The Treasury of Lives

A Biographical Encyclopedia of Tibet, Inner Asia, and the Himalaya

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

Lhachik Dembu

early 12th cent.

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.

 

Jangsem Dawa Gyeltsen was an important figure in the transmission lineages of the deities Hayagrīva and Avalokiteśvara, and in the dissemination of the Avalokiteśvara fasting ritual or nyung-ne. A great visionary who apparently became quite wealthy later in life, Dawa Gyeltsen is known principally as a meditator, healer, miracle worker, and teacher of bodhicitta. 

Khordong Choktrul Gyurme Dorje was a twentieth-century Nyingma lama in the Jangter, or Northern Treasures tradition. He was the son of Gonpo Wanggyel, the maternal grandson of Khordong Terchen Nuden Dorje, and the elder brother of Tulku Tsullo.

Pema Chozin

18th cent.

Pema Chozin, like her sister Pema Chodzom, was an eighteenth-century nun and patron of the Nyingma and Barawa Kagyu traditions in southern Tibet. Her brother was Polhane Sonam Tobgyel. Both sisters, students of Orgyen Ngawang Yeshe, lived during their adult years at Karye Monastery in Mangyul. There they sponsored and participated in the editing of the Rigdzin Tsewang Norbu (Waddell) edition of the Collected Nyingma Tantras. Pema Chozin also edited the collected works of Rigdzin Tsewang Norbu.