A Brief Life History of the Venerable Choeding Rinpoche

About a days travel from Lhasa in Tibet is the town of Pembo. Many years ago a Kadampa Geshe was practicing and meditating in this town. Also in Pembo lived Ben Kunkyen, a member of one of the local families. Be Kunkyen owned 40 Drokel fields but was not satisfied with this and lived for may years as a thief and robber. At the age of 40 Ben Kunkyen was staying at Gola, a high pass between Pembo and Lhasa, where he met an old woman who asked him where Ben Kunkyen was living. When he replied that he was Ben Kunkyen the old woman died on the spot of a heart attack.

Thus Ben Kunkyen realized how terrible his actions were and he went to the Lama who was living in Pembo to receive teachings and to meditate on Love and Compassion. He eventually took full ordination and received the name Gelong Tsultim. However, the ordinary people called him Geshe Ben Kunkyen.

After his death Ben Kunkyen took rebirth many times. In the year 1020 he was one of the 13 Geshes, amongst them Geshe Potowa, who were staying in Shang Namling. There was a misunderstanding between the Geshes and their sponsors and so the Geshes left for Shigatse in Tsang. After walking for three miles the Tulku of Ben Kunkyen remembered that he had left some things behind in Shang Namling, and so he went back. The other 12 Geshes carried on to Shigatse and found the 12 Lakars, which are these days in Tashi Lhumpo, the seat of the Panchen Lama.

Choeding Rinpoche is the eighth emanation of Geshe Ben Kunkyen at the Shang Ganden Choekor monastery which was founded in the year 1604 by the great Fifth Dalai Lama. He was recognized as a Tulku by Phurchok Jamgon Rinpoche, one of the tutors of the 13th Dalai Lama. Born in 1936, Choeding Rinpoche entered the Ganden Choekor Monastery at the age of seven. After several years spent in study, memorizing texts and passing Buddhist examinations he entered Sera Je Monastery at the age of 14 to study Buddhist Dialectics. In 1958 he escaped the Chinese invasion of Tibet and fled to exile in India. He founded the new Ganden Choekar monastery in Pokhara, Nepal. In 1991 he received a Geshe degree at Sera Je in south India.

This is the brief life history of Choeding Rinpoche, translated by Markus Lodermeier.
 

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