Matteo Pistono

Tertön Sogyal's first teacher was the master Nyala Pema Düddul, who attained rainbow body in 1872. Pema Düddul is shown in this wall mural at Kalzang Temple, surrounded by his disciples, and above his head, the lineage gurus. Pema Düddul sent the young Tertön Sogyal into retreat under the yogi Lama Sonam Thaye. Theirs was a lineage not of ordained monks living in large monasteries but of lay tantric yogis, untethered by convention, who wandered from hermitage to cave, occasionally stopping in the towns across Tibet. Tertön Sogyal stayed for five years in his first retreat on the Tromthar plains, especially at the remote encampment of Drikok under Lama Sonam Thaye. As I write in “Fearless in Tibet,”  Read More 

This is one of my favorite photos in "Fearless in Tibet: The Life of the Mystic Tertön Sogyal", which is of Tertön Sogyal's wife, Khandro Pumo Trinley Chodren, a humble and highly realized Dzogchen yogini.

The photo was taken on her stupa which is in Nyarong, eastern Tibet. Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo bestowed the name "Trinely Chodren" which was part of the name of one of his root gurus, Jetsun Trinley Chodren. Mindroling monastery writes, "Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo received the Nyingthig teachings of Dzogchen— the ripening empowerments, liberating instructions, entrusted advices and so forth—from Jetsün  Read More 

Tertön was born in a small village in eastern Tibet in the region of Nyarong. This is the family who lives where the tertön was born. They are not blood relatives of Tertön Sogyal but know of him and have his portrait in the family room.

Many of the stories about Tertön Sogyal's childhood came from the hermits, lamas, and yogis from the Nyarong region in eastern Tibet. I am very grateful to all of these gritty hermits with whom I spent many days asking questions!

extract from "Fearless in Tibet: The Life of the Mystic Tertön Sogyal" about Kalzang Temple, which became the seat of Tertön Sogyal:

Nyala Pema Dündul frequented many hermitages and caves during his life-long wanderings, but it was this peak where he chose to spend nearly a decade in retreat in the Cave of Blazing Expanse of Great Bliss on the mountain’s southeast side. He sustained himself during those years on the water that dripped in his shallow cave and the herbs that grew by the entrance. Pema Dündul’s austerities mirrored those of the 11th-century Tibetan saint Milarepa. The last years of retreat in his cave, Pema Dündul perfected an alchemical practice whereby he ate only wild rhubarb flowers and berries, and eventually subsisted by sucking on pebbles to extract the life essence of the substances through yogic exercises, and mantra, earning him the nickname “The Rock Eater.”

One day in the Iron Monkey year (1860), soon after he had completed nine years of retreat, Pema Dündul was meditating under the cobalt sky near his home village of Khangtseg, which lies below Lhangdrak Peak. Pema Dündul rested his gaze in the space in front of the soaring peak, and soon the sky began to fill with shooting rainbows, one after another. Coils of light sprang Read More