Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche (1930-2002)

Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche passed away on November 17, 2002, during a retreat at Khandro Ling monastery in Brazil, where he lived. Rinpoche was a lineage holder within the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism, as well as an artist and Tibetan physician.Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche (1930-2002)

Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche passed away on November 17, 2002, during a retreat at Khandro Ling monastery in Brazil, where he lived. Rinpoche was a lineage holder within the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism, as well as an artist and Tibetan physician. Born in 1930 in eastern Tibet, Chagdud Tulku was recognized at a young age as the sixteenth tulku in the line of Chagdud incarnations. He fled Tibet at the time of the Chinese Communist occupation in 1959 and helped to establish and administer several refugee camps in both India and Nepal. At the request of his American students, he moved to the West in 1979, where he established the Chagdud Gonpa Foundation for the study and practice of Vajrayana Buddhism, and Padma Publishing for the translation and printing of sacred texts. There are now more than thirty Chagdud Gonpa centers and practice groups throughout the world.

In his book Life in Relationship to Death, Rinpoche wrote:

Time is very precious. Do not wait until you are dying to understand your spiritual nature. If you do it now, you will discover resources of kindness and compassion you didn’t know you had. It is from this mind of intrinsic wisdom and compassion that you can truly benefit others. . . . Moment by moment, we should look at life as if it were a dream unfolding. . . . In this relaxed, more open state of being, we have the opportunity to gain the infallible means of dying well, which is recognition of our absolute nature.