Changling Rinpoche XV

Ngawang Lekshey Gyaltso (born 1977, Kalimpong, India) is the fifteenth in the lineage of Changling Rinpoches. His lineage was started by Rechung Dorje Drakpa, who lived in eleventh century Tibet.

In 1985, Khabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche and Khabje Penor Rinpoche recognized Changling Rinpoche as the main tulku of Changchub Ling Monastery in the Ü-Tsang region of Central Tibet. The news came to Rinpoche’s family in Kalimpong via a letter written by the Khabjes.

Rinpoche’s grandmother, surprised by the news, took it upon herself to look into the situation. She traced the source to an old yogi, Lama Trakden, a student of the previous Changling Lingpa. Lama Trakden had gone to see Khyentse Rinpoche who was giving teachings in Mysore at Penor Rinpoche’s monastery and requested him to recognize the tulku of his root teacher. This is how it came about that both Khyentse Rinpoche and Penor Rinpoche made the recognition together.

As an 11-year-old boy, Rinpoche entered Shechen Monastery and was enthroned by Khyentse Rinpoche and ordained by Trulshik Rinpoche. In the first year Rinpoche learned how to read and write Tibetan. The following year Shechen opened its philosophical college and Khyentse Rinpoche put Changling Tulku into the program when he was twelve, an age considerably younger than usual. When Rinpoche was fifteen, his root teacher Khyentse Rinpoche died. At age sixteen Rinpoche began to give teachings to others students in college. At eighteen Shechen Rabjam Rinpoche, abbot of Shechen Monastery, sent Changling Rinpoche to complete his studies of the Heart Sutra under the tutelage of the great khenpos of Penor Rinpoche’s college in Mysore. Rinpoche took full monk’s ordination at age twenty with Trulshik Rinpoche. Rinpoche graduated with a khenpo degree at the age of twenty-one.

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Wikipedia