Namtrul Jigme Phuntsok (Author) - Inseparable across Lifetimes: The Lives and Love Letters of the Tibetan Visionaries Namtrul Rinpoche and Khandro Tare Lhamo

I N 2004, I ventured to the grasslands of Golok in eastern Tibet for the first time, two years after Khandro Tre Lhamo passed away. Having read her biography in Tibetan, I hoped to meet her husband Namtrul Rinpoche and request a copy of their complete corpus of writings and revelations. This aspiration took me to Nyenlung Monastery, the couples teaching seat in a bucolic valley amid rolling hills outside Serta in Sichuan province. In our initial meeting, Namtrul Rinpoche seemed pleased that I wanted to do research on Tre Lhamo and translate their biographies. Without hesitation, he gave his blessings to the project.

On that occasion, Namtrul Rinpoche offered me a copy of their corpus in twelve volumes and a separate volume containing their letters, exchanged between 1978 and 1980, which had recently been published as a facsimile edition. Soon thereafter, I realized the significance of their correspondence, which chronicles the evolution of a Buddhist tantric partnership in contemporary times and illuminates a key historical transition as Tibetans in China emerged from the devastation of the Cultural Revolution. With the help of Tibetan interlocutors, I began to explore the various poetic and folk song styles contained in the letters, composed almost entirely in verse, and to appreciate the rich set of resources from Buddhist tantra and Tibetan lore that this couple drew on to imagine their future together.

As the correspondence unfolds, it has a surprisingly playful and direct quality, showing the human side of a tantric partnership. While geared toward the revelation of esoteric teachings and practices, the courtship between Tre Lhamo and Namtrul Rinpoche was also full of affection. Without sources like these, we might think that Buddhist masters are somehow above ordinary longings and emotions, that enlightenment magically lifts them out of the mire of their historical circumstances, or that teachings on the ultimate nature of reality diminish the importance of personal relationships and connections that turn out to be at the very heart of Buddhist communities. The lives and letters of Tre Lhamo and Namtrul Rinpoche provide a poignant example of how the visionary and human aspects of Tibetan Buddhism are interwoven. In this case, their partnership was integral to their overall mission to heal the damage of the Maoist period following the Chinese Communist takeover of Tibetan areas and to restore Buddhist institutions, teachings, and practices in the region of Golok.

Rarely do we hear about love in a tantric partnership and especially about an older female Buddhist master initiating a consort relationship with a younger male lama. I found it so refreshing to read, in their own words, about the mutuality of affection and enduring bond between Tre Lhamo and Namtrul Rinpoche. This was no casual liaison, but a committed relationship in which the two traveled and taught, side by side on elevated thrones, during the 1980s and 1990s. This is what has inspired me for more than a decade to continue with researching, writing on, and translating materials by and about this visionary Buddhist couple. Now, more than ever, it feels important to explore an example of a consort relationship in which both partners were respected and indeed revered.