Tsok Khang

A close friend of Péma Dégyal (1873–1933) and a fellow disciple of Düdjom Lingpa, Tsok Khang pursued a spiritual path that integrated both Düdjom Lingpa’s terma teachings and his inherited family tradition of the Drikung Kagyü. Moving fluidly between these lineages his spiritual journey led him from Golok, in far eastern Tibet, to central Tibet, and ultimately to the Mount Kailash (Gang Rinpoché) region of far western Tibet, where he joined the community of practitioners at Namkha Khyung Dzong, established by his vajra brother, Pema Déchen Gyalpo.

A Student of Düdjom Lingpa in Dartsang Kalzang

Little is known about the early life and training of Düdjom Lingpa’s heart disciple, Tsok Khang. He was born in the early 1870s into a nomad family in Golok and was given the name Karma Loden, indicating his parents’ affiliation with the Kagyü school of Tibetan Buddhism.

As a teenager, Tsok Khang heard inspiring accounts of Düdjom Lingpa, whose activities as a tertön in the Mar Chu and Ser Chu valleys had brought him growing renown throughout Golok and neighboring regions. In 1891, when Düdjom Lingpa established a dharma encampment at Dartsang Kalzang in the upper reaches of the Do Chu valley, Tsok Khang traveled there to meet him.

At that time, Dartsang Kalzang consisted largely of black yak-hair tents strung with colorful block-printed prayer flags and spread across open nomadic pastureland and snow-fed meadows––dotted during the short summer with gentians, edelweiss, and alpine asters. The surrounding hills rose to over 4,000 meters in long, undulating ridges, their slopes covered in coarse grasses, dwarf shrubs, and patches of moss. The air was thin and dry, and the sky, when clear, appeared an almost translucent blue—a defining feature of the Golok highlands.

For Düdjom Lingpa, the location was ideal. The wide-open spaces allowed for large gatherings of tents during teaching assemblies, while the surrounding mountains provided secluded meditation sites for solitary retreat. The silence of the plateau—broken only by wind, bells on yak harnesses, and distant streams—created an atmosphere especially conducive to contemplative practice.

Tsok Khang was twenty-one when he arrived at Dartsang Kalzang and first met Düdjom Lingpa. Folding his hands in supplication, he immediately requested to become his student. Over the following twelve years, Düdjom Lingpa guided him through a rigorous course of training based on his revealed termas and associated teachings, bestowing the requisite empowerments, oral transmissions, and pith instructions. Like many of the close disciples gathered at Dartsang Kalzang, Tsok Khang remained a ngakpa—a lay tantric practitioner—and did not take monastic vows.

Other prominent disciples residing at Dartsang Kalzang during the twelve years Tsok Khang remained there included Ling Lama Orgyen Chökyi Jorpa (c. 1850s–c. 1920s), Chönjuk Lama (1816–c. 1904), Pékö Lama Könchok Rabten (c. 1870–c. 1940), Péma Déchen Gyalpo [also known as Péma Dégyal] (1873–1933), Puktrül Gyürmé Ngedön Wangpo (c. 1860–1923), Sögen Trülku Natsok Rangdrol (1869–1935), Tsultrim Dorjé (1880–c. 1950), and Yungshul Sungchok Dorjé (1872–1952). Among them, Tsok Khang became especially close to Péma Déchen Gyalpo, who was of similar age and disposition.

In 1898, Tsok Khang also witnessed the arrival at Dartsang Kalzang of the seven-year-old Péma Lungtok Gyatso (1891–1964), later renowned as Golok Serta Rinpoche. In time, Pema Lungtok Gyatso followed his eventual root teacher, Péma Déchen Gyalpo, to Mount Kailash, where he later reconnected with Tsok Khang, further strengthening the network of Düdjom Lingpa’s disciples in far western Tibet.

A Tsok Practitioner in Drikung Terdrom

During the final decades of his life, Düdjom Lingpa repeatedly advised many of his followers that, either before or after his passing, they should journey to Béyul Pémakö, Guru Rinpoché’s sacred hidden land in the mist-shrouded forests of southeastern Tibet. At the same time, he offered more specific instructions to individual students, directing some toward eastern or central Tibet, while advising others to wander freely without fixed destination, in accordance with the practice of Chö, or ‘severing’ attachment to personal identity.

To Tsok Khang’s close friend, Péma Déchen Gyalpo, Düdjom Lingpa gave precise instructions to travel to Mount Kailash in western Tibet, near the Nepal–Tibet frontier, a mountain revered across multiple religious traditions as the center of the world. He specifically advised him to undertake a three-year retreat at Langchen Puk (‘Elephant Cave’), where both Guru Rinpoché and the renowned yogin-poet Jétsün Milarépa (c. 1028/40–1111/23) were said to have meditated. ‘Many benefits will arise from this,’ Düdjom Lingpa assured him. ‘And I prophesy that you will achieve the rainbow body!’

In December 1903, Düdjom Lingpa passed away at Dartsang Kalzang. Several months earlier, a group of his senior disciples had already departed for Béyul Pémakö, heeding the tertön’s cryptic statement that he himself would arrive in the hidden land of dense forests, precipitous gorges, and heavy rainfall before they arrived there.

Péma Déchen Gyalpo set out for Béyul Pémakö in a second group of close disciples, together with Tsok Khang. Their route followed traditional trade and pilgrimage corridors through eastern Tibet during a time of increasing violence and political instability in the region resulting from ongoing predations by the Qing military commander Zhao Erfeng (1845 –1911). Although Péma Déchen Gyalpo reached the hidden land of Pémakö, he remained there for only a month before departing to Kongpo and, from there, to Mount Kailash in accordance with Düdjom Lingpa’s instructions. Tsok Khang, meanwhile, parted ways with the group near Chamdo, in Kham, a year before Zhao Erfeng’s forces brought Chamdo under Qing control and consolidated a network of garrisons and administrative reforms across eastern Tibet. He then followed a network of caravan tracks used by traders, pilgrims, officials, and monastics that ran westward along the upper Dri Chu (Yangtze) valley and then traversed high, open plateau country to Nak Chu (Mekong) before heading southward toward the Lhasa basin. From there, he followed a side valley to Drikung Til, the principal monastic seat of the Drikung Kagyü tradition in central Tibet.

Drikung Til was renowned throughout Tibet as one of the most important ‘sky-burial’ sites, where corpses were offered to vultures in accordance with Tibetan funerary custom and as an overt sign of ultimate detachment from the physical body. The charnel grounds above the monastery were also favored locations for Chö practitioners who, with their resonant double-sided drums and femur-bone trumpets, invoked the spirits of earth and sky to sever attachment to fear and ego-grasping. Tsok Khang practiced in these charnel grounds for several weeks before continuing up a winding valley to Drikung Terdrom, a site of hot springs and meditation caves associated with Guru Rinpoché and Yéshé Tsogyal, who practiced there during the eighth century.

Terdrom was also the location of an important Nyingma–Kagyü temple dedicated to the yab yum union of Hayagriva and Vajravarahi. Tsok Khang frequented this temple daily, internalizing the teachings he had received from Düdjom Lingpa at Dartsang Kalzang and performing nearly continuous tantric feast (tsok) offerings in the assembly hall. In recognition of his devotion, it was here that Karma Loden came to be known as ‘Tsok Khang’—‘the one who continuously performs tsok in the temple’.

Traveling to Namkha Khyung Dzong

After several years of practice in Drikung Terdrom, Tsok Khang left with a group of fellow practitioners on an extended pilgrimage to sacred sites throughout central Tibet. Around 1911—when Tsok Khang was in his forties—he learned that Péma Déchen Gyalpo had heeded Düdjom Lingpa’s instructions and established a retreat center known as Namkha Khyung Dzong (‘Garuda Sky Fortress’) near Mount Kailash in far western Tibet. Despite the arduous journey across sparsely inhabited high-altitude, desert-like terrain, Tsok Khang resolved to travel there to reunite with his Golok compatriot and vajra brother.

Tsok Khang and his companions set out on foot across the treeless, wind-scoured plateau, shifting sand dunes, and broad gravel plains separating central Tibet from the Mount Kailash region. Along the way, they practiced Chö and relied on alms from yak herders and fellow pilgrims. Though remote, the Mount Kailash region was not entirely uninhabited. Nomadic families moved seasonally across the plateau, herding yak, sheep, and goats over marginal grazing lands. Their encampments were widely spaced, typically located near glacial streams or small patches of pasture. Tsok Khang and his companions also shared the route with other practitioners traveling toward the sacred mountain.

After weeks on the pilgrimage track, they passed north of Lake Manasarovar, where they first saw Mount Kailash, rising like a crystal stupa above the barren, windswept plateau. Enraptured by the 6,714-meter cone of ice and rock, they continued westward until reaching the Maja Khabab (Karnali), one of the four great rivers––along with the Brahmaputra, the Sutlej, and the Indus––traditionally believed to originate from the sacred Kailash massif.

They had learned that Namkha Khyung Dzong (‘The Fortress of the Sky-Garuda’) lay near the headwaters of the Maja Khabab, west of Mount Kailash. Yet the river divided into multiple braided channels across the arid, treeless terrain, leaving them uncertain which course to follow. Proceeding upstream, they eventually reached a confluence of branching streams where the route became unclear.

Having recently received offerings from local nomads, Tsok Khang recalled Péma Déchen Gyalpo’s advice that when the path forward was uncertain, one should perform rituals to remove obstacles. Tsok Khang and his companions therefore conducted an elaborate tsok ceremony. After completing the offering, they intuitively selected one branch of the river to follow and, auspiciously, soon arrived at Namkha Khyung Dzong.

At approximately 5,000 meters above sea level, the altitude exceeded even that of Tsok Khang’s homeland in Golok. The austere environment of the Mount Kailash region—vast, silent, and dominated visually by the sacred peak—made Namkha Khyung Dzong particularly suited to contemplative practice. The isolation, harsh climate, minimal vegetation, and expansive horizons reinforced the sense of living at the edge of the inhabited world, a setting long associated with profound retreat and realization.

Péma Déchen Gyalpo had already spent several years in meditation in this stark, high-altitude wilderness. As instructed by Düdjom Lingpa, he undertook an initial three-year retreat from 1909 to 1912 at Langchen Puk (‘Elephant Cave’), which faces Mount Kailash’s western wall of ice and rock. This cave had previously served as a meditation site for Guru Rinpoché (8th century), Jétsun Milarépa (c. 1028/40–1111/23), and many later Nyingma and Kagyü practitioners.

At the same time, the Mount Kailash region remained one of Tibet’s most important pilgrimage destinations. Pilgrims from Tibet, Ladakh, Nepal, and India regularly passed through the area, circumambulating the sacred mountain and visiting nearby holy lakes. Many of these travelers encountered Péma Déchen Gyalpo at his encampment and became disciples, contributing to the gradual emergence of Namkha Khyung Dzong as a remote yet influential Nyingma practice center, dedicated to propagating Düdjom Lingpa’s terma teachings.

Practicing near Mount Kailash

Péma Déchen Gyalpo was overjoyed when Tsok Khang arrived at Namkha Khyung Dzong and he warmly welcomed him into the community of dedicated practitioners. Tsok Khang, in turn, expressed deep admiration for his friend’s discipline, while also confessing a certain apprehension. ‘The way that Péma Déchen Gyalpo upholds his samayas is absolutely extraordinary,’ Tsok Khang remarked. ‘Worrying that I may break any of mine, I am in fact as terrified as if I were living with a tiger!’

When Péma Déchen Gyalpo first settled at Namkha Khyung Dzong, he did not construct a formal monastery. Instead, the community initially took shape as a mobile encampment—much like Düdjom Lingpa’s Dartsang Kalzang—with practitioners living in tents, stone huts, and cave hermitages scattered across the surrounding mountainsides. Only later did disciples begin constructing permanent temple buildings to support the growing community, which gradually emerged as the most important western Tibetan center of the Düdjom Tersar lineage.

Because Tsok Khang had also been a direct student of Düdjom Lingpa, the Namkha Khyung Dzong community treated him as a special guest. Practitioners introduced him to the sacred geography surrounding the encampment, explaining how the landscape itself formed a natural maṇḍala with three gateways: an outer gateway where yogic practitioners gathered for meditation; an inner gateway where monastic communities later developed; and a secret gateway containing caves associated with ḍakini practices. Among these was Khandro Sangwé Shelpuk (‘Secret Crystal Cave of the Ḍakinis’) where later lineage holders would remain in retreat for extended periods.

With Péma Déchen Gyalpo’s guidance, Tsok Khang soon undertook a one-year retreat at Jakyib Gompa, a cave hermitage located near the northwestern shore of Lake Manasarovar. The site was traditionally associated with the five hundred arhats—the devoted disciples who, following the Buddha’s parinirvaṇa, convened at Rajagṛha to compile his teachings into scripture.

Across the lake from his hermitage, the Lapcha La pass leads through the Gurla Mandhata range toward Halji, a village in the Limi Valley of northwestern Nepal, within sight of both Lake Manasarovar and Mount Kailash. The inhabitants of this remote region have long maintained strong ties to the Drikung Kagyü tradition, with which Tsok Khang was closely connected.

Tsok Khang eventually settled in the Limi Valley and, over the ensuing decade, became an important source of guidance for the local community. To practitioners there, as well as to students connected with Péma Déchen Gyalpo, he bestowed empowerments, oral transmissions, and pith instructions from the Düdjom Tersar, especially the Tröma Nakmo practice cycles and the Néluk Rangjung (‘Self-arising Natural State’) that, in a Dzogchen context, reveals the ultimate nature of reality as unfabricated, primordially present and spontaneously arising and implying the inseparability of emptiness and appearance.

Among the many practitioners who gathered around him, two became particularly close to Tsok Khang. One was Sherpa Orgyen Kyab, and the other was Péma Lungtok Gyatso (1891–1963)—who would later become known as Golok Serta––whom Tsok Khang had first encountered as a seven-year-old child at Dartsang Kalzang. The dreadlocked Péma Lungtok Gyatso later became a close disciple of Péma Déchen Gyalpo and eventually joined him at Namkha Khyung Dzong, where the connections forged decades earlier in Golok were renewed in the remote highlands near Mount Kailash.

Passing Away Amidst Rainbow Lights

After spending nearly ten years in the Namkha Khyung Dzong–Mount Kailash region, Tsok Khang sensed that his life force was diminishing. Resolving to return to Kham and eventually to Golok, he set out during the 1930s with a small group of close disciples. Their journey across the high-altitude Ngari Plateau proved arduous. Even in summer, sudden storms swept across the barren landscape, bringing snow, hail, and sand-laden winds. After several months of travel, Tsok Khang and his companions eventually arrived in Droshek, a village in the heart of Horpön Khaknga—the Hor States—in northern Kham, situated on the banks of the Nyak Chu, the largest tributary of the Dri Chu (Yangtze River).

By that time, Tsok Khang was no longer able to continue the journey to Golok. He passed away in Droshek, where many extraordinary signs appeared as outer manifestations of his inner realization. At the time of his passing, rainbow lights filled the sky and appeared around his kudung. For several days, his body showed no signs of decomposition, and multicolored ringsel—pearl-like relics—began to emerge from his remains. His followers therefore decided to embalm his kudung and enshrine it as an object of devotion in Droshek’s Tushita temple.

Shortly after his death, however, an unfortunate incident occurred. Some of Tsok Khang’s less mature students began quarrelling over his personal belongings, displaying greed rather than the compassion appropriate to their practice and the passing of their teacher.

Sherpa Orgyen Kyab, one of Tsok Khang’s closest disciples, later described what transpired:

‘After his passing, all his students started to greedily fight over his belongings. As the quarrel continued, a loud sound of “A Hom” was heard, coming from nowhere. Looking into the sky, we all saw the vivid appearance of Tsok Khang, sitting in a circular rainbow, watching us with wrathful eyes of pure compassion. Realizing the stupidity of our fighting, we all confessed our bad actions and prostrated to the vision of Tsok Khang.’

Following this extraordinary event—and Tsok Khang’s astral intervention—harmony was restored among the disciples. Those involved in the quarrel experienced deep remorse and reconciliation. It was then decided that all of Tsok Khang’s belongings should be placed within the reliquary stūpa together with his embalmed body. With generous offerings from his disciples, the stūpa was gilded in silver, consecrated, and installed at the center of the Tushita temple.

In the 1960s, during the Communist Cultural Revolution, Tsok Khang’s reliquary stūpa faced the threat of desecration by predatory ‘Red Guards’––radicalized youth mobilized during the Cultural Revolution under Mao Zedong. As elsewhere in China, they were primarily students and young activists encouraged to attack the ‘Four Olds’ (old customs, culture, habits, and ideas). In Tibet, many were Han Chinese students and cadres sent from inland China, but they were often joined by Tibetan youths who had been educated in new Communist schools. From 1966 to 1969, they committed themselves to the destruction of monasteries, temples, and sacred art as well as public denunciations and persecution of monks, nuns, and lay religious figures.

Amidst the suppression of Tibetan religious practice and cultural expression, Tso Khang’s devoted disciples secretly removed his kudung from the reliquary stūpa and cremated the embalmed body to prevent it being destroyed and desecrated. Even though many years had passed since Tsok Khang’s death, remarkable signs again appeared. A distinctive oily substance spread across the ground where the cremation fire had burned, and numerous relics were discovered in the cool ashes after the ceremony had concluded—further affirming the depth of Tsok Khang’s spiritual accomplishment.

Reincarnation in the Humla Region of Nepal

After the passing of his two principal teachers—Péma Déchen Gyalpo in 1933 and Tsok Khang in the 1930s—Golok Serta wandered widely through the Himalayan ranges with fellow practitioners, maintaining the contemplative and itinerant lifestyle that had characterized the Namkha Khyung Dzong community. In time, two of his sons were recognized as emanations of his own teachers, further reinforcing the continuity of their shared lineage.

When political upheavals in Tibet led to the destruction of Namkha Khyung Dzong at Mount Kailash, Golok Serta established a new dharma center in the Humla region of northwestern Nepal, near Tsok Khang’s former base in the Limi Valley. There, the lineage found renewed expression. His first son, Péma Jikmé Chöying Rangdrol (1937–1985), was identified as a trülku of Péma Déchen Gyalpo, while his third son, Tsokhang Chöktrul Tséwang Dorjé, was recognized as a Trülku of Tsok Khang.

These two emanations continued to uphold and disseminate the Namkha Khyung Dzong tradition, centered on Tröma Nakmo––a Tibetan iteration of Kali––as Lama, Yidam, and Khandro. Through them, the spiritual bonds forged between Düdjom Lingpa’s disciples in the highlands of Golok and the remote wilderness around Mount Kailash continued to endure, extending the living transmission of their teachings into new regions and future generations.

Beyond Time and Geography

The bonds between teacher and disciple transcend both time and geography. At Namkha Khyung Dzong, Tsok Khang became one of the root teachers of Péma Lungtok Gyatso, who himself became a beacon of realization of the Düdjom Tersar in the surroundings of Mount Kailash. Through these intertwined relationships, Düdjom Lingpa’s lineage at Mount Kailash continued to unfold across subsequent generations.

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