Horla Péma Tashi

Alongside Goser Önpo Khyenrab Gyatso (c.1840–c.1910), Gili Ngawang Gyatso (c.1841–1893), Hor Püntsok Tashi (c.1835–1893), Ngawang Trinlé (c.1840–c.1910), and Lama Tséchu (1850–c.1890), Horla Pema Tashi was one Düdjom Lingpa’s six main earliest students. He was one of four of them to achieve the rainbow body at the conclusion of his life, marking him as one of the earliest Dzogchen adepts within what would later be known as the Düdjom Tersar lineage.

One of Düdjom Lingpa’s Six Earliest Students

Horla Pema Tashi was adopted in childhood by the chief of the Hor clan (Horkor), a prominent tribal confederation comprising approximately two hundred families settled along the Mar Chu river in eastern Golok. He was ordained at a young age as a novice monk, and developed exceptional skills in reading and writing.

Following Düdjom Lingpa’s arrival in the Mar Chu Valley in 1857, members of the Hor clan—who, like the Gili family, quickly recognized him as a spiritual prodigy—began introducing promising young students to him. Among them was the teenage monk later known as the ‘Hor Lama’, Horla Pema Tashi, who entered Düdjom Lingpa’s circle at a formative stage and remained closely connected to him for nearly four decades.

In a later autobiographical account, Düdjom Lingpa recalls that a dakini named Küntu Gyuma Saljéma had previously foretold that a disciple from the Hor clan named Pema Tashi would become one of his principal chödak (dharma custodian). The prophecy further instructed that this disciple should not remain bound to monastic institutions or fixed residences, but instead apply the teachings as an itinerant yogin, carrying the terma lineage through lived realization rather than institutional consolidation.

This prophecy would come to shape both Horla Pema Tashi’s role within Düdjom Lingpa’s community and the distinctive pattern of his spiritual path, which unfolded beyond the confines of monasteries and formal seats of learning.

A Chödak of the Tröma Nakmo Practice Cycle

In 1861, Düdjom Lingpa received a major visionary transmission that would come to constitute one of the most widely practiced bodies of teachings within his corpus: the Chönyi Namkha Long Dzö ('The Vast Space Treasury of Fundamental Reality’). From the outset, Horla Pema Tashi demonstrated a natural affinity with this cycle and assumed a central role in its consolidation. He committed its core materials to writing, including the khajang, the prophetic guide authorizing and structuring the terma as a whole; the lung jyang, cataloguing its associated prophecies; the Za’i Sokwang, a life-force empowerment rite for the treasure-protector Za Rahula; and a series of practices centered on Tröma Nakmo.

Like several of Düdjom Lingpa’s earliest disciples—among them Goser Önpo Khyenrab Gyatso, Hor Püntsok Tashi, and Lama Tséchu—Horla Pema Tashi was formally designated as a chödak of the Tröma Nakmo Chö transmissions. Düdjom Lingpa recounts in Namtar Shyal Sungma–his outer autobiography–that when Horla Pema Tashi first began transcribing the Tröma Nakmo practices of the Chönyi Namkha’i Long Dzö, a stream of ambrosial milk issued spontaneously from empty space and filled a wooden cup. Upon drinking it, Horla Pema Tashi’s body and mind were said to be suffused with bliss for three days, during which new levels of meditative insight arose.

Moved by Horla Pema Tashi’s spontaneous devotion and aptitude, Düdjom Lingpa urged him to prepare authoritative written versions of the diverse Tröma Nakmo practices then emerging through pure vision.

In the winter of 1872—the Year of the Water Monkey—Düdjom Lingpa selected Horla Pema Tashi together with two other disciples, Orgyen Dorjé and Lama Tséchu, to join him in a month-long meditation retreat devoted exclusively to Tröma Nakmo on the banks of the Mar Chu. Referring to the three as his ‘supreme disciples’, Düdjom Lingpa later remarked that no others were qualified to undertake this retreat alongside him.

During this period, intensive meditative practice was accompanied by the continued transcription and editing of Tröma Nakmo practice texts. As Düdjom Lingpa recounts in his Namtar Shyal Sungma, a sudden whirlwind arose and scattered the completed folios in all directions, while the sky and surrounding mountains became filled with Himalayan griffon vultures, whose wingspans reach several meters. Hundreds of their small tail feathers descended upon the landscape. Düdjom Lingpa interpreted these events as auspicious indications that his Tröma Nakmo teachings would one day spread widely, reaching beings in all regions and lands.

Throughout his life, Horla Pema Tashi remained a principal scribe and custodian of Tröma Nakmo transmissions. Among the most important texts he transcribed was the Khandro Düpé Wangdü Zilnön Pema Gyepé Chünchang ('The Flower-Wreath of Blossoming Lotusses, Bringing under Control and Supressing with Splendor to Gather the Dakinis’)—from the Daknang Yéshé Drawa cycle. Employing imaginal decapitation and shamanic dismemberment, the practice reveals the sense of self to be an illusory projection arising from the empty and luminous ground of awareness. He also transcribed and edited the closely related Rangnang Wangdü Zhennang Zilnön Sengé Ngaro (‘The Lion’s Roar, bringing under control one’s own appearances and suppressing other appearances with splendor’)—belonging to the Chönyi Namkha’i Long Dzö, as well as the Dur Chö, an extremely wrathful rite from the same cycle.

Through these activities, Horla Pema Tashi emerged as one of the earliest and most influential custodians of the Tröma Nakmo Chö tradition, ensuring its coherent transmission at a formative moment in what would later be systematized as the Düdjom Tersar lineage.

A Chödak of the Sherik Dorjé Nönpö Tantra

In addition to his pivotal role in the codification of Tröma Nakmo practices, Horla Pema Tashi was also instrumental in the articulation and transmission of Düdjom Lingpa’s Dzogchen teachings. Most notably, he played a central role in the writing and early dissemination of the Sherik Dorjé Nönpo Gyü (‘The Sharp Vajra of Primordial Awareness Tantra’)—a Dzogchen tantra belonging to the Daknang Yéshé Drawa terma cycle that Düdjom Lingpa first revealed in 1857 through a pure vision of Manjushri, the bodhisattva of transcendent wisdom.

Although the tantra was revealed during Düdjom Lingpa’s early years at the Gili family homestead in Dziteng, more than three decades elapsed before circumstances ripened for its transcription. In 1888, four of Düdjom Lingpa’s closest disciples urged him to commit the teaching to writing. The group that collaborated in this process consisted of Horla Pema Tashi, Orgyen Dorjé, Lodrö Zangpo, and Düdjom Lingpa’s third son, the twenty-year-old Khyentsé Tulku Dzamling Wangyal (1868–1907). Their collective effort ensured that one of the most profound expressions of Düdjom Lingpa’s Dzogchen vision would be preserved in definitive textual form.

The Sherik Dorjé Nönpö is one of only three Dzogchen tantras within the entire Düdjom Lingpa corpus, and it is distinguished by its comprehensive scope. Düdjom Lingpa himself described it as a complete condensation of the Vajrayana path:

‘All the qualities of view, meditation, and conduct, together with ground, path, and fruition—along with refuge, bodhicitta, the six perfections, and the maṇḍalas of dei-ties and mantras—are collectively perfected in the Sherik Dorjé Nönpo.’

The influence of this tantra would extend well beyond Düdjom Lingpa’s own lifetime. His corporeal reincarnation, Düdjom Jigdrel Yéshé Dorjé (1904–1987), later credited the Sherik Dorjé Nönpö as foundational to his understanding of Dzogchen. As Nyoshul Khenpo Jamyang Dorjé (1931–1999) observed:

‘Düdjom Rinpoche studied the Sherik Dorjé Nönpo tantra, and the dynamic energy of his Rigpa—innate awareness—welled up as the sublime knowing that discerns the true nature of phenomena. He easily and very naturally understood the difficult points of the vast classes of the Vajrayana path.’

Recognizing Horla Pema Tashi’s depth of realization and clarity of expression, Düdjom Lingpa instructed him to compose a commentary on the tantra. The result was the Drelchung Dönsal Nyingpo (‘The Essence of Clear Meaning’)—a 126-page exegetical work elucidating the core Dzogchen practices of Kadak Trekchö and Lhündrup Tögal. In his introduction, Horla Pema Tashi notes that ‘the time is ripe for meditative experiences and realizations based on the swift path to Buddhahood in a single lifetime.’

In his colophon, Horla Pema Tashi explains that he transmitted the contents of the Drelchung Dönsal Nyingpo to a close retinue of disciples near Guru Rinpoche’s hermitage of Drak Yangdzong—a complex of sacred caves south of Lhasa, in Central Tibet—drawing upon ‘the memorized oral teachings of the great tertön Düdjom Lingpa.’ Having traveled far from the Mar Chu Valley, in Golok, to one of the most revered Nyingma pilgrimage sites in Central Tibet–while Düdjom Lingpa was still living–Horla Pema Tashi and his companions acted in accord with Düdjom Lingpa’s injunction that his close students wander widely and freely in pursuit of enlightenment.

Motivated by devotion to what he describes as ‘this foremost path’, Horla Pema Tashi wrote that he committed Düdjom Lingpa’s teachings on Dzogchen to writing so that they would not be lost to future generations. Through his direct involvement in the transcription of the Sherik Dorjé Nönpö tantra and his authorship of its principal commentary, Horla Pema Tashi rendered an enduring service to the Düdjom Tersar tradition, ensuring the continuity of its Dzogchen transmission at a decisive historical moment.

According to Düdjom Lingpa, in his final years Horla Pema Tashi ‘gained a distinctive realization, superior to anyone else, and became profoundly learned. Having undertaken essen-tial practices in unfixed mountain locales, he mastered the swift path to authentic, complete en-lightenment.’ These words underscore the balance he maintained between rigorous literary activ-ity and sustained retreat, in keeping with the early prophecy of the dakini Küntu Gyuma Saljé-ma that he should live without fixed abode.

A jalüpa, achieving the rainbow body

Having deeply integrated the practices of Tröma Nakmo and Dzogchen, Horla Pema Tashi ultimately dissolved his physical form into a rainbow body (jalü) at the end of his life, as did several of Düdjom Lingpa’s other monk disciples from Golok’s Hor clan—thus sealing his life as both a consummate practitioner and a foundational lineage holder of the Düdjom Tersar.

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