and Spontaneously Accomplished Vihara, including the three temples of the queens, which was built to resemble Mount Sumeru surrounded by the four continents, eight subcontinents, sun and moon, and the wall of iron mountains. During the consecration ceremony five wondrous signs occurred.
The king then wished to translate the scriptures and establish the Dharma, so he had many intelligent Tibetan boys study to become translators. Inviting other masters of the Tripitaka from India, he had the Khenpo ordain the first seven monks and gradually establish an ordained sangha. The Khenpo Bodhisattva and Padmakara and the other panditas, together with Vairochana, Kawa Paltseg, and Chog-ro Lui Gyaltsen and the other translators, then rendered into Tibetan all the existent Buddhist scriptures on sutra and tantra as well as most of the treatises explaining them.
Vairochana and Namkhai Nyingpo were sent to India, where Vairochana studied Dzogchen with Shri Singha while Namkhai Nyingpo received the teachings on Vishuddha Heruka from the great master Hungkara. They both attained accomplishment and spread the teachings in Tibet.
King Trisong Deutsen then requested empowerment and instruction from Padmakara. At Chimphu, the hermitage above Samye, the great master disclosed the mandala of eight heruka sadhanas, into which he initiated nine chief disciples, including the king. Each of them was entrusted with a specific transmission, and all nine attained siddhi through practicing the teachings.
Padmakara gave numberless other profound and extraordinary teachings connected with the three inner tantras to many destined students headed by the king and his sons and the twenty-five disciples in Lhodrak, Tidro, and many other places.
Guru Rinpoche remained in Tibet for fifty-five years and six months, forty-eight years while the king was alive and seven years and six months afterward. He arrived when the king was twenty-one (810 C.E.). The king passed away at the age of sixty-nine. Padmakara stayed for a few years after that before leaving for the land of the rakshas.
Padmakara visited in person the twenty snow mountains of Ngari, the twenty-one places of practice in central Tibet and Tsang, the twenty-five places of Dokham, the three hidden valleys, and numerous other places, each of which he blessed to be a sacred place of practice. Knowing that a descendant of the king would later try to destroy Buddhism in Tibet, he gave many predictions for the future. Conferring with the king and the close disciples, Padmakara concealed countless terma teachings headed by the eight personal treasures of the king, the five great mind treasures, and the twenty-five profound treasures. The reasons for hiding these termas were to prevent the destruction of the teachings of Secret Mantra, to avoid the corruption of the Vajrayana or its modification by intellectuals, to preserve the blessings, and to benefit future disciples. For each of these hidden treasures Padmakara predicted the time of the disclosure, the person who would reveal it, and the destined recipients who would hold the teachings. He manifested in the terrifying wrathful form of crazy wisdom in the thirteen places named Tiger’s Nest, binding all the mundane spirits under oath to serve the Dharma, and entrusted them to guard the terma treasures. At that time he was named Dorje Drollo.
To inspire faith in future generations, he left an imprint of his body at Bumthang, handprints at Namtso Chugmo, and footprints at Paro Drakar as well as in innumerable other places of practice.
After the death of King Trisong Deutsen, Padmakara placed Mutig Tsenpo on the throne. He performed a drubchen at Tramdruk, where he entrusted the profound teachings to Gyalsey Lhaje, the second prince, and gave him the prophecy that he would benefit beings by becoming a revealer of the hidden treasures in thirteen future lives.3
It is impossible to count exactly how many students in Tibet received empowerment from Padmakara in person, but the most renowned are the original twenty-five disciples, the intermediate twenty-five disciples, and the later seventeen and twenty-one disciples. There were eighty of his students who attended the rainbow body at Yerpa and also the one hundred and eight meditators at Chuwori, the thirty tantrikas at Yangdzong, and the fifty-five realized ones at Sheldrag. Of female disciples there were the twenty-five dakini students and seven yoginis. Many of these close disciples had blood lines that have continued until the present day.
When he was about to leave for the land of rakshas to the southwest, the king, the ministers, and all the disciples tried to dissuade Padmakara from parting, but to no avail. He gave each of them extensive advice and teachings, and departed from the pass of Gungthang, riding on a horse or a lion, accompanied by numerous divine beings making offerings. At the summit of the Glorious Copper-Colored Mountain on the Chamara continent he liberated Raksha Thotreng, the king of the rakshas, and assumed his form. After that, he miraculously created the palace of Lotus Light endowed with inconceivable decorations and also emanated a replica of himself on each of the surrounding eight islands, where they reside as kings teaching the eight heruka sadhanas.
At present he dwells on the vidyadhara level of spontaneous presence in the form of the regent of Vajradhara, unshakable for as long as samsara remains. Full of compassion he sends out emanations to benefit beings. Even after the teachings of the vinaya have perished, he will appear among the tantric practitioners. There will be many destined disciples who attain the rainbow body. In the future, when Buddha Maitreya appears in this world, Padmakara will emanate as the one known as Drowa Kundul and spread the teachings of Secret Mantra to all worthy people.
This short biography is just a partial narration that conforms to what was perceived by some ordinary students.4
1. A “nirmanakaya who tames beings” appears in the six realms of samsara, as opposed to an emanation in a natural nirmanakaya realm such as Buddha Amitabha’s pure land Sukhavati.
2. Khenpo Bodhisattva is usually known by the name Shantarakshita, the Indian master who ordained the first monks in Tibet.
3. The thirteenth of these incarnations was the great treasure revealer Chokgyur Lingpa.
4. Jamgon Kontrul was himself a reincarnation of the translator Vairocana. He had many visions of Guru Rinpoche and was also a revealer of terma teachings.
In the world period that we are now in, one thousand buddhas will appear. In the same way, for each of these buddhas there will be one thousand Guru Rinpoches to carry out their activities. In the present age of Buddha Shakyamuni one such emanation appeared in the person of Padmasambhava, the Lotus-Born One. It is said in Padmasambhava’s life story that he was spontaneously born without a father or mother from a lotus flower in a lake. As a miraculously born human being, he was endowed with great powers capable of subduing not only human beings but also spirits and other different types of nonhumans. He lived for quite a long time. He stayed in India for roughly a thousand years and then spent fifty-five years in Tibet. When about to leave Tibet, he was accompanied by his twenty-five chief disciples and the king. At the border of Nepal he was escorted by dakinis of the four classes on a horse called Mahabala. This fabulous horse flew into the skies, leaving the disciples to watch Guru Rinpoche’s image slowly disappear, becoming smaller and smaller.
According to the story, Padmasambhava descended to Bodhgaya and stayed there for some time. He then went on to his pure land, which is known as Sangdok Palri, the Glorious Copper-Colored Mountain. Physically it is a large island, a kind of subcontinent, situated in the ocean to the southwest of Bodhgaya. The island has several levels. The lower levels are inhabited by rakshas. According to the predictions of Buddha Shakyamuni, these cannibal spirits would invade the known world in a later historical period when the average life span of human beings would approach twenty years. Posing a great danger, the rakshas would subdue and destroy all human beings. The Buddha also predicted that Guru Rinpoche should go to their continent and conquer
