HH the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa,
Rangjung Rikpé Dorjé
The Sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, Rangjung Rikpé
Dorjé, was born in the kingdom of Dé-gé, in eastern
Tibet, in 1923, as the son of a noble family called A-toop. Having received
predictions that she would bear a great bodhisattva son, his mother
had gone to stay in a holy cave, once used by Guru Rinpoche, where she
waited to give birth. It is said that, at one point at the very end
of the pregnancy, the future Karmapa disappeared entirely from his mother's
womb for a whole day. He was to do many such things in his life which
would confound materialists and doctors, as witnessed by the physicians
in the Zion, Illinois hospital, where he eventually died. The day of
his birth, his mother returned to normal pregnancy size and soon gave
birth to him. Those present heard him say to his mother that he would
be leaving. Water in offering bowls there turned to milk. Realising
that she had indeed given birth to a great bodhisattva, she pretended
to have had a daughter, to protect the child through secrecy.
The Eleventh Tai Situpa, one of the most eminent lamas
of the Kagyu tradition, soon recognised the A-toop child as being the
new Gyalwa Karmapa and sought confirmation from HH the Dalai Lama. The
details of the birth coincided properly with those of a prediction letter
entrusted by the Fifteenth Karmapa to his attendant. Meanwhile, the
child received his first ordination and bodhisattva vows from the Tai
Situpa and from Palpung Kongtrul Rinpoche: his predecessor's two foremost
disciples. Eventually, the Dalai Lama gave his aknowledgement. The boy
was eight years old and still residing in the Dé-gé kingdom,
when he received the Vajra Crown and ceremonial robes of the Karmapa,
brought to him from Tsurphu. He visited Palpung monastery, stopping
to bless the famous De-ge monastic printing works on the way, and was
enthroned there, as the Sixteenth Karmapa, Rangjung Rikpé Dorjé, by
Palpung's chief abbot, the Tai Situpa, who shortly afterwards accompanied
him on the long journey to the seat of the Karmapas at Tsurphu, in central
Tibet, where the new incarnation was greeted by Gyaltsab Rinpoche, Palpung
Kongtrul and Pawo Rinpoche.
Tsurphu is close to Lhasa. Soon after his arrival, the
Karmapa was received by the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, who performed the
"hair-cutting" ceremony. While so doing, the Dalai Lama had a vision
of the celestial bodhisattva crown on the Karmapa's head. After this
ceremony, the Karmapa was given a second enthronement, at Tsurphu, by
the Tai Situpa and the Head of the Drukpa Kagyu school. He then studied
for some years under Gongkar Rinpoche, an extremely erudite scholar
who had mastered the entire tripitaka and who recorded several stories
of former lifes told to him by the young Karmapa. It was a great loss
that these stories remained with him in Tibet at the time of the troubles.
He never escaped and the records were lost.
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