Sogyal Rinpoche

Sogyal Rinpoche was born Sonam Gyaltsen Lakar in 1947 in what the Tibetans called the Trehor region of Kham, Tibet.[8] According to his mother, the patron of his courtesan aunt and de facto stepfather, Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö, recognized him as the incarnation of Tertön Sogyal and supervised his education at Dzongsar Monastery.[9] He studied traditional subjects with several tutors, including Khenpo Appey, who was appointed as his tutor by Dzongsar Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö.[9][10]

Sogyal Rinpoche attended a Catholic school in Kalimpong, India and then studied at Delhi University in India's capital before coming to the West. In 1971, he was granted a place to study comparative religion at Trinity College, Cambridge as a visiting scholar.[11] He continued to study with many masters, of all schools of Tibetan Buddhism, especially Dudjom Rinpoche, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, and Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche.[12] He first began to translate for Dudjom Rinpoche in Kalimpong in India[13] and later continued in the role of his translator in Europe and during a tour of the United States.[14] In 1973 he assisted in organizing the Dalai Lama's first visit to the West in Rome, which included an audience with Pope Paul VI.[7]

Sogyal Rinpoche began to teach in London in 1974. His centre, a house in Kilburn, was originally called Orgyen Chöling. The name later changed to Dzogchen Orgyen Chöling. Dudjom Rinpoche also asked Sogyal Rinpoche to take care of his centre in Rue Burq, Paris, which opened in 1978. In 1979, Sogyal Rinpoche chose the name Rigpa—the innermost, essential nature of mind—for his work.[15]

Rigpa soon established an annual schedule of longer seminars, referred to as retreats, with Sogyal Rinpoche and other teachers leading events in France in the summer, California at Thanksgiving, Germany in Winter, followed by Myall Lakes in Australia, and then England at Easter. The first winter event at Kirchheim in Germany took place in December 1986,[16] annual retreats in Tiona Park in Australia began in 1989, and the first Thanksgiving retreat in the US was in Oakland in 1988.

In 1987, Rinpoche was invited to become spiritual director of the centre in County Cork in the west of Ireland which was to become Dzogchen Beara, Rigpa's first long-term retreat facility.[17] In 1991, Sogyal Rinpoche founded the retreat centre of Lerab Ling near Montpellier in southern France. The first three-month retreat was held there in 1992.[18] A centre in Berlin named Dharma Mati was formally opened in October 2007.

On 11 August 2017, following allegations of physical, emotional and sexual abuse from current and ex-members of Rigpa, Sogyal Rinpoche "decided, with immediate effect, to retire as spiritual director from all the organizations that bear the name of Rigpa in different countries around the world".[2]

In 1983, Rinpoche met Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, Kenneth Ring and other figures in the caring professions and near-death research, and they encouraged him to develop his work in opening up the Tibetan teachings on death and helping the dying. Rinpoche continued to teach throughout the world. Then, in 1989 in Nepal, Rinpoche met Andrew Harvey and invited him to help on the project.[19] About the writing process, co-editor Patrick Gaffney said, "Probably, a book has never been written in such an unusual way."[19]

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying was first launched in the United States in September 1992, where it received high acclaim and spent several weeks at the top of the bestseller lists.[20] It was subsequently released in the United Kingdom, Australia and India, and first translated into German and French. To date, more than two million copies have been printed in 30 languages and 56 countries.[21]

Rinpoche was a regular speaker at conferences around the world, addressing topics such as Buddhism in the modern world, death and dying, meditation and happiness. In 2004, he served as a keynote speaker at the Parliament of the World's Religions, where over 8,000 religious leaders and lay people gathered in Barcelona in Spain to discuss the issues of religious violence, access to safe water, the fate of refugees worldwide, and the elimination of developing countries' debts.[22] In August 2008 he joined Robert Thurman at the Aspen Institute in Aspen, Colorado, to speak about "Tibet’s Unique Buddhist Heritage" as part of a symposium called "His Holiness the Dalai Lama at Aspen: A Celebration of Tibetan Culture", organized jointly with the Conservancy for Tibetan Art and Culture.[23] In October 2010 he gave a keynote speech on "Tibetan Buddhism in Modern Western Culture" at the International Conference on Tibetan Buddhism held at Emory University.[24] In 2011, he was a keynote speaker and participant in the Global Buddhist Congregation in Delhi which brought together "religious, spiritual and world leaders, as well as 800 scholars, delegates and observers from 32 countries."[25] "The goal was to examine both the capacity and the resilience of Buddhism to engage with the most pressing concerns of the modern world, namely violence, social and economic disparity, environmental degradation and discord between and within communities and nations" and "to contribute to cultivating and fostering peace, harmony, co-existence and a shared responsibility amidst the diversity of cultures, communities and nations."[25] In 2012, he was a keynote speaker at the Happiness and Its Causes conference in Sydney.[26]

Sogyal Rinpoche performing an empowerment ritual in Bhutan

Rinpoche taught regularly in India, especially in Delhi at the Foundation for Universal Responsibility of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.[27] He also taught in the Himalayan regions of Sikkim, where he lived for part of his childhood, and Bhutan. He had been teaching annually in Bhutan since 2007 and his teachings were regularly shown on television there.[28] The first Prime Minister of Bhutan and champion of its philosophy of Gross National Happiness, Lyonchen Jigme Yoser Thinley, regularly attended Rinpoche's teachings.[29] Sogyal Rinpoche said that he decided to make teaching in Bhutan a priority since it is the only remaining independent Vajrayana Buddhist country in the world. He also said that "today’s younger generation in the Himalayan region needed to understand the Dharma in a practical way" and that "understanding the Dharma in a real way is an important and integral part of the development of Bhutan."[29]

In 1998, Rinpoche was formally offered the throne of Tertön Sogyal's home monastery in Tibet, Kalzang Monastery, by the abbot, Sherab Özer Rinpoche, in a ceremony in France.[30]

Sogyal Rinpoche died, aged 72, of a pulmonary embolism on 28 August 2019 in Thailand[31] where he was being treated for colorectal cancer.[7]

• Sogyal Rinpoche (1990). Dzogchen and Padmasambhava (2nd ed.). Rigpa Publications. ISBN 0-9624884-0-2.
• Sogyal Rinpoche (1994). The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-250834-2.
• Sogyal Rinpoche (1995). Glimpse After Glimpse: Daily Reflections on Living and Dying. Rider. ISBN 0-7126-6237-5.
• Sogyal Rinpoche (2002). The Future of Buddhism. Rider & Co. ISBN 0-7126-1564-4.

• Sogyal Rinpoche (2004). Ray, Reginald A. (ed.). The Pocket Tibetan Buddhist Reader. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications. ISBN 1-57062-851-3.
• Sogyal Rinpoche (2004). "In the Mirror of Death". In Meeske, Kathryn (ed.). Sacred Voices of the Nyingma Masters. California: Padma Publishing. pp. 148–161. ISBN 1-881847-35-7.
• Sogyal Rinpoche (2005). "The Remembrance of Past Lives from the Tibetan Buddhist Perspective". In Cott, Jonathon (ed.). On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering. Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6058-3.
• Sogyal Rinpoche (2006). "Gift of Dharma". In Coburn, Brot (ed.). Himalaya: Personal Stories of Grandeur, Challenge and Hope. National Geographic Books. pp. 62–67. ISBN 978-0792261926.
• Sogyal Rinpoche (2012). "Sogyal Rinpoche". In Bradley, Rosalind (ed.). A World of Prayer: Spiritual Leaders, Activists, and Humanitarians Share their Favorite Prayers. Orbis Books. pp. 150–151. ISBN 978-1-57075-952-9.
• Sogyal Rinpoche (2012). "Tibetan Buddhism in Modern Western Culture". In Schuyler, Kathryn Goldman (ed.). Inner Peace—Global Impact: Tibetan Buddhism, Leadership, and Work. Information Age Publishing. ISBN 978-1-61735-918-7.
• Sogyal Rinpoche (2013). "Understanding the Mind and Meditation: A Buddhist Approach to Well-Being". In Fraser, Andy (ed.). The Healing Power of Meditation: Leading Experts on Buddhism, Psychology, and Medicine Explore the Health Benefits of Contemplative Practice. Shambhala Publications. pp. 3–17. ISBN 978-1611800593.

• Longaker, Christine (1998), Facing Death and Finding Hope: A Guide to the Emotional and Spiritual Care of the Dying, Arrow Books, ISBN 0-09-917692-0
• Namdrol, Khenpo (1999), The Practice of Vajrakilaya, Snow Lion Publications, ISBN 1-55939-103-0
• Gyatso, Tenzin (2000), Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection, Snow Lion Publications, ISBN 1-55939-219-3
• Tsoknyi Rinpoche (2003), Fearless Simplicity: The Dzogchen Way of Living Freely in a Complex World, Rangjung Yeshe Publications, ISBN 962-7341-48-7
• Farber, Don (2005), Portraits of Tibetan Buddhist Masters, University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-23973-3
• Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche; Barron, Richard (2005), A Marvelous Garland of Rare Gems: Biographies of Masters of Awareness in the Dzogchen Lineage (A Spiritual History of the Teachings on Natural Great Perfection), Padma Publications, ISBN 1-881847-41-1
• Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche (2005), Blazing Splendor: The Memoirs of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, North Atlantic Books, ISBN 962-7341-56-8
• Gyatso, Tenzin (2007), Mind in Comfort and Ease, Wisdom Publications, ISBN 978-0-86171-493-3
• Khyentse, Dilgo; Jinpa Palmo, Ani (2008), Brilliant Moon: The Autobiography of Dilgo Khyentse, Shambhala Publications, ISBN 978-1-59030-284-2
• Gerstein, Mordicai (2012), The Mountains of Tibet, Barefoot Books, ISBN 9781782850472

• Batchelor, Stephen (1994). The Awakening of the West. London: Aquarian. ISBN 1-85538-343-8.
• Tart, Charles T. (1994). Living the Mindful Life. Boston: Shambhala. ISBN 978-1-57062-003-4.