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The Sakyong offers message on His Eminence Namkha Drimed Rinpoche

Apr 26, 2007

The Sakyong, Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche, has sent the following message to the Shambhala community from Kathmandu, on the conclusion of his retreat practices in Nepal. The Sakyong has informed us that he has now completed the practices he undertook with His Eminence Namkha Drimed Rinpoche and Khandro Tseyang at the Maratika cave and at Nakha Drimed Rinpoche's monastery in Pharping.

The Sakyong's message celebrates the role that His Eminence will be able to play in our mandala. Namkha Drimed Rinpoche is the supreme head of the Ripa lineage of Nyingma Vajrayana Buddhism and a living Terton who has discovered many volumes of hidden teachings. The practices of the Ripa lineage are based on Taksham Samten Lingpa's vast Terma cycle of revealed teachings which also includes the most elaborate account of the life of Yeshe Tsogyal. Rinpoche is also the revealer of the complete cycle of teachings on the life of Gesar of Ling, the enlightened warrior-king of Tibet.

His Eminence will be offering further teachings on Gesar at Shambhala Centres this summer, as well as teachings on powa at Karme Choling in the fall. The schedule for those teachings will be announced shortly.

"I have recently spent several weeks in retreat practicing with His Eminence Namkha Rinpoche, my father-in-law and my wife's primary spiritual teacher. During this period, I was struck by Rinpoche's profundity of practice, his kindness, his attention to detail, his overwhelming love for my father, and affection towards me.

In the Tibetan community, Namkha Rinpoche is already highly regarded as one of the few accomplished senior lamas of his generation who is still with us. He continually guides people in their practice and affairs of life. I feel very lucky to have him as a guiding and supportive figure, and I've asked him to teach in our community on a regular basis to help people, to guide them in their practice, and to give them advice.

Rinpoche has a unique quality to share with us: being a married lama and having a family, he understands many of the issues of a householder-yogi. He has raised a very loving, affectionate, and harmonious family, which is not easy to do in these times.

I have asked His Eminence to come visit us as often as he can, although he is no longer just a guest teacher. He is now within our family. So I hope everyone will warmly invite and welcome him, as he is very much the Royal Father. I have requested that he teach what he is already well-known for -- the teachings and practices of the Gesar lineage -- but he is also very well accomplished in other spheres such as powa, dzogchen, sadhana practice, and meditation.

One of Namkha Rinpoche's unique and rare abilities is divination. In fact, as he was leading people out of Tibet, he practiced divination to determine which passes to take. He is renowned for a form that he has accomplished, the Gesar arrow divination, originally written by Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche. On a daily basis, people in the Tibetan community ask him for divinations. That is something that we also could request from him.

In the West, people are not so familiar with divination, but in the Tibetan community, it is a staple; often one of the roles a lama plays is to perform divinations. When we have a specific question or are facing an uncertainty or obstacle in our life, we ask an accomplished master to perform a divination. The master meditates -- often on a particular deity -- and then uses a medium that gives an indication about the future. The divination device can be a mala, a mirror, dice, a system of tying knots, an arrow, or another object. The most common device is the mala, and the most rare are the mirror and the arrow. The Vidyadhara often used a mirror.

Clearly we are becoming richer through this union with the Ripa lineage as we continue to discover what they can offer in our Shambhala mandala. I encourage you to welcome His Eminence into our world and share in his knowledge, wisdom, and blessings."

(This announcement was from the Shambhala News Service)