Lopön Ogyan Tanzin Rinpoche
Lopön Ogyan Tanzin Rinpoche is a Nyingma Vajrayana master, a scholar and a senior student of Dudjom Rinpoche.
Birth and Family
Originally from Pemakö, he was born into a family of ngakpa descending from the tertön Pema Lingpa, an important tertön from Bhutan. On his father side, Lopön Ogyan Tanzin Rinpoche is also a descendent of Jikme Kundrol Namgyal, who is his great great grand-father [1].
Lopön Ogyan Tanzin Rinpoche also have very close family relations with Dudjom Rinpoche as his great great grand-father married Dudjom Rinpoche’s father’s sister, who was from Pumo ; and as one of his uncle Chonyi Rinpoche [2] married Semo Dechen Yudron, the eldest daughter of Dudjom Rinpoche.
When he was six years old, Lopön Ogyan Tanzin Rinpoche went with his mother to Dechen Chöling, Dudjom Rinpoche’s main place in Pemakö, to visit Namgyal Drolma[3].
Training
Lopön Ogyan Tanzin Rinpoche's main teacher is Dudjom Rinpoche, and his retreat master was Changchak Rinpoche.
He holds the Nyingma lineages of:
He received initiations from:
- Chatral Sangye Dorje
- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
- Dodrupchen Rinpoche
- Dudjom Rinpoche
- Dungse Thinley Norbu Rinpoche
- Chimé Rigdzin Rinpoche
- Minling Trichen Rinpoche
- Penor Rinpoche
- Taklung Tsetrul Rinpoche.
Lopön Ogyan Tanzin Rinpoche studied in Orissa with a group of lamas he is now closely related:
- Khenpo Tashi Deleg, popularly known as Lama Tashi Deleg
- Lama Dawa (from Nepal)
- Lama Tarchin Rinpoche
- Lama Tsering Gyaltsen
All of them were instructed by Dudjom Rinpoche to develop ngakpa institutions and help preserve this lay practitioner ‘s tradition of the nyingma.
Activity
Lopön Ogyan Tanzin Rinpoche is the spiritual director of Ogyan Chokhor Ling (the European sangha of his students) and the director of Lhundrup Topgye Ling Ngakpa Dratsang School (in Arunachal Pradesh, India).
He has a particular gift for languages, as he is fluent in Tibetan, Sanskrit, Tshang-lha, Hindi, Bengali, Nepali and can easily communicated in English with great simplicity.
He is also presently working on a Tshangs-lha-Tibetan dictionary, with the aim of recording and preserving the rich vocabulary of the Tshangs-lha language, which is now in danger of extinction.
Rinpoche is a ngakpa and is keen to see this tantric ordination flourish in the West as it has for over a thousand years in the Himalayas and Tibet. He is the inspiration behind Khye’u-chung Lotsapa Translations, which produces English (and other European language) translations and editions of Tibetan texts belonging to the Dudjom Tersar tradition.
He resides in Varanasi and frequently visits his centre in Arunachal Pradesh. As well as being a lama, Rinpoche is a respected academic with a teaching career of three decades in higher education.