Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche (1920–1996) was a Tibetan master of both the Kagyu and Nyingma schools. He held an especially close transmission of the Chokling Tersar, the treasure teachings revealed by his great-grandfather, Chokgyur Lingpa, and passed it on to many lamas, including the regents of the Karma Kagyu lineage.

Family and training

He grew up in Nangchen in eastern Tibet, in the Tsangsar family, which for generations had been the main holder of the Barom Kagyu lineage. His father, Tsangsar Chimé Dorjé, was the lama of Namgön Tupten Namdak Ling Monastery. His paternal grandmother, Könchok Paldrön, was a daughter of Chokgyur Lingpa, and she taught him the generation and completion practices and the ritual arts of the treasure revealer’s tradition.

The 15th Karmapa, Khakyab Dorje, recognised him as a tulku and enthroned him. His uncle, Tsangsar Lama Samten Gyatso, introduced him to the nature of mind and became his root guru. He also received teachings from the 16th Karmapa, Dzongsar Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö and Shechen Kongtrul, among others. In the Nyingma tradition he held the complete teachings of three 19th-century masters: Chokgyur Lingpa, Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo and Jamgön Kongtrul.

According to his son Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche, he spent more than twenty-one years in strict retreat, practising Mahāmudrā and Dzogchen in Kham, at Tsurphu, in Sikkim and in Nepal.

Nepal

In Nepal he helped build the temple at Nagi Gompa, a hermitage and nunnery above the Kathmandu Valley, and made its three main statues with his own hands. He worked on site through the building of Ka-Nying Shedrub Ling beside the Boudha stupa, where the King of Nepal inaugurated the monastery and the 16th Karmapa ordained its first monks. He also built Ngedön Ösel Ling at Swayambhu and established the Pema Ösel Ling retreat centre at Asura Cave.

Teaching

He taught in Sikkim, Bhutan and Nepal, and in 1980 toured Southeast Asia, Europe and the United States with Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche, giving Dzogchen and Mahāmudrā teachings. He gave the major transmissions of the Chokling Tersar to the 16th Karmapa, and the Dzogchen Desum, the Three Sections of the Great Perfection, to the 16th Karmapa, Dudjom Rinpoche, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche and many other lamas. Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche and Erik Pema Kunsang described his teaching style as concise, lucid and humorous. His teachings in English include Rainbow Painting, As It Is and Repeating the Words of the Buddha, and his memoirs are published as Blazing Splendor.

Four of his sons teach or taught in the lineage: Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche, Tsikey Chokling Rinpoche (who died in December 2020), Tsoknyi Rinpoche and Mingyur Rinpoche. In his later years he lived at Nagi Gompa, and he died there on 13 February 1996.