The Eight Names of Guru Rinpoche

The fourth line of the Seven-Line Prayer is the simplest. It calls him by his name: Padmasambhava, the Lotus-Born.

Yet the tradition remembers him by many names. The best loved are eight, known in Tibetan as Guru Tsen Gyé, which means "the eight names of the Guru." In English they are usually called the Eight Manifestations: eight forms in which, the accounts say, he appeared at different moments of his life.

Rigpa Wiki puts it gently. These are not eight different Padmasambhavas. They show one teacher's ability to appear as each need required. So this is not a catalogue. It is one life, told eight times, each time in a different robe.

1. Tsokyé Dorjé, the Lake-Born Vajra

The first name belongs to his birth. The traditional accounts say that he appeared on a lotus on Lake Dhanakosha, in Oddiyana, as a child of about eight, holding a vajra, a small scepter that stands for what cannot be broken.

Tso means lake (one translation says ocean), kyé means born, and dorjé means vajra. The whole story, with the king who found him, is told in "The Lotus-Born" on this site. In paintings of the eight forms, Tsokyé Dorjé often looks just like the Guru's familiar main form, rising on a lotus from blue water.

2. Shakya Sengé, Lion of the Shakyas

The accounts say that, though he was already awake, he chose to walk the path the way others must, so that they could follow. And so he asked to be ordained, to take the formal vows of a Buddhist monk.

The tellings differ on where. Some say he was ordained at the Diamond Throne in Bodhgaya by Ananda, the Buddha's closest disciple. Others say it was in Zahor, by a master named Prabhahasti. Either way he received a new name, Shakya Sengé, "Lion of the Shakyas," the Buddha's own clan.

In paintings he looks almost like the Buddha himself: monk's robes, a crown of short curls, a vajra in his right hand and a plain alms bowl in his left.

3. Loden Choksé, Wise Seeker of the Sublime

Next comes a season of learning. The life stories describe him travelling from teacher to teacher, studying the sciences of his day and the many kinds of Buddhist teaching. Rigpa Wiki says he mastered each teaching the first time he heard it.

For this, they say, he was called Loden Choksé, "Wise Seeker of the Sublime." Painters show him as a bright young prince-scholar holding a little hand drum and a skull cup. The skull cup, a bowl made from the crown of a skull, reminds the viewer of impermanence.

4. Pema Gyalpo, the Lotus King

The fourth name brings fire and water. In Zahor, the accounts say, an angry king tried to burn him on a pyre, and the fire became a lake. That story belongs to Princess Mandarava, and it is told in "Mandarava and the Lotus Lake."

In Rigpa Wiki's telling, something like it happened again. He returned with Mandarava to his old kingdom of Oddiyana, was recognised, and was set on a pyre once more. Again he was found sitting on a lotus in a lake. Afterwards the two of them taught there for thirteen years, and he became known as Pema Gyalpo, the Lotus King.

Other sources link the name to his earlier years as the young prince of Oddiyana, ruling, as Lotsawa House puts it, with wisdom and compassion. In paintings he wears a king's crown and holds a hand drum and a round golden mirror. The mirror is the easiest way to tell him apart from Loden Choksé.

5. Nyima Özer, Rays of the Sun

Then he went to the cremation grounds, the wild places where the dead were burned, which yogis sought out to face impermanence without flinching. ("From Prince to Yogi" tells how his path first led there.)

The accounts say he taught the dakinis there, the female wisdom beings of Tibetan tradition, and turned the spirits of those places into protectors of the Dharma, the Buddha's teaching. He became Nyima Özer, "Rays of the Sun."

Painters give him a beautiful sign. He sits as a lean yogi, a staff in his right hand, while his left forefinger points upward and a ray of light holds the sun in the sky. One Himalayan Art Resources note reads those rays as light that removes ignorance.

6. Sengé Dradok, the Lion's Roar

At Bodhgaya, the accounts say, five hundred skilled opponents came to debate the Buddhist scholars, and the scholars were losing. Guru Rinpoche came to their aid, won the debate, and turned back the magic that followed. "The Dakini and the Prayer" tells how the scholars called him.

From this he was named Sengé Dradok, "Lion's Roar," an old Buddhist phrase for truth spoken without fear. He is shown dark blue and wreathed in flames, a vajra held high. The tradition reads such fierce forms not as anger but as compassion at full strength.

7. Padmasambhava, the Lotus-Born

The seventh name is the one the prayer uses. Rigpa Wiki notes that Padmasambhava was first the name of this one manifestation, and only later came to stand for all of them.

It belongs to Tibet. King Trisong Detsen invited him to help found Samye, the first monastery there, but the accounts say the local spirits tore down by night what was built by day. Guru Rinpoche climbed the hill of Hepori and brought those forces under oath, and the building could go on ("The Building of Samye").

In this form he is a great scholar-monk, in a tall red pointed hat, seated before a basket of books, one hand raised in the gesture of protection.

8. Dorjé Drolö, the Wild Wrathful Vajra

The last name is the wildest. Rigpa Wiki says that at thirteen places called Taktsang, "Tiger's Lair," he appeared in a terrifying wrathful form, binding worldly spirits under oath to protect the terma, treasure teachings hidden for later generations.

As Dorjé Drolö he is deep maroon, riding a tigress through flame, a vajra in one hand and a ritual dagger pointed down in the other. His best-known lair is the cliff above Paro, told in "The Tiger's Nest."

Why so many forms?

Why would one teacher need eight faces? The tradition's answer is simple: because beings are different. A scholar may listen to a scholar, a court to a king, a yogi in a cremation ground to another yogi, and a proud, frightening force only to someone more powerful still.

One picture may help, offered here only as an image. On a still night a single moon shines in every bowl of water set out to catch it. There are many moons in the bowls, and only one in the sky.

Rigpa Wiki adds that each manifestation shows a different side of the nature of mind, and quotes Guru Rinpoche himself: "Mind itself is Padmasambhava."

Many lists, one teacher

The lists do not all agree, and it is worth saying so gently. This page follows the order of the life story in Rigpa Wiki's biography.

Rigpa Wiki's own list of the eight runs differently, with Nyima Özer third and Pema Gyalpo sixth. Lotsawa House puts Pema Gyalpo second, right after the birth. The Pema Kathang, a fourteenth-century treasure biography, sets the eight around the directions of a mandala, the circular pattern of a sacred world. Some lists replace Tsokyé Dorjé with Orgyen Dorjé Chang or add the name Padmakara.

Himalayan Art Resources notes that when painters set the eight together, they usually arrange them by rank rather than by the order of his life. The forms stay the same. Only the order changes.

The eight, danced

In Bhutan the eight are not only painted. They are danced. Each year at the Tshechu, a festival whose name means "tenth day," the day of the month kept for Guru Rinpoche, monks perform the Guru Tshengye, the dance of the eight manifestations.

Writing in Tricycle, Karen Greenspan describes a two-hour dance drawn from treasure texts of Guru Chöwang, the thirteenth-century master who also revealed the Seven-Line Prayer. Dorjé Drolö enters first and clears the ground. Then each form dances alone at the centre of a circle, in its own mask and robe, the peaceful ones slowly and the wrathful ones faster and faster.

The Treasury of Lives says the same cycle lies at the heart of a yearly dance of the eight aspects held at most Nyingma monasteries. One Bhutanese story, told in "The Tiger's Nest," even remembers Guru Rinpoche dancing in eight forms in a meadow in Bumthang.

At Paro, on the festival's last morning, a huge appliqué banner of the eight manifestations, about twenty metres wide, is raised on the wall before dawn. It is taken down before the sun can touch it. People come in the dark to see it, and it is said that seeing it washes away wrongdoing.

So the eight names are not only history. Each year they are sewn, painted and danced, and for a few hours a whole valley stands inside the story.