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Seen from a hillside at dawn, the round white wall and temples of Samye sit in mist beside a wide river. In the foreground a single small lamp burns on a stone ledge, and a white silk scarf lifts in the wind from a juniper branch.
AncientTraditional accountLine 2 · Lotus birth

Princess Pemasal and the Promise

Some stories in this library tell of great journeys. This one tells of a short life. It is about a little girl who died, and what the tradition says happened next.

It is told gently, as the tradition tells it, and it makes no promise about anyone else's loss. If you are carrying a loss of your own, please read slowly, or stop whenever you need to.

The king's daughter

In the eighth century King Trisong Detsen ruled Tibet. He invited Guru Rinpoche, Padmasambhava, from India, and with the abbot Shantarakshita they founded Samye, Tibet's first monastery, in the wide sandy valley of the Tsangpo river.

The king had a daughter named Pemasal, also spelled Pema Sal or Pema Sel. Pema means "lotus" and sal means clear or bright, so her name can be read as "Clear Lotus" or "Lotus Light." Rigpa Wiki names her mother as Queen Droza Changchub, of the Dro clan.

In a sunlit courtyard at Samye, the king in a cream robe and tall turban stands with his hand on the shoulder of a small girl in a deep red robe with braided hair. She looks up at a white stupa.
King Trisong Detsen and his daughter Pemasal, whose name means something like "Clear Lotus."

The old accounts say very little about her days. We are not told what games she played or which songs she knew. We know only that she was the king's child, and that she was young.

A lamp goes out

When she was about eight years old, Pemasal died. Rigpa Wiki says it was unexpected. The accounts do not dwell on it, and neither will we.

A small brass butter lamp on a dark wooden ledge, its flame almost out and a thin thread of smoke rising. A folded white silk scarf lies beside it, and a small window shows a deep blue night sky.
Pemasal died when she was about eight years old.

Her father's grief was very great. Rigpa Wiki's page on her teaching says simply that the king was overcome, and that Guru Rinpoche acted to console him.

It is worth pausing there. Before anything wondrous happens in this story, there is a father sitting with his sorrow, and a teacher who comes to sit with him.

In a lamp-lit room with whitewashed walls, a king in a turban sits with his head bowed. Beside him on a cushion sits Guru Rinpoche in his lotus hat, turned toward him with a gentle, caring expression.
The accounts say Guru Rinpoche came to console the grieving king.

Called back for a little while

What happened next is told as a wonder. It is the tradition's account, and this page does not try to explain it.

The accounts say Guru Rinpoche traced a sacred syllable over the girl's heart and, by the power of his meditation, called her mind back. She opened her eyes, and she could speak again.

A close portrait of Guru Rinpoche in his lotus hat, eyes lowered in compassion and concentration, holding a golden vajra at his heart, lit warmly on one side by lamplight and coolly on the other by dawn.
Tradition says he called the princess's mind back for a little while.

Every telling agrees that it was only for a short time. It was not a cure. It was a meeting, held open just long enough for something to be given.

What he gave her

The gift is remembered as the Khandro Nyingtik, the "Heart-Essence of the Dakinis." A dakini is a female embodiment of enlightened wisdom. A translator's note on Lotsawa House, citing Khenchen Namdrol Rinpoche, explains the name: the teaching was first given to two dakinis, Yeshe Tsogyal and the princess, and a female protector guards it.

Across a simple room in morning light, a young girl in a deep red robe and cream shawl sits upright, looking up at Guru Rinpoche, who leans toward her kindly. A soft golden light hangs between them. In the background a young woman in white kneels beside a lamp.
He gave her the teaching later called the Khandro Nyingtik, the "Heart-Essence of the Dakinis."

The sources describe the gift in different ways. Rigpa Wiki says he gave her the whole cycle at once, through his power to pass on blessing directly. The Treasury of Lives speaks of instructions and transmission, entrusted to her as her inheritance.

A history kept within the Khandro Nyingtik itself, translated on Lotsawa House, says that Guru Rinpoche and his consort gave her the direct realization of the teaching, and a secret name: Pema Ledrel Tsal.

None of them describes a book placed in her hands. The teaching was given to her mind, the way a seed is set in the ground to wait for its season. Guru Rinpoche, Rigpa Wiki says, empowered her to bring it to light again in a future life.

The sources do not agree on where this happened, either. The Khandro Nyingtik history names Chimphu, the hermitage in the mountains above Samye; the other accounts used here name no place. What the teaching itself contains is for a qualified teacher to give, and the Find a Teacher page can help.

Then, soon after, the accounts say, Pemasal passed away again. The tradition does not tell us how the king bore this second parting. It remembers, instead, what she carried with her.

From high rocky crags at sunrise, a white silk scarf floats away on the wind over a misty valley, where a tiny circle of temples can be seen far below.
Soon after, the accounts say, Pemasal passed away again.

A treasure in the rock

The teachings were hidden as terma, or "treasure": teachings concealed so that the right person could find them at the right time. Rigpa Wiki and the Treasury of Lives both say that Yeshe Tsogyal, Guru Rinpoche's closest disciple, was given the task of concealing them.

Rigpa Wiki also names the place where they were later found: Tramo Drak, a rock in the region of Dakpo, downstream along the Tsangpo from Samye.

Close-up at dusk of a woman's hands, with a white sleeve and dark red shawl, placing a small casket wrapped in yellow cloth into a crack in a speckled rock face.
Yeshe Tsogyal is said to have hidden the teachings as treasure, later found at Tramo Drak in Dakpo.

The boy who found it

Centuries passed. Jamgön Kongtrul, the great nineteenth-century collector of treasure teachings, writes that the princess had five pure rebirths. The fifth, by the dates on Lotsawa House and the Treasury of Lives, was born in 1291, into a family descended from the treasure revealer Nyangral Nyima Özer. Rigpa Wiki gives earlier dates.

He was named Rinchen Tsuldor, and when he became a monk, Tsultrim Dorje. When he was sixteen, the Treasury of Lives says, he met an old man, apparently an emanation of Guru Rinpoche, who gave him a list of places where treasures lay hidden. More lists came to him at twenty-one.

On a mountain path in warm evening light, an old monk in patched red robes with a walking staff hands a small yellow scroll to a young shaven-headed monk, who reaches out with both hands.
At sixteen, the accounts say, he met an old man who gave him a list of hidden treasures.

At twenty-three he went to Tramo Drak in the Dang valley of Dakpo and brought the Khandro Nyingtik out of the rock. He is remembered by the secret name the princess had been given long before: Pema Ledrel Tsal.

Looking up at a tall speckled cliff at dawn. At its foot a young monk in a red cap holds a small yellow scroll to his heart, with three companions behind him, and a faint rainbow glow shines from a crack in the rock above.
At twenty-three, Pema Ledrel Tsal brought the Khandro Nyingtik out of the rock at Tramo Drak.

Rigpa Wiki says he decoded the teaching only in part. He passed it to his close disciple Gyalse Lekpa and to the Third Karmapa, Rangjung Dorje. His own life was short. He died at about twenty-five, and Kongtrul writes that after his passing the whole valley was filled with rainbow light for a week.

Longchenpa

Tradition holds that his next birth was Longchenpa (1308–1364), one of the most beloved masters of the Nyingma, the "Ancient" school of Tibetan Buddhism. Rigpa Wiki says Longchenpa received the Khandro Nyingtik from Gyalse Lekpa, so the teaching came back to the one who had first found it.

He wrote commentaries on it that became part of the Nyingtik Yabzhi, the "Heart-Essence in Four Parts." His life is told in Story 14, "Longchenpa, the Vast Expanse." He taught at Chimphu and died there, on the same mountain where, by one account, the princess received her gift.

At twilight, Longchenpa, in a tall pointed red hat and red and gold robes, sits in meditation on soft clouds of light above rocky crags. Below him a lamp glows in a small cave doorway.
Tradition holds that Pema Ledrel Tsal's next birth was Longchenpa, who taught at Chimphu.

Pema Lingpa

The thread goes on. Rigpa Wiki calls the Bhutanese treasure revealer Pema Lingpa (1450–1521) the last of Pemasal's five incarnations and, quoting Nyoshul Khenpo, the first of Longchenpa's. Kongtrul, as we saw, counted Pema Ledrel Tsal as the fifth. The sources count differently, and the difference is left here as it stands.

Pema Lingpa's story, with its burning lake and its lamp, is Story 15, "Pema Lingpa and the Burning Lake." It also mentions one of his treasures, a conversation in which the young princess asks Guru Rinpoche how to awaken.

Inside a dim temple with painted walls, a round-faced master in a red hat and red cloak sits holding a small golden vase in his lap, beside a row of glowing butter lamps.
Rigpa Wiki counts the Bhutanese master Pema Lingpa among Pemasal's later births.

A promise kept

You may notice one word that runs through these names: Pemasal, Pema Ledrel Tsal, Pema Lingpa. Pema, lotus. The second line of the Seven-Line Prayer remembers Guru Rinpoche born on the heart of a lotus. In this story the tradition sees something like a lotus opening again and again across the centuries, still carrying what a little girl was given.

The tradition does not say what this means for anyone else's child, and this page will not say it either. What it offers is a picture of care: a teacher who came to a grieving father, a gift that was not lost, and a promise remembered for centuries.

A small brass butter lamp burns on a wooden window ledge beside a folded white silk scarf, while the sky outside turns rose and gold at dawn.
A lamp, a pause, and the prayer recited once.
About the art

This story concerns a child's death, so the death itself is never shown. It is told through symbols instead: a butter lamp going out, a white silk scarf carried off on the wind, and dawn light returning. The princess appears only twice, alive and fully dressed, and always from a respectful distance.

No traditional portrait of Princess Pemasal was found. She is shown in a child-sized version of eighth-century Tibetan court dress, a long robe with wide triangular lapels like the one worn by Yeshe Tsogyal in her youth, but in deep red, so the two are not confused. King Trisong Detsen wears the cream turban and patterned silk robe seen in early paintings of the Tibetan emperors.

Guru Rinpoche appears in his best-known form: the lotus hat with a half-vajra and a single vulture feather, a five-pronged vajra held at his heart, and a slender khatvanga staff at his left shoulder. At the king's side he sits on a simple cushion rather than his lotus throne. The tradition says he traced a sacred syllable over the princess's heart. As on every page of this site, no letter or syllable is drawn in any image.

Pema Ledrel Tsal is painted after a small figure at the top of an eighteenth-century painting in the Rubin Museum (Himalayan Art Resources item 65864): a young teacher in a soft dark-red cap, a blue-grey inner garment, an ochre shawl and a red lower robe. Longchenpa wears the tall pointed red hat of a learned master, and Pema Lingpa the red hat with gold trim and the red cloak of his Bhutanese portraits. The scrolls are yellow, the colour traditionally linked with treasure texts, and the brass butter lamps are simple bowls on short stems in the early scenes and the classic chalice shape in the last.

Why this matters for practice

The second line of the Seven-Line Prayer remembers Guru Rinpoche born on the heart of a lotus, and this story follows a lotus name, Pema, from a little princess through the lives the tradition says came after her. It gives a picture of a teacher whose kindness meets a grieving father, and of a gift kept safe across centuries until it could be found. Reciting the prayer is a simple way to turn toward that same kindness, with no more than the wish to remember.

If something in this story touched you, you might light a lamp, or simply pause, for someone you love, and recite the prayer once.

Sources and further reading

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.

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Story XV · Lineage history

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Story V · Traditional account

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