Sogyal Rinpoche

Sogyal Rinpoche is one of the most well-known Tibetan-Buddhist masters teaching in the modern world today, and amongst the last of the generation of teachers to have been born in Tibet before the Chinese invasion in 1959.

He was born in Kham, East Tibetan, to the eldest daughter of the wealthy Lakar family, and recognized as a tulku of Tertön Lerab Lingpa by Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö, who was perhaps the greatest Tibetan Buddhist master of the 20th century and the most important single influence in Sogyal Rinpoche's life.

After an idyllic early childhood, political unrest in Tibet forced previously unimaginable changes upon Rinpoche and his entire family.

In the early fifties, Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö led his family and close friends on a three-year pilgrimage through central Tibet that ended up in Sikkim, which has since become part of India. Soon after they arrived it became clear that the situation in Tibet was far too dangerous and unstable for them to return, and so almost overnight they had all become refugees.

The King of Sikkim, who had invited Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö to visit Gangtok when they met in Lhasa, immediately offered him a home and generously made it possible for all his followers, including the Lakar Family, to live in Gangtok.

In spite of all the kindness and generosity showered upon them all, being refugee is never easy, and their old life was now like a dream—things had changed so dramatically. Yet, for Sogyal Rinpoche it was nothing in comparison to the loss of his beloved Master who passed away in 1959.

From then on, Sogyal Rinpoche's life turned upside down, and instead of spending his days studying and practising with his master, on the recommendation of the King and Queen of Sikkim, he was sent to the Catholic Boarding School in Darjeeling to learn about the world.

His school friends describe him as being a very happy child, and very clever. He studied hard, was good at English and Physics, played football and even took the role of Shylock in a school production of The Merchant of Venice. In 1971, Rinpoche was sent to England to Trinity College Cambridge to study comparative religion as a visiting scholar, while continuing to his Buddhist education with such great masters as Kyabjé Dudjom Rinpoche and Kyabjé Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, acting, when necessary, as their translator and attendant.

Encouraged by Dudjom Rinpoche, Sogyal Rinpoche began teaching in 1974, and, with his remarkable gift for presenting the essence of Tibetan Buddhism in an authentic and completely relevant way for the modern mind, has become one of the most respected and beloved Tibetan Buddhist masters of our time.

His book, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying published in 1992, succeeded in making the essence of the Buddhist teachings accessible to a general audience, and two million copies in thirty different languages have been sold in fifty-nine countries. Now a spiritual classic, it is studied in universities and relied on by the doctors, nurses, and carers working in hospitals and hospices all over the world.