The life and teachings of Saljey Rinpoche.
Saljey Rinpoche was born in Tibet.
When he was young, he did a three-year retreat
and he had a lot of great masters.
Afterwards, he went to Palpung Monastery in Tibet,
the second largest monastery in the Karma Kagyu tradition in Tibet.
He studied there with His Eminence Tai Situ Pema Wangchuk Gyalpo
and the second Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche,
and with Beru Khyentse Rinpoche.
He studied under many great masters.
He studied Buddhist philosophy and special vajrayana tantric texts.
And after that, he spent a lot of time in retreat.
Almost half of his life was spent in retreat.
He was really a great master.
Normally, he was holding a prayer wheel in his right hand
and holding a mala in his left hand.
"Om Mani Padme Hum. Om Mani Padme Hum."
When I was thirteen years old, I moved to…
No, when I was eleven years old, I moved to Sherab Ling in India.
And he was there. Saljey Rinpoche was there,
and my father introduced me to him.
My father also asked me to receive teachings from Saljey Rinpoche.
They knew each other and Saljey Rinpoche was very happy.
He gave me a lot of teachings even before the three-year retreat.
Normally, as I mentioned, Saljey Rinpoche was using
a prayer wheel and mala, and often fell asleep, you know.
Many people said, "Oh, Saljey Rinpoche is a great master!"
But when you looked at him, it just looked like he loves to sleep.
He was falling asleep all the time.
But actually there is what we call a special practice of "luminosity"
and he was doing that.
When he was falling asleep, whatever questions we asked, he would hear.
Sometimes we had a lot of questions.
Like with me, you know,
sometimes I had some questions, and long stories.
At first he would say, "OK, OK. Hmm… yeah, yeah."
If there was a new student, they often thought,
"Oh! The master has already fallen asleep.
"Shh… we have to go out."
But for us, we didn't care.
We continued to ask our questions. Question number 1, 2, 3, 4.
After we had finished all of our questions,
he woke up and gave us all the answers very clearly.
Sometimes when we asked questions during his sleep,
the answers were clearer than those he gave in his waking state.
One time, we were receiving the third Karmapa's prayer,
the Mahamudra Lineage Prayer.
He was giving these teachings for a few weeks.
And he said,
"Oh, maybe I will finish tomorrow, or maybe the day after tomorrow."
The next day, he said, "I will finish today."
And we hadn't prepared anything, so we said, "OK, thank you!"
And he finished the teaching and said,
"This is the end of the teaching. We should pray."
There's one long prayer called
"Sangcho Monlam — The Prayer of Noble Conduct."
We tried do that prayer, but we didn't have any texts.
Actually we had to memorize this prayer.
I had already memorized it when I was 8 or 9 years old.
Something like that.
I thought I knew it OK, you know. At this time, I was 12 years old.
I thought, "It's OK."
We prayed, and in the middle of the prayer we got lost.
There were five of us.
We were lost, but we kept quiet and looked at each other.
Saljey Rinpoche had already fallen asleep before that, you know.
Then he woke up, and continued the prayer at the next sentence,
and then he fell asleep again.
And his main topic of teaching was about Mahamudra.
Meditation on Mahamudra.
It was very clear, very profound, and simple, also.
Clear, profound, and simple. Very nice!
When I was 13 years old, I joined a three-year retreat,
and he was my main teacher during the three-year retreat.
He gave me all the teachings about Mahamudra
and the Six Yogas of Naropa.
And then all the deity practices, like Chakrasamvara,
Vajrayogini,
and Red Arya Avalokiteshvara.
All these things are completed during the three-year retreat.
At the end of my retreat, when I was almost finished -
there were maybe three or four months left —
he came to the retreat and said, "I'm going to Nepal,
"and I very much appreciate all of your practice.
"So now I'm going to say goodbye. And I really rejoice
"in your practice and appreciate what you have done."
He said goodbye, and we thought, "Why?"
The feeling was almost like, "I'm not going to see you again."
And he gave us all of his advice.
He went to Nepal, and died in Kathmandu.
OK.