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A close-up of my statue of His Holiness Kyabje Zong Rinpoche. It was made by an artisan in Nepal in 1987 and contains the actual bone relics  and hair of Kyabje Zong Rinpoche, as well as many other precious items and other relics.

It says in the 50 Verses of Guru Devotion that Vajradhara has stated very clearly for any of our practices to bear fruit or to fruition, we must rely on our teacher or, in Sanskrit, our Guru. Our teacher, being our Guru, introduces us to the basic teachings and foundations of Dharma which starts from impermanence and death and refuge, the Four Noble Truths, the Three Principal Paths, the Twelve Interdependent Links, and etc. etc. etc. and up to the highest tantras.

So, our scriptural teachers are very important. Our Gurus who introduce us and give us the Dharma and inspires us to do the Dharma, let us know that there’s another way of looking at our existence. Our teacher gives us a more profound and realistic view of our existence. Our teacher lets us know that although the realistic view of existence is not always very happy, that there is hope, that there is a way, that there is a remedy and that remedy is to become a fully enlightened being.

Even the existence of fully enlightened beings depend on the teacher. Even the knowing and the knowledge of becoming an enlightened being depends on a teacher and even after becoming an enlightened being, one recognises one’s teacher that allowed you the great opportunity to be free of suffering and samsara. Basically, to be free of one’s self.

The millennials like to say, “It’s about myself, it’s about loving myself, it’s about taking care about myself. It’s about ‘me’ time, it’s about myself. It’s about how important I am. It’s about recognising myself. It’s about being kind to myself.” The millennials like to use that as some kind of a mantra. That’s very true, that we should be kind and loving and forgiving of ourselves, but that has to come with if we are loving ourselves the right way and we are taking care of ourselves the right way and we are producing the right results. Otherwise it just becomes a very nice millennial mantra that follows the herd.

“Be nice to ourselves” – what does that actually mean? “Be nice to ourselves” is actually engaging into the understanding of the true nature of existence. Living a life that eliminates procuring more suffering and having a life that not only uses the resources, the planet and the people around us but also give back. So yes, we should be good to ourselves but we need to be good to others who have been good to ourselves. So that’s very important to understand.

My statue of my root Guru, His Holiness Kyabje Zong Rinpoche in its full glory. I had the clothes sewn up and the jewels added as an offering to the statue. The highest offering we can make, the offering with the most merit, is the one that we make to our teacher.

Now in reliance on the Guru, we learn a different view of life; in reliance on the Guru, we learn a different view of our existence and perhaps a higher purpose in our lives and to even aspire to become free of the endless rounds in life… Endless round of lives which is reincarnation in samsara, at least to be reincarnated in suffering states. So this is all dependent on the Guru and on top of that, to be completely liberated, to become a fully enlightened being, also depends on the Guru. So therefore the Guru is pivotal for any spiritual growth, practice, change and eventually achieving the goal. The Guru is pivotal.

Therefore, Vajradhara states whether the Guru is ordinary and he teaches you – he’s an ordinary person that teaches you – he’s a kind person, he’s a good person and he teaches you the Dharma, which you practise and become an enlightened being, or that your Guru is a fully attained being such as a Mahasiddha and teaches you the Dharma to become enlightened – either way, it is not the Guru who brought you to enlightenment but it is the Dharma that brought you to enlightenment.

So whether your Guru is an enlightened being or ordinary being, if he teaches you the Dharma, you can become enlightened. Having said that, Vajradhara also goes one more step by explaining that it’s important to view our teachers, whether they are highly attained or ordinary beings, as living Buddhas themselves. Therefore if we have that view, the blessings will be much more stronger, the blessings will be more potent and also it’ll inspire us more to become more like our teachers, to have better motivation, to sacrifice, to be able to renounce and to be able to give our lives over to practising the Dharma, or at least becoming better people within our lifetimes. So it is very important to view our teacher as enlightened beings (living Buddhas).

So whether our Guru is an ordinary being or a highly attained being, the Dharma he teaches us brings us to that level of attainment, brings us to the higher level of attainment which is Buddhahood. Therefore, it is more logical to view our teachers as enlightened beings giving us teachings to bring us to enlightenment.

Geshe Tsultrim Gyeltsen, my second Guru who lived in Los Angeles. I had some letters to deliver for Geshe-la and also wanted to go on pilgrimage, so I found myself in Nepal.

And hence remembering Vajradhara’s teachings in the 50 Verses of Guru Devotion – which we will have a link towards that on another blog post – in remembering that, in 1987 I had made my… In 1987, I had gone and received permission from my first teacher, Geshe Lobsang Tharchin and my second teacher, Geshe Tsultrim Gyeltsen and also His Holiness Kyabje Zong Rinpoche, my root Guru, to become an ordained monk. And so in 1987, at the age of 22-ish, I flew to India to become a Buddhist monk and to be ordained by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I was in Dharamsala for about two months… About a month and a half, two months, for that, after which when I was ordained, I went to Nepal to go on pilgrimage and to deliver some letters that my teachers… My teacher had entrusted me to deliver from the U.S. to Nepal. And after Nepal, I was supposed to go down to Gaden, which I did.

So I was in Nepal until December-January, around that time, and it was January 19… December, January, February, around that time. And so it was from 1987 to ’88 and around February 1988, then I arrived in Gaden Monastery. But let me backtrack. When I was in Nepal, in December around that time, I was there for some work for my teacher and pilgrimage, as I mentioned earlier. And while I was there, I found that the Nepalese are very great artisans. They can make statues from thangkas. Sorry, they can make statues from metals, from clay, they can paint and you have artisans of all levels. So I decided to make a statue of His Holiness Kyabje Zong Rinpoche while I was there.

Without the robes that I offered onto Kyabje Zong Rinpoche, you can see the skill and talent of the artisan to create the statue. This statue is made from clay.

I enquired around with my monk friends there, that had become friends, and they had taken me about 45 minutes’ drive out of Kathmandu to a small area where there was an artisan. The artisan lived with this family and it was a little bit of a walk from the taxi, where we were dropped off, into kind of a wooded area. It was rural but it wasn’t like in the middle of the forest, but it’s quite rural. And he lived with his family and his children in a simple house and he made clay statues and so a lot of people went there to see him. So I went there to see him and I brought many, many pictures of what I can get of Kyabje Zong Rinpoche. Profile, front, from the top, from the sides, from the back and I brought it to him and asked him to make a statue of Kyabje Zong Rinpoche for me from clay.

And so after some light negotiations, which my monk friends helped me with, we settled on about 600 rupees, Nepalese, at that time. Now 600 Nepalese rupees at that time is how much in US dollars? So it would be about five dollars and 41 cents, US, that time and a lot of you would say, “Well, wow. That’s really dirt cheap.”

It wasn’t dirt cheap. I was a very poor monk. I had only a few hundred dollars to my name and five dollars, ten dollars, whatever dollars would mean a lot. Luckily, the exchange rate was high at that time. So anyway, to make this Zong Rinpoche statue, now when I look back, I think, “Wow. It was really cheap” but at that time 600 rupees was quite a lot of money. The artist was an extremely nice person. He was friendly, helpful, he was gentle in demeanour and hardworking. And I had read somewhere that when you create Buddha images, holy images, whether it’s thangkas, drawings, paintings or statues, you should make a good relationship with the artist because when you have a good relationship with the artist, he has a good mind, good energy, he feels happy. So when he creates these images, the images will come out very holy and very powerful and blessed. You don’t want to have a bad relationship with the artists and, you know, that would sour or kind of give negative energy to the objects that we are creating.

So realising that, I would go there and visit him almost every two days and I would bring little biscuits and snacks to give him and to please him, and I would check on the progress of the statue. And luckily I did because neck-down, it was quite easy to make because it’s pretty standard, how to make lama’s robes and monk’s robes and stuff because being a Nepalese, he would have seen, you know, many monks throughout his lifetime so it’s not difficult but the head part was difficult. I had to go every two days, sometimes more often, to tell him how to mould His Holiness Kyabje Zong Rinpoche‘s face, head shape and profile. And so we did a lot of amendments and he was very patient and helped me do that.

Cittamani Tara with forms of Tara at the chakras. The pose of Kyabje Zong Rinpoche was done according to the visualisation of our Guru as described by the Cittamani Tara Tantra. To download other similar Rime images in high resolution, click here.

Another trick was we had to leave the statue hollow. The reason we left the statue hollow is because so I can fill it with relics and mantras. The pose of the statue is the pose that you will visualise your Guru according to the Cittamani Tara Tantra by Tagphu Dorjechang. So the pose that you see Kyabje Zong Rinpoche in in the statue is not made arbitrarily. I didn’t make it up; it was according to the tantric tradition of Cittamani Tara. So in Cittamani Tara’s tantric tradition, you visualise your Guru with the right hand holding a vajra, the left hand holding a bell and from each finger… Thumb and index finger, they’re holding a lotus that opens at the left and right side of the lama’s ear. He will be wearing the three robes of a monk, and the coat and the yellow hat of a great pandit.

So that is according to the Cittamani Tara tantric system that I had created Kyabje Zong Rinpoche’s statue. After about 10 days, he finished the statue and it was to my liking, and he had painted it and I was so happy with it.

I was really, really so happy and so I gave him gifts and khata, and I remember I gave him a little bit of a tip and some snacks to thank him. And then I brought my statue back and then the next phase was, I contacted some old monks there who took me to a tailor that made the clothes for Kyabje Zong Rinpoche, the traditional clothes for a statue, and also the golden hat for Kyabje Zong Rinpoche.

And while I was there, I also made a Kyabje Zong Rinpoche thangka and the thangka was to represent that the Guru emanates the Yidam and the Guru emanates the Protector. So nearby the monastery I was staying – I was staying at Samtenling Monastery in Boudha – literally five minutes’ walk away, on the second floor, there was an old Nepalese artist that I was introduced to, who was also very patient and who charged me about 1,100 Nepali rupees to create a thangka, beautiful, 16 by 20 inches. The centre being Kyabje Zong Rinpoche. From the heart, rays of light emanate and Vajra Yogini appears. From rays of light and rainbow lights, another figure appears which is Dorje Shugden. And at the bottom of the thangka, you’ll see one monk prostrating eternally to Kyabje Zong Rinpoche and that is myself.

The thangka of His Holiness Kyabje Zong Rinpoche that I commissioned. Later on, I had this thangka reproduced which you can download in high resolution here.

And so on the thangka, for this thangka creation I went every single day also, to visit the artist and to give him commentary on how to make the Vajra Yogini, how to make Kyabje Zong Rinpoche, how to make Dorje Shugden and I brought samples and I explained to him. And also on the thangka of Kyabje Zong Rinpoche, you’ll also see it is according to traditional iconography, as well as Vajra Yogini and as well as Dorje Shugden. So while I was in Nepal, I was very lucky. I was able to create a statue of my Guru which I wanted on my shrine and a thangka of himself, his Yidam and his Dharma Protector to be behind the statue.

I wanted to bring this back to Gaden and I did. And while I was in Nepal, I went shopping for a metal box that can lock and I wrapped the statue, wrapped the thangka very thickly and I put it inside the box and I closed it and I locked it, and I took it with me on the bus. So when I returned back to India, I went by bus. I didn’t have money so I went by bus. It was a two-day, three-night journey. I repeat, it was a two-day three-night journey and on another blog post, I’ll tell you about the journey but it was quite dramatic because you’re stopped about 14 times along the way, and you’re asked for all kinds of money to get through. For example, you know, tax for your statues, tax for your thangkas and you’ve paid tax about five times already, you still have to pay tax at each stop. Anyways, India and Nepal is very interesting and I love them. I love both countries and I would love to live there.

As you can see, it doesn’t matter what route you take. The journey from Kathmandu to Mundgod, where Gaden Shartse Monastery is located, is a long one and that’s these days. Can you imagine what it was like 31 years ago?

Anyways, I took my thangka and my statue back from Kathmandu to Delhi, three days and two nights (by bus). From Delhi, I took a train, two days and two nights to South India, to the monastery. So when I entered Gaden Monastery for the first time in my life, I took my beautiful statue. I was assigned a room in Zong Rinpoche’s house. I arrived in Gaden and I did three prostrations to Zong Rinpoche’s house before I entered because I’m going to live in my Guru’s house, I’m going to use my Guru’s facilities, I’m going to use my Guru’s property. So to show respect and not to feel entitled or that my Guru owes me anything, I made three prostrations at the entrance of Kyabje Zong Rinpoche’s house and then I brought my luggage in, I brought my Zong Rinpoche statue, my thangkas, my clothes, my robes in. Then I walked in and I was assigned a room.

And in my room, I cleaned it up and the first thing I did was set up Kyabje Zong Rinpoche’s statue and the thangka, and I made offerings immediately. So I don’t know how many years has been, 1987 till now? So it’s been 31 years since I made those statues and the thangka and they’re still on my altar. And you’ll see in the blog post the original thangka [Editor’s Note: see above], and I’ve had this statue with me and it’s been here and it’s very treasured.

And as an ending to what I want to share with you is when I arrived in Zong Ladrang, the assistant of Zong Rinpoche gave me actual bone relics of Kyabje Zong Rinpoche. Zong Rinpoche had passed away and he was cremated and so they have a lot of his relics. So I actually received bone relics of his actual body and I have hair from Zong Rinpoche’s goatee which he gave me when we were in America, and I have some robes of Kyabje Zong Rinpoche and and pills made by Zong Rinpoche, and I put that inside my statue. And also I have many holy mantras and other relics and other holy items inside the statue and it was enshrined inside the statue. So my statue of Zong Rinpoche has the actual relics of Kyabje Zong Rinpoche which I got from Zong Ladrang.

Myself with His Eminence Kensur Rinpoche Jetsun Jampa Yeshe, who kindly blessed my statue of His Holiness Kyabje Zong Rinpoche

After that was all done, then I was very fortunate because the abbot of the monastery, Khen Rinpoche Jetsun Jampa Yeshe Pelsangpo, who was the abbot at the time, did a blessing ceremony and blessed my Zong Rinpoche statue with the mantras and relics inside, and he also blessed my beautiful thangka. And so I’ve had these beautiful things with me for 31 years now and it’s part of my very important spiritual items which I hope when I pass away, we can create some kind of museum here or some area here where people can go and continue to receive blessings.

Anyways, that’s how I made my Kyabje Zong Rinpoche statue and I’ve had pictures taken of him from different angles so you can see and all that. I thought I’d share that little story with you.

But the bottom line is this – without the Guru, there is no Dharma. Without the Guru, there is no Buddha. Without the Guru, there is no Dharma, there is no Buddha, there is no Sangha. There is no Buddha, Dharma and Sangha without the Guru. Without the Guru, we would never hear the name ‘Buddha’; without the Guru, we would never know what the Dharma is and we can never be a Sangha, we can never practise, we can never become enlightened. Without the Guru, even the opportunity or even knowing what the opportunity of enlightenment is, would never reach our ears.

Therefore from now and until enlightenment, I take refuge in my Guru. My Guru is the synthesis of all the great Gurus, back to Shakyamuni Buddha. My Guru is all the synthesis of all the Dharma, both Sutra and Tantra. My Guru is the synthesis of all the Buddhas, bodhisattvas and deities. My Guru is all the dakas, dakinis, shravakas and all the Dharma protectors and so on and so forth, and all the enlightened beings.

So therefore the statue of my Guru and the thangka of my Guru represents the full path and scope to enlightenment, and the opportunity afforded to me to traverse that path because I was able to meet my Guru. And that is the reason I created the statue of Kyabje Zong Rinpoche and this thangka.

Thank you,
Tsem Rinpoche

For more information about His Holiness the incomparable Kyabje Zong Rinpoche, you can read all of these blog posts that I have composed about him: https://www.tsemrinpoche.com/tsem-tulku-rinpoche/category/kyabje-zong-rinpoche

I was ordained in 1987 by His Holiness the Dalai Lama but I actually requested His Holiness for ordination back in New Jersey, USA. I was fortunate that someone was able to capture this moment on film: https://www.tsemrinpoche.com/?p=19322

Photos of my Kyabje Zong Rinpoche statue

Do enjoy and be blessed by this images of His Holiness Kyabje Zong Rinpoche. I was very fortunate to have been introduced to an artist who was able to make such a complete image of my root Guru. It was with me the very first time I arrived in Gaden Shartse Monastery in South India.

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