The Treasury of Lives

The boy who would later be known as Zang Samlingpa (zang bsam gling pa) was born in 1189 to a man named Pukpa Gon (phug pa mgon) who had worked as a servant in Tanak (rta nag) and who later moved to he decided to go to Dingri (ding ri) to take up the life of a yogi. There he met a woman named Darma Cham (dar ma lcam) who soon gave birth to a son.

The boy spent his childhood studying the usual subjects. At age twenty-one he was ordained by Chel Lotsāwa Chozang (dpyal lo tsA ba chos bzang, d. 1216), later serving as his teaching assistant. At the same time he studied and practiced under many of the teachers of his day.

It was in Upper Nyang (myang stod), at Sertreng Monastery (ser phreng dgon), while receiving teachings from an unnamed Kagyu master, that the young man attained the realization of Mahāmudrā. He might be considered a member of the lineage of Gangpa Rinchen Ozer (gangs pa rin chen 'od zer, 1175-1249), who was a disciple of the First Karmapa, Dusum Khyenpa (kar+ma pa 01 dus gsum mkhyen pa, 1110-1193), but he also followed the famous hermit Kodrakpa Sonam Gyeltsen (ko brag pa bsod nams rgyal mtshan, 1182-1261).

Late in life he earned the name Samlingpa after he founded Samling Monastery (bsam gling dgon) in the Lower Nyang valley, in the general vicinity of the city of Gyantse, and it is for this that he is best known to posterity. Not much else seems to be known about the last decades of his long life, except that he served as the ordinator, in about 1240, of Orgyenpa Rinchen Pel (o rgyan pa rin chen dpal, c.1229-1309).