Ngala Rig’dzin Dorje
with son Henry in park
Ngala Rig’dzin Dorje with his son Henry, in 1998, during a social invitation to the home of Ngak’chang Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen. Henry received the names Akyong Rig-tsal Takjung from Ngak’chang Rinpoche: ‘Protector of the Primordial A, Radiance of Primordial Awareness, Born of Tigers’. Henry is very friendly with the Lineage Lamas’ son Robert (Düd’dül Dorje) though they live on opposite sides of the country.
Ngala Rig’dzin Dorje is wearing informal robes. He has a white tan-chu, ‘half-chuba’, the wrap-around skirt which is in effect the lower portion of the chuba, the dressing-gown style of coat or overcoat worn by most Tibetan people. A more enclosed version of the tan-chu is worn by Tibetan women, and by female Lamas; frequently by Khandro Déchen, for instance. Ngala Rig’dzin Dorje wears the undervest rather than the full to-nga, but the vest is still ornamented with the crossed lapels which represent ‘the fangs of Yama’, the proximity of the ever-closing jaws of death.
Unlike monastics, yogis and yoginis have always tended to alternate between religious dress and clothing appropriate to other circumstances (although monks and nuns will also quite customarily wear, for example, traveling dress). This alternation, between manifesting symbolic appearance and absenting oneself from formality, between retreat circumstances and the practice of everyday life, typifies and catalyses the practice of Tantra. But it would be a mistake to think that this makes the life of the tantrika less demanding. On the contrary, it exposes the practitioner to the risk of trying to take a holiday from the life of practice, in the face of multitudinous demands and distractions. It places emphasis on the practice of finding continuity of awareness through these wildly contrasting and unremittingly cycles of circumstances. This is why it is said that, in Tantra, ‘the more wood, the hotter the fire’.