Long ago, the tradition says, the Indian master Vimalamitra made a promise. After many years of teaching in Tibet he left for Wutai Shan, a sacred mountain in China, and, Rigpa Wiki says, promised to come back to Tibet once every hundred years to keep the Great Perfection alive.
The Great Perfection, Dzogchen in Tibetan, is the Nyingma school's deepest teaching on the nature of mind. Many in that school count among Vimalamitra's returns a scholar-yogi of eastern Tibet born in 1879: Khenpo Ngawang Palzang, called with affection Khenpo Ngakchung or Khenpo Ngaga. A khenpo is a learned abbot, the head teacher of a monastic college.
A boy of the Nyoshul family
Rigpa Wiki gives his birthday as the tenth day of the tenth Tibetan month of the Earth Hare year, 1879. His father, Namgyal, belonged to the Nyoshul clan; his mother was Pema Tso.
The Buddhist Digital Resource Center places his birth at Mok Pema Drakkar, in country it links with Katok, the old monastery in Kham whose founding is Story 51. At seven he learned to read and write from his uncle. At eight he began to receive teachings.
Illustration in preparationA promise kept
His story begins a generation earlier. Patrul Rinpoche, the wandering teacher of Story 11, had a devoted disciple, Nyoshul Lungtok Tenpé Nyima, who served him for twenty-eight years, Rigpa Wiki says. At last Patrul sent Lungtok home to the Nyoshul country and foretold that there he would meet an emanation of Vimalamitra.
In his sixtieth year Lungtok settled in an encampment high on a mountain called Pema Ritro, in the Trom region of Kham. It was there that he taught the young Ngakchung. The tradition sees in this meeting Patrul's words coming true.
Illustration in preparationNgakchung took novice vows in 1893 and full ordination in 1898. The Buddhist Digital Resource Center keeps an early ordination name, Zhönnu Pema Lekdrub, and says the name Ngawang Palzang was given to him by a senior abbot, Khenchen Lodrö Gyatso.
Rigpa Wiki names many teachers, among them Tertön Sogyal, Khenpo Shenga and Katok Situ Chökyi Gyatso. But Lungtok was the root, and Ngakchung stayed at his side until 1900.
Illustration in preparationThe words of his perfect teacher
Lungtok carried Patrul's own way of explaining The Words of My Perfect Teacher, Patrul's guide to the ngöndro, the preliminary practices that prepare the ground for everything else. He passed this spoken explanation to Ngakchung, who wrote it down.
Those notes are known in English as A Guide to the Words of My Perfect Teacher. Rigpa Wiki calls the book a treasury of explanation and practical advice from the oral lineage.
Ngakchung also did the preliminaries himself. Lotsawa House keeps a short verse which, it says, he received in a pure vision of Longchenpa, the great fourteenth-century master, while he was making mandala offerings, one of those practices. The verse points to the nature of mind. Like the vision itself, it belongs to the tradition, and its meaning is for a teacher to explain.
Illustration in preparationA song for his brothers and sisters
Lungtok died in 1901; one translator gives 1900, and the day of the month differs between the accounts. Among Ngakchung's writings is an undated song addressed to his fellow disciples after their teacher had passed away. Lotsawa House thinks the teacher was most likely Lungtok.
The song grieves openly. Then it turns the grief gently around: in the deepest sense, it says, there is no meeting and no parting, and the friends are invited to rest in that.
Illustration in preparationThe young monk at Shri Singha
In 1900 he went to Dzogchen Monastery to study at its college, Shri Singha. Rigpa Wiki notes that Mipham Rinpoche, whose White Lotus explains the Seven-Line Prayer (Story 12), was living there at the time.
Study was not always easy for him. In 1907, Lotsawa House notes, he was reading Dharmakirti's Exposition of Valid Cognition, a famously difficult Indian work on logic, with Khenpo Lhagyal, and found it hard going. He prayed to Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, and the difficulty lifted.
Out of that faith he wrote a short praise of Manjushri and signed it "the young monk, Ngawang Palzang" (translated by Joseph McClellan, Lotsawa House).
Illustration in preparationKatok, and home
His learning carried him back toward the country of his birth. The translator of his counsels for Lotsawa House writes that he taught at Katok from 1909 until 1922, when he retired as its senior khenpo and went home to Nyoshul. The Treasury of Lives remembers him as Katok Khenpo Ngawang Pelzang.
At home was Jönpalung, a small monastery and hermitage in the Dzin valley of Tromtar. The Treasury of Lives says he founded it in 1910 as a branch of Katok; the Lotsawa House notes put its founding in 1922. The sources do not explain the difference.
Illustration in preparationThat same year, 1922, the Treasury of Lives says, the Second Penor Rinpoche opened a college at Palyul, another great Nyingma monastery of Kham, whose founding is Story 47, and invited Khenpo Ngakchung to be its first abbot. Rigpa Wiki adds that this lama, also called Pema Norbu, took full ordination from him and received from him the oral instructions of the Great Perfection.
Illustration in preparationA teacher of teachers
Students came to him from all over Kham. Rigpa Wiki names four "great pillars" among his closest disciples. Others included Chatral Sangye Dorje, later one of the most respected Dzogchen yogis of the twentieth century. Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö received teachings from him and wrote a short prayer to him.
His counsels, Lotsawa House says, are plain and serious, often confessional, touched with a melancholy meant to turn students away from chasing the world. He spent long periods in retreat at Jönpalung, among them in 1927 and 1939.
His autobiography, Wondrous Dance of Illusion, tells his life as a picture of the whole path, according to its publisher, from renunciation and finding a teacher to the highest practice. The publisher marks it as a restricted text, to be read with a teacher's permission, so this page draws only on descriptions of it.
Illustration in preparationCalling on Guru Rinpoche
For all his learning, his devotion to Guru Rinpoche was simple and warm. Lotsawa House has a four-line prayer of his to Guru Rinpoche as Pema Tötreng Tsal, "Lotus Skull-Garland", and a longing song to Guru Tsokyé Dorje, the "Lake-Born Vajra", the form that recalls the birth on a lotus in a lake which the prayer's second line remembers.
In a short piece of light-hearted advice he tells a student to recite the Seven-Line Prayer and the Vajra Guru mantra earnestly, calling to mind Guru Rinpoche's qualities. Then he teases the student about an old tale he has just cited, of a monk born with a crooked back because of his past deeds: if you recite like this, he jokes, you will not end up like him. It is a joke, not a guarantee, and a glimpse of a strict teacher smiling.
Illustration in preparationMany names, one life
Who was he? The accounts answer in different ways. Rigpa Wiki speaks of Vimalamitra. His publisher calls him an emanation of both Vimalamitra and Longchenpa. A short prayer by his own hand names four: the Indian masters Manjushrimitra, Humkara and Vimalamitra, and Longchenpa.
In the same prayer's closing line he calls himself an idle fellow who wrote down whatever came to mind, under a name the treasure revealer Tutop Lingpa had given him, Dorje Zijitsal. It is the tradition's grand picture, signed with a shrug.
Most sources give 1941 as the year of his death; the Buddhist Digital Resource Center records 1940. His notes on Patrul's teaching are now translated into English and French, and his line of the Great Perfection passed through his students to many teachers of the generations since.
Illustration in preparationAbout the art
Khenpo Ngakchung died in 1941, so he is painted only in the manner of a traditional lineage portrait, never as a likeness. No painted portrait of him could be found for this page, and his only widely published portrait is a photograph, which was not used for his face. He wears what a Nyingma khenpo wears in such paintings: maroon and yellow monastic robes, a golden-yellow outer cloak for teaching, and the tall pointed red scholar's hat with long lappets, a sign of a learned master. His hands make a simple teaching gesture. Books in his hands and on the tables are Tibetan loose-leaf volumes wrapped in cloth, always shown blank.
His teacher Nyoshul Lungtok is drawn after a painted portrait published on Lotsawa House: the same pointed red-orange hat, a yellow-orange vest, a red-orange shawl and both hands at the heart. The young Ngakchung is shown bareheaded in a plain, patched robe. The ash-dusted board in the second picture is the kind once used to practise writing; it is shown blank because the site never puts letters into its images. The plate heaped with grain stands for the mandala offering, one of the preliminary practices. It is shown only as an object, and the faint rainbow glow above it marks the tradition's account of a vision, without showing the vision.
Guru Rinpoche appears as a small gilded shrine statue in his main form: the lotus hat with one vulture feather, the five-pronged vajra at his heart, the skull cup holding a long-life vase, and the khatvanga staff in the crook of his left arm. Vimalamitra, Patrul Rinpoche, Mipham and all later and living teachers of this line are named in the text only. Prayer flags at Pema Ritro, Jönpalung and Palyul are plain coloured cloth without writing.
Why this matters for practice
Khenpo Ngakchung's story is a story of births and returns: Vimalamitra's promise to come back, Patrul's prophecy of a student yet to be born, and a boy of the Nyoshul family in whom the tradition saw that promise kept. The second line of the Seven-Line Prayer remembers another birth, Guru Rinpoche's on a lotus in a lake, the Lake-Born Vajra to whom Khenpo Ngakchung wrote a longing song. For all his learning, the practice he pressed on his students was this simple one: to recite the seven lines earnestly while remembering Guru Rinpoche's qualities.
If something in this story moved you, the boy of the Nyoshul family, or the strict and kindly khenpo who sent his students back to the Seven-Line Prayer, you might pause tonight and recite the prayer once. The deeper teachings he gave belong with a teacher, and the Find a Teacher page can help with that; the seven lines are open to anyone.
Sources and further reading
- Khenpo Ngawang Palzang; Nyoshul Lungtok Tenpé Nyima; Vimalamitra; Second Drubwang Pema Norbu; A Guide to the Words of My Perfect Teacher, Rigpa Wiki (via web.archive.org)
- Khenchen Ngawang Palzang (author page and translations), Lotsawa House
- Khenpo Ngawang Pelzang (Joseph McClellan, 2023); institution pages Tosam Norbu Lhunpo and Nyoshul Jonpalung Monastery, The Treasury of Lives (via web.archive.org)
- Person record P724, ngag dbang dpal bzang, Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC)
- Wondrous Dance of Illusion: The Autobiography of Khenpo Ngawang Palzang (publisher's description), Shambhala Publications (via web.archive.org)
- Teacher (Lama) figure index; Tradition: Katog (Nyingma), setID 2515, Himalayan Art Resources
This retelling is waiting to be read by a knowledgeable practitioner. Where the traditional accounts differ, the story says so; if you notice a mistake, please tell us through Share Your Story.
