Samlingpa

A man named Phugpa Gon (phug pa mgon) was working as a servant in Tanag (rta nag) when he decided to go to Dingri (ding ri) to take up the life of a yogi. There he met a woman named Darma Cham (dar ma lcam) who gave birth to the son who, much later on in his life, would be known as Samlingpa.

The boy spent his childhood studying the usual subjects. At age twenty-one he was ordained by Chal Lotsawa Chozang (dpyal lo tsA ba chos bzang), later serving as his teaching assistant. At the same time he studied and practiced under many of the teachers of his day. Chal Lotsawa died in 1216. It was in Upper Nyang (myang stod), at Sertreng (ser phreng) Monastery, while receiving teachings from an unnamed Kagyu master, that the young man attained the realization of Mahamudra. He might be considered a member of the lineage of Gangpa Rinchen Ozer (gangs pa rin chen 'od zer), who was in his turn a disciple of the First Karmapa, Dusum Khyenpa (kar+ma pa 01 dus gsum mkhyen pa), but he also followed the famous hermit Kodrakpa (ko brag pa).

Late in life he earned the name Samlinpa after he founded a monastery in the Lower Nyang valley, in the general vicinity of the city of Gyantse, called Samling (bsam gling), and it is for this that he is best known to posterity. Not much else seems to be known about the last decades of his long life, except that he served as the ordinator, in about 1240, of Orgyenpa Rinchen Pel (o rgyan pa rin chen dpal).

Sources

Roerich, George, trans. 1996. The Blue Annals. 2nd ed. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, pp. 518-9.

Dan Martin
August 2008