Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche
Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche (1920 - February 13, 1996) (Tibetan: སྤྲུལ་སྐུ་ཨོ་རྒྱན་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་, Wylie: Sprul-sku O-rgyan Rin-po-che). A contemporary Buddhist master of the Kagyü and Nyingma lineages, who lived at Nagi Gompa hermitage in Nepal, Urgyen Rinpoche was considered one of the greatest Dzogchen masters of our time.
Life
Born in Eastern Tibet in Kham, in 1920, he was recognized by Khakyab Dorje, 15th Karmapa Lama as both the reincarnation of the Chowang Tulku and Nubchen Sangye Yeshe, one of the twenty-five principal students of Padmasambhava.
Rinpoche's father was Tsangsar Chimey Dorje, a vajrayana instructor who began giving Rinpoche transmission for the Kangyur, the Buddha, and "The New Treasures of Chokgyur Lingpa." As he grew older, he studied Dzogchen with Samten Gyatso.
Urgyen Rinpoche spent thirty three years at Nagi Gompa Hermitage where he spent two decades in retreat, and eventually established six monasteries and retreat centers in Nepal. Urgyen Rinpoche was the father of Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche.
Sons
He had four sons, each of whom is now an important Buddhist master in his own right: Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche, Tsikey Chokling Rinpoche, Tsoknyi Rinpoche and Mingyur Rinpoche.
Death and Later reincarnation
In the early morning of February 13, 1996, Urgyen Rinpoche died.
- Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche's special quality was to begin with the view rather than end with it; to train in devotion, compassion, and renunciation, perfecting the accumulations, and removing obscurations, all within the framework of the view. The practitioner was encouraged to see all these aspects of practice as the very expressions of the view itself. That was Tulku Urgyen's unique style.
His reincarnation was discovered in March 2006, the four year old son of Chokling Rinpoche (known as the Chokling of Neten, not to be confused with Tulku Urgyen's son who is the Chokling of Tsikey). He lives in the village of Bir in Himachal Pradesh, in India.
Writings
His main transmissions were the Chokling Tersar and the pointing-out instruction.
He is the author of the 2-volume series titled 'As It Is', which deals with the subject of emptiness.
