Guru Jotsé

Guru Jotsé (Wyl. gu ru jo tshe), aka Tsewang Darpo (Wyl. tshe dbang dar po), was a tertön who lived in the thirteenth century.

Jamgön Kongtrul recounts his life in his Lives of the Hundred Tertöns, and included two of his termas in the Rinchen Terdzö, The Treasury of Precious Terma Revelations.

Guru Jotse was born in Central Tibet and recognized in the termas as the combined emanation of two of King Trisong Detsen’s sons, Mutik Tsepo and Murub Tsepo. He was also predicted by Guru Rinpoche in chapter 92 of the Pema Kathang, The Life & Liberation of Padmsambhava.

Guru Jotse revealed a large cache of termas from one of Guru Rinpoche’s practice caves called ‘The Red Rock Copper Sky Fortress’: some thirty volumes of profound termas, inexhaustible ever-increasing Buddha relics, a hundred and eight kutsabs of Guru Rinpoche and all the phurbas that Guru Rinpoche used to subjugate the land at Samyé, which had multiplied by the time that Guru Jotse revealed them to number over five hundred. Jamgön Kongtrul explains that Guru Jotse’s termas did not have such a great impact in themselves, but the relics “brought endless benefit to others”.

The termas revealed by Guru Jotse included in the Rinchen Terdzö are the only ones Jamgön Kongtrul could find: a brief ‘wangdü’ and a ‘ransom’ offering of ‘a hundred meats and a hundred pieces of dough’ for liberating gyalpo spirits. Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo later re-discovered one of Guru Jotse’s termas, The Confession & Fulfilment Offering to the Peaceful & Wrathful Deities.

Further Reading

• Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrö Taye, The Hundred Tertöns (Woodstock: KTD Publications, 2011), pages 106-107.

External Links

• TBRC Profile