Khenpo Nima Rinpoche

Birth and Ordination

In 1956, the Venerable One was born in Menthang, Bhutan. From his earliest years he showed the virtuous roots of past lives; renouncing worldly life and turning toward the path, in 1965 he took ordination within a monastery, shaving his head and donning the robes. From that time he received a rigorous monastic education, and amid the discipline of the vows, dignified conduct, and the recitation and chanting of liturgy, he laid the foundation for a lifetime of study, contemplation, and meditation. Even as a young monk, he was renowned within the community for his reverence and diligence; whatever he heard and received, he was able to hold without forgetting, and those near and far who knew him recognized that he was no ordinary vessel.

Bhutan is the sacred land where Guru Padmasambhava once subdued and tamed the unruly; its mountains and rivers are everywhere marked by the Master's footprints and treasure sites. Growing up amid these surroundings, the Venerable One was steeped from childhood in the atmosphere of the Ancient Translation Nyingma lineage, and his faith in Guru Rinpoche and in the three sublime ones—the master, the abbot, and the king—deepened day by day within this pure perception.

The Study of Thangka

From 1968, the Venerable One studied thangka painting under the master Lopön Tsering Dorje of Lhalung. The art of sacred painting has its prescribed proportions and ritual measures; every stroke and line bears upon the splendour of the deity's maṇḍala. It is no mere craft of pigments, but truly a gateway for gathering the mind in contemplative practice. Over the course of several years, the Venerable One completed his training in 1973, receiving in full the transmission of iconometric proportion.

This grounding in sacred imagery would later reveal itself everywhere in his attention to the adornment of monasteries and to ritual implements and liturgy: the arrangement of murals in the halls and the installation of the deities' sacred images were all carried out with precision and accord with the Dharma. In 1982, he himself painted the thangka murals for the Great Hall and the Mañjuśrī Bodhisattva Hall, adorning the centre with his brush, so that those who came to pay homage would, upon entering the halls, give rise at once to pure faith.

Advanced Study and Teaching

In 1980, the Venerable One was selected to enter Paro University, where he studied the sūtra and tantra treatises at the feet of the Eighth Bhutanese State Preceptor, Gendün Rinchen. Broadly learned and widely read, he came to penetrate in due sequence the great treatises of Madhyamaka, Prajñāpāramitā, and Vinaya. In 1983, he travelled to the Ngagyur Nyingma Institute at Namdroling Monastery in Mysore, South India, for advanced study—this monastery, founded by the Third Penor Rinpoche, is the root seat for the revival of the Nyingma Palyul lineage in India, gathering the very essence of the contemporary study, contemplation, and practice of Dzogchen.

The Venerable One pursued his studies intensively there for several years, advancing in both learning and virtue. In 1987 he was promoted to reviewing teacher at Namdroling Monastery; in 1990 he was appointed reviewing teacher at Tharpaling Monastery, and thereafter rose to the rank of khenpo. From 1995, in his office as khenpo, he taught at the institute, teaching for many years at both Namdroling Monastery and Tharpaling Monastery, expounding the sūtra and tantra treatises, the generation and completion stages, and the pith instructions of Dzogchen, never ceasing to nurture monastic talent.

Abbot of Tharpaling Monastery

In 1997, by the appointment of the Bhutanese government and the Third Penor Rinpoche, the Venerable One was installed as the sixth abbot of Tharpaling Monastery. During his tenure, he reformed the educational system of the monastic community and established a curriculum of study, contemplation, and meditation; and for the benefit of the local people and the ease of pilgrimage, he built some twelve kilometres of connecting roads and eight stūpas, so that wherever the wheel of Dharma turned, the roads were open and the sacred sites adorned.

In 1999, having perfected the threefold wisdom of study, contemplation, and meditation in both sūtra and tantra, the Venerable One was recognized by Penor Rinpoche as a qualified Khenpo Rinpoche, formally assuming the charge of upholding and transmitting the teaching seat of the Ngagyur Nyingma. In 2002, Penor Rinpoche, by an open letter, earnestly recommended the Venerable One's Dharma activity to the faithful of Taiwan, attesting that he was a spiritual friend worthy of reliance. In 2005, the reconstruction of Tharpaling Monastery broke ground and the foundation was laid; after more than a decade of effort, it was completed in November 2016, when the Longchenpa Hall, the Green Tārā Hall, and the Hall of Śākyamuni Buddha with the Eighteen Arhats were consecrated in succession—the chanting solemn, monastic and lay rejoicing together.

Writings and the Spreading of the Dharma

The Venerable One is accomplished in both the teachings and the arts, and his writings too are founded upon these two. In 2011, he published a bilingual Tibetan-Chinese work, The Development of Buddhist Thangka Painting—The Grove of Clear-Mind Joy, tracing the origins of sacred painting and explaining iconometric proportion, in order to carry forward the tradition of sacred imagery handed down in unbroken succession; in 2016, he further published, in two volumes in Tibetan and Chinese, A Record of the Building of Tharpaling Monastery in Bhutan, recounting in detail the causes and conditions of its founding and the whole course of its construction, preserving its history for later generations.

Beyond the spreading of the Dharma, the Venerable One has placed particular emphasis on the work of education and patronage. From 2002, he was repeatedly invited to Taiwan, propagating the true Dharma and teaching thangka painting in Taipei and Taichung; in 2006 he established the Taichung Longchen Buddhist Centre, and in 2009 he reopened thangka art painting classes in both places, so that the transmission of ancient sacred painting might continue overseas. In 2013, to support the monastic education of his homeland, he founded the Footprints of Guru Rinpoche Foundation, dedicated to building monasteries, training the saṅgha, supporting Dharma ceremonies, and preserving Buddhist culture—this is the very basis of this centre's mission. He was subsequently invited to teach and spread the Dharma in the United States and Canada, the sound of the Dharma carrying far.

The Venerable One holds the transmission conferred by the Third Penor Rinpoche, belonging to the Nyingma Palyul lineage, and propagates the Dzogchen teachings of Longchen Nyingtik and the Namchö sky-treasure. On this centre's lineage chart, he receives the transmission from Penor Rinpoche above and passes it to the resident master Tsering Rinpoche below, serving as the contemporary link by which this heart-essence teaching entered Hong Kong and Taichung. Today he continues to spread the Dharma in Hong Kong, guiding fellow practitioners in relying upon the Longchen Nyingtik preliminaries and the graduated practice of Dzogchen, and often encouraging himself and others with a single aspiration: "Carry the Dharma to every dark corner of the world, so that all places of darkness may shine with light."