Feb 12, 2020 – Bylakuppe, India | Namdroling Monastery commemorated the 657th Mahaparinirvana Anniversary of Omniscient Longchen Rabjam yesterday.
Longchen Rabjam (1308 – 1363) is one of the greatest Dzogchen masters in the Nyingma tradition. He was a scholar, a meditator and poet, who revitalized the Nyingma School by organizing all the Nyingma teachings into the ‘Seven Treasuries’. These voluminous collection of writings still serve as an authoritative source of all the Buddha’s teachings, particularly of the Dzogchen teachings up to this day. He also gave extensive teachings on Dzogchen.
Longchen Rabjam, or Longchenpa, practiced with the hidden yogi master Kumaradza, his main master. When he was 29, he went to the camp of Rigzin Kumaradza. He underwent tremendous hardship under this master for two years.
An excerpt from The Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism,
To arouse disillusionment [towards the world] in his disciples, the awareness-holder Kumaradza had no fixed home. During the spring and summer of that year he wandered nine times from one deserted valley to the next. Because it seemed as if they had to move just as they had made camp, Longcenpa could obtain neither food nor clothing.
With the change of seasons he was completely worn out by the bitter cold and the icy terrain; and he survived for two months on nothing but three measures of flour and twenty-one mercury pills. Then, when the snow fell he lived inside a sack garment which served both as a robe, and as a bed. In these and other ways he endured inconceivable austerity for the sake of the (Dharma) doctrine.
The image of Longchenpa (in the middle)
