchen Sakya Rinpoche pointed out his son's special abilities to his parents at an early age. At the age of five, Chogyal Rinpoche already wanted to enter a Buddhist monastery. His parents took him to Sikkim, where he received a traditional Buddhist education in the monasteries of Rumtek and Zurmang over the next ten years.
In 2000, he began his studies of advanced Buddhist philosophy at the Dzongsar Buddhist Institute in Bir, Himachal Pradesh, India. At the end of 2001, at the request of His Holiness the 14th Shamarpa, who had revealed to him that he was the reincarnation of a yogi named Gatsa Gomchen, he transferred to the S.D.V. Buddhist Institute in Kalimpong near Darjeeling, West Bengal.
In 2002, he was officially recognised as Chogyal Tulku. In February 2010, he completed his studies with a Khenpo degree. Already during his studies in Kalimpong, he initiated local charity projects.
After graduating, he spent about three years travelling in Tibet. He meditated in remote places, including Mount Kailash, and in 2012 he met his root Lama, Repa Tsultrim Tharchin. This marked the beginning of an intensive period of training.
Building care, education, and resilience
Compassion in Action
Before Chogyal Rinpoche returned to Nepal in mid-2013, he completed an intensive course in Chinese at the University of Beijing. Back in Kathmandu, he took full responsibility for the Sertshang orphanage, which he and his father had previously founded, and continued his studies of Tantra philosophy. In 2014, he founded the BIA Foundation (which supports people with disabilities). In 2015, he launched the ‘Repa Programme,’ a three-year Vajrayana study and meditation programme for lay practitioners in China and Europe. Rinpoche also opened a small nunnery in Kathmandu. In 2016, he founded the Nepal Buddhist Association, which aims to support ngagpas1 and help rebuild small gompas (temples) destroyed by the 2015 earthquake.
Bridging Ancient Wisdom and Modern Disciplines
Modern learning, timeless wisdom.
Between 2015 and 2017, Rinpoche completed an intensive study of analytical psychology at the C.G. Jung Institute in Switzerland. In addition, he has familiarised himself with various methods, such as TM meditation, MBSR, hypnosis and regression techniques, and has recorded several mantra CDs. In 2017, he completed a yoga teacher training course. In 2018, he organised and accompanied most of Repa Tsultrim Tharchin's five-month pilgrimage to important Buddhist sites in India, Nepal and Bhutan.
During his training, Chogyal Rinpoche received numerous empowerments, oral transmissions and teachings from great masters such as H.H. the 14th Shamarpa and H.H. the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa, and studied with renowned teachers such as Prof. Sempa Dorje and Khenpo Chodrak Rinpoche.
From his root guru, Repa Tsultrim Tharchin, he received the empowerments, initiations and the entire transmission lineage of the Karma Kagyu and Barom Kagyu lineages, as well as the liberating path of the Six Yogas of Naropa and the complete practice of the Karma Kagyu and Barom Kaygu Thrul Khor. Repa Tsultrim Tharchin asked him to teach and pass on the Chulen and Barom Kagyu Phowa practice to lay practitioners.