Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche

Khenpo Tsültrim Gyamtso Rinpoche is a prominent scholar yogi in the Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.

He teaches widely in the West, often through songs of realization, his own as well as those composed by Milarepa and other masters of the past.

"Tsültrim Gyamtso" translates to English as "Ocean of Ethical Conduct".

Rinpoche was born in 1934 to a nomad family from Nangchen, Kham (eastern Tibet).

He left home at an early age to train with Lama Zopa Tarchin, who was to become his root guru.

After completing this early training, he lived the ascetic life of a yogi, wandering throughout Tibet and undertaking intensive, solitary retreats in caves and living in charnel grounds practicing Chöd.

During the 1959 Tibetan uprising Rinpoche fled Tibet, leading a group of Buddhist nuns over the Himalayas to safety in Bhutan.

He subsequently went to northern India, where he spent the next nine years at the Buxa Duar Tibetan Refugee Camp.

At Tsurphu Monastery, the historic seat of the Karma Kagyu lineage, Rinpoche continued his training with the lineage head, the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa, and other masters.

Here he studied and mastered Buddhist scholarship and was awarded a Khenpo degree by the 16th Karmapa and the equivalent Geshe Lharampa degree by the 14th Dalai Lama.

At the direction of the Karmapa, he subsequently settled in Bhutan, where he built a nunnery, retreat center, and school.

Along with Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, Khenpo Rinpoche served as the principal teacher at the shedra (monastic college) at Rumtek Monastery, the seat of the Karmapa in exile.

As such, he trained all of the major lineage holders of the Karma Kagyu lineage.

He also taught extensively around the world.

Rinpoche is also the principal teacher of the Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, and is very close to his Nalandabodhi organization.

He also teaches extensively in the Shambhala Buddhist community.

Rinpoche is also a primary teacher of Lama Shenpen Hookham, Rigdzin Shikpo Rinpoche and Lama Tashi Lhamo.

Shentong views the two truths doctrine as distinguishing between relative and absolute reality, agreeing that relative reality is empty of self-nature, but stating that absolute reality is "empty" only of "other" relative phenomena, but is itself not empty.

This absolute reality is the "ground or substratum" which is "uncreated and indestructible, noncomposite and beyond the chain of dependent origination."

Dolpopa identified this absolute reality with the Buddha-nature.

The shentong-view is related to the Ratnagotravibhāga sutra and the Yogacara-Madhyamaka synthesis of Śāntarakṣita.

The truth of sunyata is acknowledged, but not considered to be the highest truth, which is the empty nature of mind.

Insight into sunyata is preparatory for the recognition of the nature of mind.

Hookham explains the Shentong position, referring to Khenpo Tsultrim's Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness.

Khenpo Tsultrim presents five stages of meditation, which he relates to five different schools or approaches: