The Treasury of Lives

Jetsunma Kunga Trinle Wangmo was a yoginī, author, and lineage-holder of the Jonang order of Tibetan Buddhism. As a woman of the Jonang order in seventeenth-century central Tibet, she lived a contemplative life immersed in yogic practice while she wrestled with the real-time political and social unrest of her time. She was a close disciple and secret consort to Tāranātha and a key figure in the transmission of the Zhentong philosophy of emptiness. During the latter period of her life, she was a mentor to the generation of masters who were instrumental in transplanting the Jonangpas from Tsang in central Tibet to Dzamtang on the far eastern frontiers of the plateau after the confiscation of Takten Puntsok Ling Monastery by the Ganden Podrang government.

Ngawang Lodro Drakpa was a vajra master at Tsangwa Monastery in the Dzamtang region of Amdo. Often referred to as “Mati Rinpoche,” he was one of the leading intellectual figures and most prolific Jonangpa authors of the twentieth century. He is regarded by the living Jonang tradition as a miraculous manifestation of the Tibetan masters Dolpopa Sherab Gyeltsen, Kunga Drolchok, and Tāranātha, among others.

Ngawang Trinle was a Jonang master who also trained in Geluk establishments. After the forced conversion of Jonang Monastery to the Geluk tradition, he traveled to Dzamtang and Mongolia, and also gave Jonang teachings in the Geluk monasteries of Drepung and Tashilhunpo.

Rinchen Pel, known as Ratnaśrī (the Sanskrit version of his name), established Choje Gyache Monastery, the first Jonang monastery in Dzamtang, Amdo, in 1425. He was the first in what has become the successive Drungpa line of the Jonang tradition.