The Passing of the Dodrupchen Rinpoche and Prayers for his Swift Rebirth
Kyabjé Dodrupchen Rinpoche, Tubten Trinlé Pal Zangpo aka Jikmé Trinlé Palbar (1927-2022), the fourth incarnation of the ‘Mahasiddha from Do’, entered into parinirvana on the 25th of January at around 4 pm in his retreat at Lukshama near Gangtok in Sikkim. Many great teachers have already expressed their condolences and shared some intimate stories of their direct experiences with Dodrupchen Rinpoche. We feel incapable of adding anything to this, and so instead we have gathered several of these messages together here. Several prayers for the swift rebirth have been written and can be found with English translation (and soon other languages) on Lotsawa House. Finally, we have aided Lotsawa House in publishing several small texts by Dodrupchen Rinpoche himself.
Rebirth Prayers for Dodrupchen Rinpoche
by Nuptul Tenpei Nyima (from the words of Dodrupchen Rinpoche & Dudjom Rinpoche)
Texts by the Fourth Dodrupchen
Condolences and stories about Dodrupchen
(In order of publication. All text and images have been taken from the Facebook pages of the respective authors)
Ringu Tulku
His Holiness the 4th Dodruchen Rinpoche (1927-2022) entered into parinirvana yesterday at around 4 pm in his retreat at Lukshama near Gangtok in Sikkim. He is one of the main lineage holders of Nyingma School of Buddhism and specially Longchen Nyingthik set of teachings. He is regarded as one of the most respectable teachers of Tibetan Buddhism.
He was personally one of my main teachers and he was our refuge and protection. His presence in Sikkim was one of the main reasons for us to settle in Sikkim. I remember all the kind and wise ways that he helped us in all various ways. Once when an insect entered into my ear he woke up in the middle of the night and found a way to get it out of my ear. He was the same way to all the people who came to get his help. Buddhists and non Buddhists all go to get his blessings in Sikkim. We go to him when a child does not sleep at night and for any major and minor needs. The community now feel like having lost their protector. We pray for a swift return of his reincarnation who would be similarly kind and wise. Ringu Tulku, 26.01.2022.
Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche
Kyabje Dodrup Rinpoche, who just passed into parinirvana, is one of our Nyingtik lineage’s greatest masters. He touched countless lives. Simply seeing him, and especially receiving teachings from him, has brought many onto the Dzogchen path and assured their liberation through the power of his blessings. The loss of him from this world brings us all a heavy heart, but we pray that another nirmanakaya will swiftly return as the fifth Dodrup Rinpoche to carry on the Great Perfection Nyingtik lineage and thus bring immense benefit.
Rabjam Rinpoche
Dodrupchen Rinpoche was the last of a generation of great Dzogchen practitioners and the principal holder of the Longchen Nyingtik lineage. He was a compelling and compassionate teacher, extremely humble and unassuming.
We always felt like we were under his protection. Rinpoche’s passing into parinirvana is a significant loss for the Buddhadharma, especially for the Nyingma tradition, both inside and outside Tibet.
Rinpoche inspired thousands of people throughout the world to practice the Dharma and have devotion to Guru Rinpoche. I feel very fortunate to have met this great master.
I’d like to share two memories I have of him from when I was younger:
In 1976 when Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche came to the USA for the first time, Dodrupchen Rinpoche travelled to New York to meet him. He wanted to take Rinpoche and his entourage out to eat “real American food.” As we were staying in Brooklyn, he found the perfect American restaurant nearby - the famous deli, Juniors.
We all sat at a long table eating hot dogs, coleslaw, and hamburgers in this brightly orange-painted restaurant. It was quite a sight for the local Junior diners to see all of us in maroon robes. Later I heard that Dodrupchen Rinpoche was very happy and satisfied to offer us this introduction to America.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche would leave Bhutan to travel to Nepal by car every year. On the way, he would always stop in Sikkim to visit Dodrupchen Rinpoche. I remember once Rinpoche and I received the transmission of the collected writings of the Third Dodrpchen, Dodrup Tenpai Nima from Dodrupchen Rinpoche himself.
We pray that all his vast and compassionate wishes for the benefit of all sentient beings and the Dharma be fulfilled, and that his lineage flourishes.
Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
We human beings tend to assess the authenticity or value of a politician, humanitarian activist or environmentalist by how well they put a theory into practice. But such an assessment is not easy to make. Does the person practise what they preach? Do they walk the talk? It’s hard to tell. And it gets even more difficult when the person involved has something to do with a spiritual path.
Many of us are very good at presenting buddhist teachings. When we teach impermanence, for instance, we have the ability to quote the best advice from the great commentaries and recite from memory the Buddha’s words and songs of impermanence. Yet the moment we are called on to forgive and forget, our hearts freeze solid. And the moment a grand vision requires some long-term planning, all thought of impermanence is crushed.
Some of us may have the ability to talk convincingly about bodhichitta. But when push comes to shove, our practice of bodhichitta is, at best, to accumulate merit so we can advance along our own spiritual path or, at worst, for our own personal gratification. And if you think the practice of bodhichitta is challenging, wait until you hear about Dzogchen and what it takes to put those teachings into action.
One of the core Dzogchen teachings is about being uncontrived and carefree. In other words, how to be 100% genuine and authentic in manner, attitude, world view and so on. Many people these days love to talk about the great path of ‘uncontriving’, but few are able to practise and actually live it – to be a Dzogchenpa. No wonder the great Dzogchen masters have warned us again and again about the vast chasm between Dzogchen the teaching and the Dzogchenpa.
Kyabje Dodrupchen Rinpoche was considered by many devotees, and especially by his disciples, to be one of the 20th century’s rare, living vidyadharas; a carefree ‘awareness holder’, who, to plagiarize Trungpa Rinpoche, was the epitome of ‘authentic presence’. Personally, I would not dare to make such a claim. How could I? Only vidyadharas can recognize other vidyadharas.
Even so, there are other ways for someone like me to establish whether a person is a vidyadhara or not. One way is to listen to my masters. Many great masters, my own included, openly venerated Kyabje Dodrupchen Rinpoche as a vidyadhara. In my experience, every word these masters ever spoke turned out to be true, so there was no reason for me not to believe them. Another way is through personal observation.
I should mention here that, although I pretend otherwise, I am a sucker when it comes to meeting social expectations, norms, etiquettes and, of course, political correctness, all of which I love to play with – which in itself is a sign of my lack of authenticity. Full, as I am, of insecurities, every move I make spawns more and more hypocrisy. Perhaps that is why the world my projections create seems to be full of hypocrites – hypocrites who ooze humility yet are anything but humble, who strive to be outrageous but whose basic attitudes are deeply conventional, who exude austerity in public but privately indulge in wanton extravagance.
Many of us adopt and even try to flaunt an easy-going, carefree persona but it’s rarely more than skin deep. Few people in this world are genuinely carefree. One of the side effects of this lack of carefreeness is that our every thought and action is contrived or fabricated. As a result, view, meditation and action become sanctimonious and hypocritical: the view is veiled by exaggeration or under-estimation (we exaggerate the ultimate truth and underestimate the relative truth); meditation is make-believe; and our actions breed a continuous stream of judgements about ourselves and others. Year after year, we talk about emptiness, yet the tiniest criticism cuts us to the quick and at a hint of praise we visibly bloat with pride.
I have known Kyabje Dodrupchen Rinpoche since I was nine years old. Time and again, in spite of my own narrow, limited perceptions, I witnessed just how uncompromising he always was – one of the few truly uncompromising beings on this planet. But were I to recount some of the incidents that demonstrate just how uncompromising and unhypocritical he really was, there would be an uproar. It might even trigger negative activities which could lead to the ruin of oneself and others. Like the frog who thought the tiny well he lived in contained all the water in the world, then fainted with shock when he saw a pond and realized how small his vision had been, many people would not believe a word, while others would faint with shock. Just a few would appreciate that everything Kyabje Dodrupchen Rinpoche ever did was an astonishing demonstration of authenticity.
Those who can savour the taste of the uncontrived path, not just in theory but in practice, will appreciate just how blessed the beings of this age are to have been alive at the same time that Kyabje Dodrupchen Rinpoche walked on this earth, a living embodiment of the Buddha’s Dharma.
– Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse