Sixth Anniversary of Lama Tharchin Rinpoche's Parinirvana

Thursday, August 15, 2019, marks the sixth anniversary of Lama Tharchin Rinpoche’s passing into parinirvana. In honor of this special day, the Full Moon Day of the Sixth Lunar Month according to the Tibetan calendar, we’re happy to share with you two precious audio recordings of Rinpoche telling his own joyful and uplifting accounts from his life growing up in a renowned ngakpa family in Tibet, along with inspirational yogi stories that influenced his personal dharma practice. We are offering free streaming of two recordings of Rinpoche’s entertaining and moving storytelling, “An Evening of Stories” told in Seattle, Washington, in 1993 and “Repkong Ngakpas,” told in San Rafael, California, in 2010. Click on the titles to go to the links on SoundCloud.

In “An Evening of Stories,” Lama Tharchin Rinpoche begins in classic form that will be instantly recognizable to his students, telling jokes and relating stories about his ancestral yogi lineage of Tibet, wild stories of his youth, the development of his own motivation for practicing the dharma through the influence of teachers, family, and sangha, stories of his mother who he considered a living bodhisattva, his visions for dharma in the West, the origin stories of Vajrayana Foundation and Pema Osel Ling, and lots more.
 
In “Repkong Ngakpas,” during an intimate evening of inspirational stories shared at Open Secret Bookstore in San Rafael, California, in the Spring of 2010, Lama Tharchin Rinpoche relates the history of the Repkong yogi tradition founded by his ancestor, Palchen Namkha Jigme, a former hunter who discovered the true nature of samsara and sought a way out of its endless cycle, as well as stories of his own special upbringing in a ngakpa yogi family in Tibet. The Repkong ngakpas were famous and revered for both their not-so-ordinary ordinary accomplishments, as well as for their realization of supreme siddhis. Rinpoche, the tenth family lineage holder of the Repkong yogis, relates awe-inspiring stories of these powerful householder ngakpa practitioners, as well as his father’s and mother's influence on Rinpoche’s own spiritual development and maturation.

Lama Tharchin Rinpoche recounts his great fortune at having been born in Tibet to a family of genuine dharma practitioners and having had connections with many revered lamas. Rinpoche shares that as a gifted young boy, he was courted to join many monasteries, but that his father counseled him that only at Kyabje Dudjom Rinpoche’s monastery would he be taught wisdom dharma rather than the dharma of concepts that many lamas teach. One of the most influential events in Rinpoche’s life was being given by his father to Kyabje Dudjom Rinpoche at the age of eight. Rinpoche stayed with Kyabje Dudjom Rinpoche until the age of sixteen when he began nine years of solitary and group retreat under Kyabje Dudjom Rinpoche’s guidance. Rinpoche also tells of the prominent role of Vajrakilaya in his family lineage and his own personal practice. He relates his family’s escape from Tibet to India in 1960, his early years in India and Nepal, moving to the West to teach at his lamas’ requests, and the dharma path of yogis and yoginis compared to the monastic path.

Please join us in practicing together on this powerful day for all of us connected with Lama Tharchin Rinpoche. Both Vajrayana Foundation and Jnanasukha are hosting events. You’ll find information for group practice onsite, online, or on one’s own on their websites, as well as how to connect through making offerings.

Photo by Angela Poopova, July 2001, Pema Osel Ling

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