Ngala Rig’dzin Dorje
playing rolmos
Ngala Rig’dzin Dorje is wearing the hat designed by Khordong gTérchen Tulku, Chhi’mèd Rig’dzin Rinpoche. It was created on the occasion of Chhi’mèd Rig’dzin Rinpoche’s second extensive visit to the home of Ngak’chang Rinpoche in 1988.
Chhi’mèd Rig’dzin Rinpoche is a speech-incarnation of Padmasambhava, and emanation of Dorje Tröllö. He is a prolific gTértön (discoverer of treasure-teachings from Padmasambhava and Yeshé Tsogyel), holder of the Khordong gTér and Chang gTér, and the head of Khordong gompa in Kham and its many satellite gompas. On the invitation of Ngak’chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen, Chhi’mèd Rig’dzin Rinpoche came from India to give a series of empowerments, teachings, and explanations from the Khordong gTér, over a two-week period, to a small audience mainly of the apprentices of Ngak’chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen. This included an occasion of extraordinary rarity, when Chhi’mèd Rig’dzin Rinpoche gave informal symbolic transmission in the style of Dzogchen. He employed the symbolic gestures which characterise the iconographic form of Sri Simha, one of the main teachers of Padmasambhava, to communicate the realisation that ‘Mind and sky are the same’.
This took place on a rocky ledge by the ocean-shore at Southerndown, on the Gower Peninsula, South Wales. Members of the lineage have commemorated this spot as a place of pilgrimage ever since, decorating many of the rocks and pebbles with painted seed-syllables. Chhi’mèd Rig’dzin Rinpoche requested that a special hat be created for the evening of formal symbolic transmission in the style of Tantra. Wearing bone-ornaments and vajra-crown, he gave the empowerments of
Tröma
Nakmo, which Ngak’chang Rinpoche had particularly requested. Some visiting Nyingma practitioners, students of
Namkha’i Norbu Rinpoche, and Chhi’mèd Rig’dzin Rinpoche’s own students, said that they had not witnessed in twenty years such an occasion of exclusively wrathful empowerments. It was on this occasion that Chhi’mèd Rig’dzin Rinpoche formally tied a
takdröl ornament into Ngak’chang Rinpoche’s hair at the conclusion of the empowerments saying: Now you have all seen me do this. I do not take back my words, or what I have given. Now let no one question his right to wear this.
The sequence and combination of colours in Chhi’mèd Rig’dzin Rinpoche’s hat are unique. Chhi’mèd Rig’dzin Rinpoche spontaneously devised the details of the design and then gave then to Ngak’chang Rinpoche, who commissioned the hat-maker accordingly. Two hats were made – one for Chhi’mèd Rig’dzin Rinpoche and one for Ngak’chang Rinpoche. Ngak’chang Rinpoche wore his for four years when giving empowerments, and then passed it on to Ngala Rig’dzin Dorje when he gave him authority to give empowerments.
Ngala Rig’dzin Dorje’s shawl was also a gift, from Ngak’chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen, who had both successively worn it as their own empowerment shawl. The shawl is ornamented with such delicate brocade stripes that it can never be washed or cleaned, and Ngala Rig’dzin Dorje treasures it as an intimate and inspiring connection with his Tsawa’i Lamas. Ngala Rig’dzin Dorje is playing an old Tibetan pair of bup-chen, large and very heavy wrathful cymbals, with which he is leading the music accompanying a performance of Phurba dance by his own apprentices, at the magnificent gompa of Ngakpa Trögyal Dorje and Naljorma Dzüdrül Pamo in Forchtenstein, Austria, in the presence of Ngak’chang Rinpoche. Nowadays Ngala Rig’dzin Dorje reserves this hat for the occasions when he presides at a tsog, the practice of feast-offering, or attends tsog with his own Lamas.