Zong Rinpoche

Zong Rinpoche (1905-1984 AD) was a Gelug Lama and disciple of the third Trijang Rinpoche, junior tutor of the 14th Dalai Lama. He was famous as a sharp analyst and master of philosophical debate, as well as a powerful Tantric practitioner. He was the Abbot of Ganden Shartse monastery.

Zongtrul Jetsun Losang Tsöndru Thubten Gyaltsen (or Kyabje Zong Rinpoche, as he is known to countless ordained and lay disciples) was born in 1905 in the village of Nangsang in the Kham province of eastern Tibet. His father and both his grandfathers were ngakpa, tantric practitioners of the Nyingma tradition, and two previous incarnations of Kyabje Dorje Chang ("Vajradhara, Lord of Refuge," as Kyabje Zong Rinpoche was also known) had taken birth within the Zong-go family: Zongtrul Phuntsok Chöpel and Zongtrul Tenpa Chöpel (1836-1899 AD).

He went to Lhasa in 1916 when he was eleven years old to study Buddhadharma as presented in Je Tsongkhapa's tradition at Ganden Shartse Monastery, one of the principal Gelug monasteries and seats of learning in Tibet. When he got there, the fourteen-year-old Trijang Rinpoche (who was to become one of the main tutors of the 14th Dalai Lama) guided the new student by taking him through his first lesson in elementary dialectics. He was later to become Zong Rinpoche's chief mentor.

Although recognized as a reincarnate Lama, Zong Rinpoche did not have the privileges accorded to modern-day tulkus. He had no benefactor to support him and lived a spartan existence:

Instead of a table from which to read the scriptures, he made do with an empty tea box supported by bricks. He was completely focused on his studies, which he pursued with unfailing courage and diligence. He seemed uninterested in food or drink, surviving on a very simple diet. With his humble lifestyle and shabby robes, often loose and torn from the physicality of the debate ground, he looked like any other boy from the remote province of Kham who had been fortunate enough to attend this prestigious monastic university.

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