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Serthar Buddhist Institute

Jigme Phuntsok
Chinese name
Simplified Chinese 晋美彭措
Traditional Chinese 晉美彭措
Tibetan name
Tibetan འཇིགས་མེད་ཕུན་ཚོགས་

Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok (Tib. འཇིགས་མེད་ཕུན་ཚོགས་འབྱུང་གནས།, Wyl. 'jigs med phun tshogs 'byung gnas; 1933–January 7, 2004) was a Nyingma lama from Sertha of Amdo(dhomay). His family were nomads. At the age of two he was identified as the reincarnation of the Terton Sogyal, Lerab Lingpa (1852–1926). He studied Dzogchen at Nubzor Monastery, received novice ordination at 14, and full ordination at 22 (or 1955).

Jigme Phuntsok was the most influential lama of the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism in contemporary Tibet (according to Khenpo Samdup who was his disciple). A Tibetan Buddhist meditation master and renowned teacher of Great Perfection (Dzogchen), he established the Sertha Buddhist Institute in 1980, known locally as Larung Gar, a non-sectarian study center with approximately 10,000 monks, nuns, and lay students at its highest count. He played an important role in revitalizing the teaching of Tibetan Buddhism following the liberalization of religious practice in 1980.

Jigme Phuntsok was also an extraordinary Terton (Buddhist treasure revealer), uncovering many treasures texts in Tibet, as well as other parts of China, and India. In the 1990s, he began an appeal to traditional Tibetan yak herders to refrain from commercial sale of their livestock for spiritual and cultural reasons that has grown into the Anti-Slaughter Movement.

Jigme Phuntsok was born in 1933, the third day of the first month of the year of the Water Bird, in Golog Serthar Amdo region of Tibet), or the rugged washul Sertar region of the Tibetan cultural region of Amdo, a vast expanse of high-plateau grasslands. He adopted Manjusri as his personal deity and he is said to have had visions of him several times, including once in 1987 when he visited Mount Wutai, the holy mountain abode of Majushri in China. At the age of five, Khenpo was recognized as the reincarnate of Tertön Sogyal, guru to the 13th Dalai Lama Thubten Gyatsho, and became a monk at Nubzur Gonpa, a branch of the Palyul monastery in Sertar. He received formal religious training under Thubga Rinpoche at Changma Rithro in Dzachukha and was selected to become abbot of Nubzur at the age of twenty-four.


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