The Treasury of Lives

The Fourth Katok Getse, Gyurme Tenpa Gyeltsen, was a twentieth-century Nyingma master from Golok. Denied access to religious training during the Cultural Revolution, beginning in the late 1970s he trained with Dudjom Lingpa's grandson Tulku Nyida, as well as Khenpo Jigme Puntsok, Khenpo Gyeltsen Wozer, and the Fifth Katok Moktsa. In 1997, he moved to India where he became close to the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Taklung Tsetrul, and Penor Rinpoche. Before his death in 2018 he served briefly as the seventh head of the Nyingma tradition in exile.

Delok Tenzin Chodron was an eighteenth-century delok—someone who journeys to the realms beyond death and returns to tell about it.

Lhachik Dembu was a twelfth-century practitioner from the Yarlung Valley. She is best known for her relatively brief but eventful relationship with the Kagyu lineage master Rechungpa. While the veracity of her life story is questionable in many regards, her story sheds light on the role of women and attitudes about them in Tibetan tantric Buddhist communities from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries when different versions of her story were composed.