Khensur Thabkhey Rinpoche. 1927 – 1999.
When Khensur
Thapkhey Rinpoche was born his mother found golden flowers growing in the snow,
which she took as an auspicious sign. From an early age the boy, named Thapkhey
Gyatso, wanted to become a monk but, being the only son, his parents were not
enthusiastic. However at the age of 14, he joined the local monastery, Shitsang
Garser where he studied for some years. Later he journeyed to Lhasa to Drepung
Gomang monastery where he continued his studies through the increasing Chinese
domination in the 1950s. In 1959 the tension between the Chinese and Tibetans
reach crisis point and His Holiness the Dalai Lama was forced to flee his
country.
Rinpoche was one of the hundreds of Gomang monks who fled with him,
crossing the Himalayas on foot, avoiding the Chinese army and finally reaching
Bhutan and then India. The Indian government gave the Tibetan refugees land in
South India, but by that time only 64 of the Gomang monks remained. This small
band decided to rebuild their monastery and its traditions out of the jungle but
not before Rinpoche had studied at the Varanasi Sanskrit College, where he
graduated with an Acharya degree, and made an extended pilgrimage to many of the
sacred Buddhist sites in India.
Rinpoche was one of the founding monks of
Gomang College, Drepung Monastery, in India and in the late 1970s took the Geshe
Lharampa exams and passed the oral and debate sections. Before he could sit the
written exam he was appointed abbot of Gomang, a position he held from 1980 to
1984.
After that, The office of His Holiness the
Dalai Lama approached him with a request to travel to New Zealand to become
resident teacher at Dorje Chang Institute (DCI). He arrived in New Zealand on
May 2, 1987 and remained at DCI until His Holiness’s first visit to the
country in 1992 during which the Dalai Lama mentioned that Rinpoche should teach
in Mongolia. Rinpoche went into retreat for a year at Te Moata on the Coromandel
before leaving for Mongolia to teach at Gaden Hidd Monastery in Ulaan Bataar.
However, his New Zealand students requested that he return to New Zealand which
he did in 1995 and set up Trashi Gomang Centre in 1996. He also gave teachings
throughout the country at places like Mahamudra Centre, Keri Keri, Whangarei,
Wellington, Nelson, Golden Bays and surrounding areas, Blenheim, Christchurch
and places on the West Coast. He also had devoted students in Hong Kong where he
regularly taught.
In 1999 Rinpoche led some of his New Zealand and Hong Kong students on pilgrimage to Tibet. While at his home monastery Shitsang Garser, he fell ill and suffered a mild stroke; a blood vessel had burst in his head. Against all predictions that he would recover, Rinpoche steadily worsened and, on the morning of 29 July 1999, he died. He was in meditation for three days before the final signs of his passing away.