Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche

Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche was born in 1930 as Padma Gargyi Wangchuk in the Thromtar region of Kham in Eastern Tibet. His father was Sera Kharto Tulku, a lama of the Gelugpa School of Tibetan Buddhism. His mother was Delog Dawa Drolma, who was widely considered to be an emanation of Tara, and was from a Sakya family; she had a profound influence on her son's spiritual life.

By the time he was three years old, Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche had been recognized as the incarnation of the previous Chagdud Tulku. Soon afterward he traveled to Temphel Gonpa, a monastery about two or three days by horseback from Thromtar. After a retreat, he received numerous teachings, empowerments and oral transmissions from a number of spiritual masters. One of them, Shechen Rabjam Rinpoche, told him that Tara meditation would become one of his major practices. Shortly after completing his first three-year retreat in 1945, he went to see Dzongsar Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö. Chagdud Tulku received the Rinchen Terzö empowerments from him, and also met Dilgo Khyentse at that time. By 1946 he had entered his second three-year retreat under the guidance of Tromge Trungpa Rinpoche. Among his other teachers were Shechen Kongtrul, Tulku Arig and Dudjom Jigdral Yeshe Dorje, who would become a main teacher and source of spiritual inspiration.

Following the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959, Chagdud Tulku escaped to India after enduring hunger and many dangers, his route taking him through the Pemakö region into Nagaland. He lived in a number of Tibetan refugee resettlement camps in India—Kalimpong, Odisha, Dalhousie, Bir, Himachal Pradesh, and Delhi—and practiced traditional Tibetan medicine, in great demand as his fellow refugees struggled with the heat and tropical diseases. At Tso Pema he met Jangchub Dorje, who gave him the empowerments for the Red Tara cycle; signs of accomplishment came swiftly, and the Red Tara sadhana would later become the meditation most extensively practiced by his Western students.

In the fall of 1977 he travelled to Kathmandu, Nepal, to receive all the empowerments of the Dudjom treasures from Dudjom Rinpoche. After many months of waiting he was finally granted a visa and arrived in San Francisco on October 24, 1979.

In 1992 Chagdud Rinpoche received an invitation to teach in Brazil, where he became a pioneer in spreading the Dharma in South America. He helped establish more than thirty-eight Dharma centers across the USA, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Switzerland and Australia — the best known being Rigzin Ling in Junction City, California, and Khadro Ling, the seat of Chagdud Gonpa Brasil in Tres Coroas, Brazil.

In the last week of his life he concluded a strict retreat, completed a statue of Amitabha, and led a phowa training for more than three hundred people. On the morning of November 17, 2002, he passed into parinirvana while sitting up in bed, remaining in a state of meditation with no deterioration of his physical form for over five days. He was then taken from Brazil to Nepal, where his cremation took place.