I hope that all of you have found yourselves warm and peaceful lately. I wanted to post this picture of Khetsun Sangpo Rinpoche for you. He has lived a long life and has lately been very ill. He is likely to make his final transition soon. According to the email Anne Klein sent out, "He is comfortable, clear, and totally at ease. We are sad. We are also joyful at his amazing blessings."
Khetsun Sangpo Rinpoche was the first Buddhist teacher I met or received teachings from in this life, in 2001. He has remained an deep inspiration for me since. I have had the wonderful opportunity to visit him a few times over the last couple of years. I snapped the attached photo in early September, 2007.
You can read a little more about him below, copied from www.dawnmountain.org/content/teachers.html
Please keep him and his community in your prayers and meditations.
-Love and light-
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Khetsun Sangpo Rinpoche is among the most senior Lamas and Dzogchen masters in the Ancient (Nyingma) Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and perhaps the most eminent Nyingma historian alive today.
He was born in 1920 in central Tibet and came to India in 1959. Soon thereafter he was asked by His Holiness the Dalai Lama to represent Dudjom Rinpoche, head of the Nyingma school, in Japan. Khetsun Rinpoche spent ten years in this capacity from 1960-1970, teaching in Tokyo and Kyoto Universities and becoming fluent in Japanese.
In 1971 he returned to India and founded a school to educate Tibetan monks in his tradition. Over the last twenty five years he has accepted numerous invitations to teach in Japanese and U.S. universities and to teach students in retreats in Dordogne, France.
In Tibet, Khetsun Rinpoche received teachings on the Very Essence of the Great Expanse tradition from the famous Lady Master Jetsun Shugseb Rinpoche (d.1953) of Shugseb Nunnery, Tibet's main institution for women practitioners of Dzogchen. Other teachers include Dudjom Rinpoche, Kangyur Rinpoche, and Dilgo Khentse Rinpoche.
Khetsun Rinpoche's writings feature a 13 volume history of all the Tibetan Buddhist traditions. He is also the author of Tantric Practice in Nyingma, used by thousands of Western students as a guide to the foundational practices.
