Gili Ngawang Gyatso
- Monk
- Chödak
From the time of Düdjom Lingpa’s arrival in the Mar Chu Valley in 1857, Gili Ngawang Gyatso—a monk of Golok’s prominent Gili family—emerged as one of his earliest and most steadfast disciples, combining strict monastic discipline with sustained engagement with Düdjom Lingpa’s tantric Terma cycles.
A Monk from the Gili Family
Gili Ngawang Gyatso was born in 1841 in the Gönang Valley, between the settlement of Chakri Tang and Akyong Yartang monastery on the left bank of the Mar Chu, in the Golok region of what was originally known as Péma Bum. He belonged to the Gili family, one of Golok’s most affluent households, whose wealth derived from extensive yak, sheep, and horse herds and from long-distance trade in wool and hides, exchanged for high-quality tea imported from China. Among the family’s most influential members was Gili Wangli, Ngawang Gyatso’s uncle, a powerful merchant whose trading routes extended across Golok and into eastern Tibet and China.
Despite the material advantages of his birth, Gili Ngawang Gyatso was ordained as a monk at an early age and maintained his monastic vows throughout his life. Like several of Düdjom Lingpa’s early students, scribes, and descendants, he was identified within the Nyingma hagiographical tradition as a reincarnation of one of Guru Rinpoche’s twenty-five eighth-century disciples—an identification that would later acquire particular significance in the context of Düdjom Lingpa’s terma revelations.
One of Düdjom Lingpa’s Earliest Disciples
By the age of twenty-two, in 1857, Düdjom Lingpa had already received training from Nyingma masters in the Ser Chu and Nyi Chu Valleys, as well as transmissions through visionary encounters with non-human teachers in dreams and meditative states. In that same year, Gili Wangli traveled to the Ser Chu Valley on a trading expedition accompanied by his nephew Loder. Upon reaching the village of Nubzur, they were introduced by the local lama, Sang Ngak Drupchok, to the young yogin Düdjom Lingpa, whose exceptional qualities the lama strongly praised. He urged Gili Wangli to invite Düdjom Lingpa to reside with the Gili family in Dziteng, in the Mar Chu Valley.
Accepting this counsel, Gili Wangli extended the invitation, and Düdjom Lingpa returned with them to Golok, where he met the monk Gili Ngawang Gyatso at the family homestead. Shortly after his arrival, Düdjom Lingpa experienced a dream-vision in which a dakini identifying herself as Ging Chungma—a diminutive female messenger of a wrathful heruka—declared that Gili Ngawang Gyatso was an emanation of Shüpu Palgyi Sengé, one of Guru Rinpoche’s twenty-five principal disciples. She further instructed Düdjom Lingpa to rely upon him as an inseparable companion, as he had done in a former life as Khye’u Chung Lotsawa, the youthful translator among Guru Rinpoche’s original circle of Tibetan students [1].
In return for the Gili family’s patronage, Düdjom Lingpa regularly performed ritual practices intended to enhance prosperity, health, and auspicious conditions within the household. He also conducted divinations and transmitted teachings attributed to Buddhist deities and accomplished masters of the past. Through these activities, he gained local recognition as the ‘Gili Tertön’, the terma revealer associated with the Gili family and its estate.
Custodian and Scribe of Düdjom Lingpa’s Earliest Terma Cycles
It was during his residence with the Gili family in Dziteng, from 1857 to 1862, that Düdjom Lingpa began revealing his first major terma cycles. Throughout this formative period, he relied heavily on Gili Ngawang Gyatso as an accomplished scribe, a trusted companion, and eventual custodian, or doctrine holder, of the emerging teachings.
In 1857 and 1858, Gili Ngawang Gyatso was present when Düdjom Lingpa revealed a series of pure visions (daknang) attributed to Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion; Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom; and Samantabhadra, the primordial Buddha. These revelations encompassed a wide doctrinal range, including sadhana cycles of Dorjé Drölo, Sangyé Menla (the Medicine Buddha), and Amritakundali, as well as advanced Dzogchen practices such as Kordé Rushen and Tögal. Gili Ngawang assisted in transcribing and organizing these visionary transmissions as they took textual form.[2]
In 1859, Gili Ngawang accompanied Düdjom Lingpa on a return journey to the Ser Chu Valley, where the tertön revealed an earth treasure (sater) entitled Zabsang Khandro Nyingtik—‘Profound Doctrine of the Heart Essence of the Dakinis’—from the forested cliff of Shadrak Dorjé Dzong. Together with other early disciples, Gili Ngawang participated in the deciphering, transcription, and editorial refinement of this and subsequent revelations over the following years.[3]
Another early disciple, Hor Püntsok Tashi (1835?–1893), also joined Düdjom Lingpa and Gili Ngawang for the terma extraction at Shadrak Dorjé Dzong. On this occasion, Düdjom Lingpa designated both students as chödak, or dharma custodians, of the Zabsang Khandro Nyingtik. They requested that he establish a definitive written recension of the teachings, but—as Düdjom Lingpa later recounts in his memoirs—he instructed that the shokser, or yellow terma parchment, remain sealed for six years before being fully decoded and committed to writing. He explained that the five auspicious connections (tendrel) required for the maturation of the terma had not yet materialized, most notably the presence of a qualified consort. This condition was fulfilled six years later, following the conclusion of a series of retreats in 1865 and his meeting with Traza Sönam Tso (1845–1867).
Alongside Gili Ngawang Gyatso, an informal circle of six committed monk disciples coalesced around Düdjom Lingpa in the Mar Chu Valley from 1857 onward. This group included Goser Önpo Khyenrab Gyatso (1840–1910?), who had accompanied him from Nubzur; two monastics from the Horkor region, Hor Püntsok Tashi (1835?–1893) and Horla Pema Tashi (1840?–1890s); the monk-turned-tantric-yogin (ngakpa) Ngawang Trinlé (1840?–1910?); and the young monk Lama Tséchu (1850–1890?). Each served in turn as scribe, ritual assistant, and eventual chödak of Düdjom Lingpa’s revealed teachings. Three members of this group—including Lama Tséchu—were later remembered as having attained the rainbow body (jalü) at the time of death, a sign of complete realization within the Dzogchen tradition.
A Dorje Drolö Adept
Within the Vajrayana tradition, disciples engage the path through diverse modalities shaped by temperament, vocation, and karmic disposition. Düdjom Lingpa, teaching primarily from the Dzogchen perspective of nya tri—experiential instruction tailored to individual capacity—encouraged his students to integrate advanced tantric practice with their existing commitments as monastics, householders, scholars, or itinerant yogins. Gili Ngawang Gyatso, while maintaining strict monastic discipline throughout his life, simultaneously became a devoted and accomplished practitioner of Guru Dorjé Drölo, the wrathful, tiger-riding emanation of Guru Rinpoche, credited with having transformed the collective consciousness and landscape of Tibet in the eighth century.
Düdjom Lingpa first initiated Gili Ngawang Gyatso into the practice of Dorjé Drölo in 1857, during his residence with the Gili family in Dziteng. This transmission followed the Dorjé Drölo treasure lineage of Rigdzin Düdül Dorjé (1615–1672), the seventeenth-century yogin-tertön whom Düdjom Lingpa identified as one of his own previous incarnations, and who was himself regarded as a reincarnation of the eighth-century Khye’u Chung Lotsawa, one of Guru Rinpoche’s twenty-five principal disciples. Rigdzin Düdül Dorjé’s Dorjé Drölo revelations were closely associated with the further opening of the hidden land Béyül Pémakö in the mid-seventeenth century, lending this lineage particular potency in shaping both minds and landscapes.
Gili Ngawang Gyatso’s engagement with Dorjé Drölo deepened two years later, in 1859, when he and Düdjom Lingpa undertook an extended retreat together focused on intensive sadhana practice and imaginal identification with Guru Rinpoche on the back of a ferocious, postpartum tigress and wielding a phurba streaming with scorpions. Such practice emphasized fearless confrontation and transmutation of obstructive forces through fierce compassion and nondual awareness.
As one of the most formidable emanations of Guru Rinpoche, Dorjé Drölo is traditionally associated with the subjugation of adverse conditions and the removal of outer, inner, and secret obstacles to realization. In Tibetan religious history, Guru Rinpoche is said to have manifested as Dorjé Drölo at moments of heightened resistance, particularly at sites where tantric treasures were concealed—both within the physical landscape and within the mind-streams of disciples destined to reveal them in future lives. In this context, Dorjé Drölo functions not merely as a wrathful deity, but as an agent of revelation itself.
Identified in visionary transmission as a reincarnation of the scholar-disciple Shüpu Palgyi Sengé, Gili Ngawang Gyatso occupied a pivotal role within Düdjom Lingpa’s revelatory milieu. His Dorjé Drölo practice was understood to assist in the removal of visible and invisible impediments to the unfolding of the Düdjom Lingpa’s visions, while supporting the accurate decoding, transcription, and ritual activation of the revealed teachings. Through this sustained engagement, Gili Ngawang Gyatso’s identity evolved—from that of a disciplined monk and skilled scribe into a powerful ritual master whose wrathful practice complemented and extended the expansive Dzogchen vision articulated by his teacher.
Retreat and Death on the Mar Chu
In 1880, in accordance with a prophecy he is said to have received earlier in life, Düdjom Lingpa departed the Mar Chu Valley and returned to his homeland along the Ser Chu, where he would go on to establish the dharma encampment of Lama Rung. Gili Ngawang Gyatso did not accompany his teacher on this journey. Instead, he remained in the Mar Chu region, entering sustained meditative retreat and devoting the remainder of his life to the luminous heart-essence practices of Dzogchen—the Great Perfection stage of Vajrayana Buddhism—to which his years of Dorjé Drölo practice had led him.
After thirteen years of dedicated practice, Gili Ngawang Gyatso passed away in early 1893. Despite the physical distance that had separated them since 1880, his connection with Düdjom Lingpa remained unbroken. On the night of the tenth day of the first summer month of that year, Gili Ngawang appeared to Düdjom Lingpa in a visionary display of clouds and rainbows at Dartsang Kalzang, where Düdjom Lingpa had settled three years earlier. As Düdjom Lingpa later recorded in his memoirs, Gili Ngawang made prostrations before him and announced that he had taken rebirth in the blissful pure land of Déchen Rölpa.
Within the vision, Gili Ngawang urged that all of Düdjom Lingpa’s karmically connected disciples apply the integrated Dzogchen path of Trekchö and Tögal, through which liberation could be attained either in the form of the rainbow body or through direct dissolution into the Dharmakaya—the unmanifest, radiant expanse of reality from which all buddhas arise and into which they ultimately dissolve.
Gili Ngawang further foretold the imminent passing of his close companion Hor Püntsok Tashi (1835?–1893), who had earlier accompanied Düdjom Lingpa from the Mar Chu Valley to Lama Rung and then onward to Dartsang Kalzang monastery. Following Düdjom Lingpa’s instructions, Hor Püntsok Tashi had spent nearly two decades in solitary retreat, practicing first Düdjom Lingpa’s Tröma Nakmo revelation, and subsequently the formless contemplations of Dzogchen. At the end of his life, he was remembered as having manifested the rainbow body, and—according to Gili Ngawang’s posthumous proclamation—as having been reborn in the hidden land of Pemakö. There, he was said to assume the role of a ‘hero’ (daka), presiding over a tantric feast (tsok) attended by innumerable beings.
Before dissolving into light, Gili Ngawang assured Düdjom Lingpa that both he and Hor Püntsok Tashi had ‘reached the ground of unchanging bliss’ through the guidance and blessings of their teacher.
From their first encounter at the Gili family homestead in Dziteng to his final years of solitary realization along the Mar Chu, Gili Ngawang Gyatso remained one of Düdjom Lingpa’s most steadfast disciples—moving from scribe and doctrine holder (chödak) to ritual adept, and ultimately to a fully realized Dzogchen practitioner whose life embodied the maturation and inner profundity of Düdjom Lingpa’s terma cycles.
References
- ↑ According to this past-life narrative, Düdjom Lingpa was the skilled translator, Khye'u Chung Lotsawa, who earned his name, ‘youthful translator’ by learning Sanskrit at an early age. A householder disciple of Padmasambhava, he became a master of the Nyingma and is remembered for having the special ability, by means of mudra, to attract and catch birds and then give them teachings. Gili Ngawang Gyatso was Shüpu Palgyi Sengé, one of the eight great scholars of Tibet. He was personally sent by King Mutik Tsenpo to Nepal to invite Guru Rinpoche to Tibet.
- ↑ Specifically, Düdjom Lingpa revealed the Mahā Ati Zabchö Gongpa Rangdrol—‘Profound Great Perfection Teaching on the Naturally Liberated Wisdom Mind’—in 1857–1858, based on a vision of Avalokiteśvara. His second pure vision revelation, in 1858, was based on a dream vision of Mañjuśrī, who imparted the terma cycle Daknang Yeshe Drawa, ‘Wisdom Net of Pure Visions’. This was followed by the Tröma Nakmo cycle Chönyi Namkhai Longdzö—‘Vast Space Treasury of the Nature of Reality’—first revealed in 1861, though not fully completed until 1872.
- ↑ Gili Ngawang Gyatso was also notably a scribe for the Khandro Lab kyi Drönmé Drubpa Ngödrub Chugyün, ‘Ḍākinī Machik Lhabdrön’s Continuous Flow of siddhis’ terma cycle. He was also present in 1861 when Düdjom Lingpa revealed the Chönyi Namkha’i Long Dzö, ‘Vast Space Treasury of the Nature of Reality’.
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