Dampa Deshek and the Founding of Katok

High in Kham, the forested country of eastern Tibet, a monastery sits on a mountainside above the Dri, the river that becomes the Yangtze. Its name is Katok. It is the oldest of the six great "mother" monasteries of the Nyingma, the oldest school of Tibetan Buddhism and the school that holds the Seven-Line Prayer to Guru Rinpoche closest to its heart.

It was founded in 1159 by a monk most sources call Katok Dampa Deshek. Dampa Deshek means roughly "the holy one gone to bliss." The Treasury of Lives lists other names for him too, among them Kadampa Deshek and Sherab Senge, "Lion of Wisdom." This is his story, and the story of the place he began.

A boy between two rivers

The Treasury of Lives says he was born in 1122 at Belmo in Kham, a village between two rivers. His father, a tantric practitioner, named him Gewa Pel, "Increasing Virtue." He was the second of four sons.

The eldest son became one of the great masters of the Kagyu school, Phagmodrupa Dorje Gyalpo. Some early histories say Phagmodrupa was his cousin rather than his brother; most sources call them brothers.

The accounts say he learned to read at five or six, memorised a long Perfection of Wisdom sutra, a scripture on emptiness, and recited it every day. He also learned to paint and to make images of the Buddha.

A hundred teachers

At nine he went to study at his brother's monastery. Later he travelled into central Tibet and studied with masters of every school of his day, among them the Sakya patriarch Sönam Tsemo and Kadam scholars at Reting. Katok's own history says he relied on more than a hundred teachers.

At twenty-four he became a monk under a Nyingma lama, Jangchub Senge, who gave him the name Sherab Senge. He took full ordination at Nartang Monastery, met Rechungpa, a close disciple of the yogi Milarepa, and later received teachings from Gampopa, Milarepa's great heir.

In 1150, at twenty-nine, he met the teacher who shaped him most. Dzamtön Drowai Gönpo was a disciple of the Zur family, the early keepers of the Nyingma teachings. From him Sherab Senge received the old Nyingma transmissions of the Guhyagarbha Tantra and the Mind Series of Dzogchen, the Great Perfection.

Two roads

Then, the accounts say, Dzamtön set two roads before him. If he meditated alone at Kampo, a mountain in Kham, he would attain the rainbow body. In the Nyingma tradition this is said to be a sign of complete realisation, when a practitioner's body dissolves into light at death. But if he went home and founded a monastery at a place called Katok, he would spread the teachings far and wide.

Katok's own history tells the prophecy more boldly: a hundred thousand of his followers would attain the rainbow body there, and his lineage would last a thousand years. He chose the second road.

He went back east slowly, staying with the First Karmapa, Düsum Khyenpa, on the way. Nyingma sources call him a close disciple of the Karmapa; the Treasury of Lives notes that Kagyu histories do not.

From 1154 he spent three years teaching across Kham. Local rulers became his patrons, and the Treasury of Lives says he gave monastic vows to more than nine hundred people.

The rock on the lion mountain

In 1158 he set out to find Katok with two close attendants, one of them a young monk named Tsangtön Dorje Gyaltsen. Near Horpo, where a smaller river meets the Dri, the accounts say a protector goddess appeared to him and pointed south.

Following her direction, he came to a mountainside where a rock seemed to form the Tibetan letters A and KA, and a double vajra. Nearby was a small cliff he knew as a meditation place of Vairotsana, the great eighth-century translator.

Alexander Berzin writes that Guru Rinpoche had foretold a monastery on a mountain shaped like a lion, and that this mountain had that shape. The main temple was built on the KA rock, and so the place was called Katok, "on top of KA" in Berzin's words.

Not everyone welcomed him. The local ruler, Gelu, followed the Bon religion and was unwilling at first, but he became the monastery's first patron and sent a hundred young men to be monks. Legends tell of a Bon mountain spirit bound in a great boulder that still sits by the monastery. The Treasury of Lives reads these tales as memories of early local resistance.

Building by day

Building began in 1159, the Earth Hare year. Katok's history says the disciples raised the walls by day and listened to teachings by night, and that the work took two years. The new temple held old scriptures from Samye, the scholar's hat of the Indian master Atisha, the robe of the Zur master Drophukpa, and more than thirteen hundred volumes, some written in gold.

In 1161 he founded a college for study and a centre for retreat. He kept a yearly rhythm: in summer, during the monks' rains retreat, he taught the sutras; in winter he gave tantric teachings and Dzogchen. Students came from all over Kham, nearly four thousand of them, the Treasury of Lives says.

Katok's history calls him an emanation of Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom. His writings filled nineteen volumes. The Treasury of Lives lists some titles; Katok's own history laments that they are lost.

The hat and the old robe

In 1191, at seventy, he gave vows to a gathering the Treasury of Lives puts at about seventy thousand people. Then he handed a scholar's hat and an old robe to Tsangtön Dorje Gyaltsen, a sign that the young monk who had walked with him to Katok would be its next abbot.

Katok's history keeps his last advice. The heart of the teachings, he said, lies in careful conduct; understanding matters more than mastering words; and nothing is more important than taming one's own mind.

He died in 1192, in Saga Dawa, the fourth Tibetan month. The Treasury of Lives gives the full-moon day; Lotsawa House gives the eighteenth. His last testament is a five-line prayer that the teachings may long remain and that all beings may awaken. Lotsawa House has it in translation.

Thirteen generations

Katok's line of abbots went on. The Treasury of Lives lists the first thirteen by name, from Dampa Deshek, Tsangtön Dorje Gyaltsen and Jampa Bum down to Jangchub Senge in the fifteenth century. The tradition honours these first masters as Katok's "thirteen generations."

Katok's most famous claim belongs to this story. Its own history says that about a hundred thousand practitioners have attained the rainbow body there, and that under the fifth abbot, Yeshe Bum, a hundred of his disciples did so. This is the tradition's account, kept with reverence. Historians have no way to test it, and it is offered here as Katok tells it.

Fallen into disrepair

Monasteries, like people, have their seasons. By the seventeenth century, Rigpa Wiki says, the old monastery had fallen into disrepair.

The revival came through two treasure revealers, or tertöns: masters said to find teachings hidden by Guru Rinpoche for later times. Rigdzin Düddul Dorje (1615–1672) was born near Derge and first studied at a Sakya college. Katok's history says he received the whole treasure lineage of Jatsön Nyingpo, whose story is Story 41, "Jatsön Nyingpo and the Union of the Precious Ones." Düddul Dorje revealed treasures of his own and at last settled at Katok.

His disciple Longsal Nyingpo (1625–1692) took on the rebuilding. Katok's history says that, at the repeated request of the ruler of Derge, he renovated the old main hall, made two statues of Guru Rinpoche for it, and taught thousands of monks. The treasures of these two masters became central to Katok's practice.

The dates differ. Rigpa Wiki says the new monastery was built in 1656; Katok's own history puts Longsal Nyingpo's restoration in a Fire Snake year, most likely 1677. Perhaps the work took many years.

The spoken word

Through all its seasons Katok kept a treasure that was never hidden in any rock. The Nyingma school has two great streams of teaching. Terma, treasure, is said to have been hidden by Guru Rinpoche and found later. Kama, "spoken word," is the long line handed from teacher to student, person to person, from the time of Guru Rinpoche and the early translators.

Katok is known above all for keeping the kama. The Treasury of Lives calls Dampa Deshek a central figure in shaping it. Katok's history names the three pillars he taught: the Sutra Gathering All Intentions, the Magical Net of the Guhyagarbha, and the Mind Series. These are teachings received from a qualified teacher, so this page only names them; the Find a Teacher page can help.

The lamp still lit

Katok went on producing great scholars, Rigpa Wiki says, among them Katok Rigdzin Tsewang Norbu (1698–1755) and Getse Pandita (born 1761). In the early twentieth century Katok Situ Chökyi Gyatso and Khenpo Ngawang Palzang were among its greatest lamas.

Berzin says Katok had 1,050 monks in 1959. During the Cultural Revolution it was destroyed and many of its lamas were imprisoned. Rigpa Wiki says Katok Moktsa Rinpoche led the rebuilding after his release, and that in 1990 Katok Lhoga Rinpoche was enthroned as the eighty-fourth throne-holder.