The Treasury of Lives

Delok Tenzin Chodron was an eighteenth-century delok—someone who journeys to the realms beyond death and returns to tell about it.

Lhachik Dembu was a twelfth-century practitioner from the Yarlung Valley. She is best known for her relatively brief but eventful relationship with the Kagyu lineage master Rechungpa. While the veracity of her life story is questionable in many regards, her story sheds light on the role of women and attitudes about them in Tibetan tantric Buddhist communities from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries when different versions of her story were composed.  

Jangsem Dawa Gyeltsen was an important figure in the transmission lineages of the deities Hayagrīva and Avalokiteśvara, and in the dissemination of the Avalokiteśvara fasting ritual or nyung-ne. A great visionary who apparently became quite wealthy later in life, Dawa Gyeltsen is known principally as a meditator, healer, miracle worker, and teacher of bodhicitta.