Jatsön Nyingpo and the Union of the Precious Ones

High above the forests of Kongpo, in south-eastern Tibet, there was once a small hermitage whose door had been sealed shut with clay. Behind it, the old accounts say, a monk practised alone for seventeen years.

His name was Jatsön Nyingpo, "Rainbow Essence." He lived from 1585 to 1656, and he is remembered for a treasure called the Könchok Chidü, "the Union of the Precious Ones," a cycle of teachings with Guru Rinpoche at its heart. This is his story, told as simply as I can from the sources.

A child of Kongpo

Guru Rinpoche, Padmasambhava, is the "Lotus-Born" master to whom the Seven-Line Prayer is addressed. The tradition holds that in the eighth century he and his disciple Yeshe Tsogyal hid teachings to be found in later ages. These hidden teachings are called terma, "treasures," and those who reveal them are tertöns, treasure revealers.

Jatsön Nyingpo was born in 1585, the Wood Bird year, at a place called Waru Namtsal in Kongpo, a green land of forests and rivers. His father was Chökyong Gönpo and his mother Namlang Butri. Jamgön Kongtrul, the nineteenth-century master who gathered the lives of the treasure revealers, regards him as the rebirth of Nyang Tingdzin Zangpo, one of Guru Rinpoche's own disciples in the days of the old Tibetan kings.

Kongtrul says the boy loved the Dharma, the Buddha's teaching, from his earliest years, and that by the age of three he could read letters after only being shown them. He adds that the child left many prints of his hands and feet in stone, a kind of sign the tradition often tells of its saints.

From twelve until twenty he studied hard, and above all he studied medicine, the healing science of Tibet, until he became skilled in it.

The pull of the Guru

During those same years, Kongtrul writes, the young man met Orgyen Rinpoche again and again, sometimes in waking experience and sometimes in dreams. Orgyen Rinpoche, "the Precious One from Oddiyana," is another name for Guru Rinpoche.

A strong wish to be free of worldly life rose up in him, together with a deep sadness at its sufferings. Kongtrul says he came to see home, friends and every ordinary comfort as a pit of fire, and that he fled to the Dharma.

He went to a master named Mipham Tashi Lodrö. The account tells a gentle story here: around the time the young man came, the lama dreamed that some women brought him an old stupa built by Guru Rinpoche and asked him to consecrate it again. When he did, it blazed with light, and he understood that a fortunate student was coming.

Mipham Tashi Lodrö ordained him and gave him the name Ngawang Chögyal Wangpo. Later he received full ordination as a gelong, a fully ordained monk, from a master called Lhatsewa. He studied with many other teachers too, in both the older and newer schools of Tibet.

The Treasury of Lives notes that he was one of the few treasure revealers who was a fully ordained monk. Many tertöns lived as lay yogis with families. Jatsön Nyingpo kept his vows all his life, and Kongtrul says he guided his students in the same simple, disciplined way.

Seventeen years behind a sealed door

Then he went into retreat. For seventeen years, the accounts say, he stayed in sealed retreat, the door of his hermitage closed with clay.

Kongtrul tells us that prophecies about treasures came to him many times in those years, and that he paid them no attention. He simply kept practising. When he had completed a vast number of recitations for Vajrapani, a bodhisattva of awakened strength, his teacher Mipham Tashi Lodrö urged him to act at last.

A little bird of metal

So, in the Iron Monkey year, 1620, on the tenth day of the first month, he took up his first treasure. Kongtrul says that from inside a tiny metal bird, no bigger than a sparrow chick, came a treasure list in Yeshe Tsogyal's own hand. He was thirty-six.

Following that list, at a rocky place Kongtrul calls Draklung Homtrang, at what he names an "iron gate," Jatsön Nyingpo received the Könchok Chidü. The Treasury of Lives dates the find to the time of his retreat or soon afterwards; the sources do not agree on every detail of the timing, and I have not tried to settle it.

Translators render the name in several ways: "the Union of the Precious Ones," "the Embodiment of the Three Jewels," or "the Universal Embodiment of the Precious Ones." Rigpa Wiki describes it as a practice concentrating on Padmasambhava. It is meant to be received from a qualified teacher, so this page names it and says nothing of its practices.

Kongtrul says it was a secret treasure. Jatsön Nyingpo first practised it fully himself and kept it sealed for a time, before sharing it with others.

A horse on the cliff

Over the years he revealed many more treasures in Kongpo and beyond. Most were found openly, before crowds; only a few, like the Könchok Chidü, were secret. Kongtrul tells one story with real relish.

At a mountain called Nyemo Lhari, some local people feared that taking out a treasure would drain the goodness of their land, so they set armed men to guard the spot. Then, the account says, the tertön rode his horse straight up a sheer cliff as smooth as a mirror, where not even a bird could climb, leaving hoofprints in the rock. He took the treasure in an instant and rode away. The guards stood stunned, and later, Kongtrul says, they came to have faith.

This is the tradition's way of telling us about his strength of mind. I pass it on as Kongtrul tells it.

A house of practice, and many students

He founded a retreat centre at Bangri Jokpo, a sacred place that he himself opened, on high and secluded ground. Kongtrul says it was still kept up in his own day by the master's family line and his reincarnations. So he is often called Bangri Rigdzin, "the awareness-holder of Bangri."

His students came from many traditions. Kongtrul and the Treasury of Lives name leaders of the Kagyu schools: the Karmapa and the Shamarpa of the Karma Kagyu, Gyaltsab Drakpa Döndrub, Chökyi Drakpa of Drigung, and Paksam Wangpo, head of the Drukpa Kagyu. They also name the Nyingma master Rigdzin Ngagi Wangpo of Dorje Drak, the meditation teacher Tsele Natsok Rangdrol, and Lhatsün Namkha Jigme, who is remembered for opening the hidden valleys of Sikkim.

Some of these masters were older than he was, so "student" here means those who received his treasures, not always the young sitting before the old.

One student was a young treasure revealer named Düddul Dorje. Rigpa Wiki says that in troubled times Jatsön Nyingpo sent him toward Pemakö, a hidden valley in the great gorges of the Tsangpo river, to open the way there. Jatsön Nyingpo had himself revealed one of the first guidebooks to that land.

How the treasure travelled

Düddul Dorje later settled at Katok, an old Nyingma monastery in eastern Tibet. Katok's own history says he had received the entire treasure lineage of Jatsön Nyingpo, and that his treasures, with those of his student Longsal Nyingpo, became central to Katok. A Könchok Chidü lineage prayer by the Katok master Rigdzin Tsewang Norbu runs through both of them.

Among Düddul Dorje's disciples, the same history names Rigdzin Kunzang Sherab, the founder of Palyul Monastery, and the Rangjung Yeshe Wiki lists Jatsön Nyingpo's treasures among the practices of the Palyul tradition. Through the Kagyu masters who received it, the cycle also took root in the Kagyu schools.

Kongtrul gives the most moving witness. He says he received all six volumes of the master's treasures, held the Könchok Chidü as the heart of his own daily practice, and saw signs of its blessing. He also writes, as I read him, that the circumstances of this treasure's discovery were not the most fortunate kind, yet because Jatsön Nyingpo's aspiration and training were so strong, and because he practised his treasures to the end, they spread widely without regard to school.

Jatsön Nyingpo died at Bangri Jokpo in 1656, at seventy-two by Tibetan reckoning. The accounts say that signs and wonders were seen, and that he passed knowingly into a pure realm.

What remains

I found no source linking Jatsön Nyingpo or the Könchok Chidü to the Seven-Line Prayer itself, so I will not claim one. What joins them is simpler: both turn the heart toward Guru Rinpoche. One small thread is that Kongtrul also asked for a regular practice and offering on the tenth day of the month, the day the tradition keeps for Guru Rinpoche. If the Könchok Chidü calls to you, that is a door to open with a teacher, and the Find a Teacher page can help.