Translating for Orgyen Tobgyal Rinpoche

How did you come to translate for OT Rinpoche?

I found myself translating for Rinpoche before I fully understood what was going on. I discovered Tibetan Buddhism while at university in Paris. I was in my early twenties—a period of intense curiosity. I wasn’t so much wondering about the “meaning of life,” but just trying to figure out what to do with myself. I experimented with different areas of learning, arts, sports, and so on, but I always reached a sense of limitation, a nagging feeling that it wasn’t it. Meditation was on the list, so I went to Sogyal Rinpoche’s Rigpa center in Paris to learn how to meditate. Along with meditation, they introduced some Buddhist ideas. These seemed interesting, so I soon decided to learn Tibetan.

After 2 years of Tibetan studies at inalco in Paris I headed East, where I spent a short time studying at Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche’s Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Nepal. My main purpose in traveling to Asia was for language immersion and to learn debate. This led me from Kathmandu to Bir, in Himachal Pradesh, India, a settlement of Tibetans who by and large didn’t speak any English. It was also the home of Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche and Orgyen Tobgyal Rinpoche, whom I had met 2 summers before at Sogyal Rinpoche’s retreat center Lerab Ling in France.

In Bir I studied at the Dzongsar Shedra, with the generous sponsorship of Sogyal Rinpoche. In return, I had to ask OT Rinpoche for divinations on his behalf. My repeated visits enabled me to get to know this traditional-looking yet unconventional, sagacious Tibetan master, rough on the outside yet incredibly generous and kind on the inside. Years later I realized that in fact it hadn’t been just a messenger job: I was also being tested, my mind X-rayed as OT Rinpoche began his invisible, patient, shaping work. Besides instilling the dharma in me, he was preparing me to one day translate for him, before the thought had even occurred to me.

OT Rinpoche was raised in a traditional Tibetan family of lamas and practitioners—his father was the Third Neten Chokling Rinpoche. They were among the first Tibetans to settle in Bir. To what extent have his family and their way of being influenced OT Rinpoche’s own dharma activities?

OT Rinpoche and his family arrived in Bir in 1966, when he was 15. Before the troubles began in Tibet, a protector deity of Neten Chokling Rinpoche told him that he should go on pilgrimage and leave Tibet—if he did, the protector would provide him with a good place to make a new home. So, in 1954 Neten Chokling and his party left his monastery in Eastern Tibet, visited the sacred places of Central Tibet, and in 1958, entered Sikkim. Altogether, they spent over 10 years on the road in Sikkim, Bhutan, and India, all the while maintaining their spiritual life consisting of retreats, drupchens, and other practices. When they reached Bir, the protector indicated that was where they should settle. Arnaud Desjardins filmed them there in 1967,[i] shortly after they arrived.

The ideal of the yogin-practitioner that his parents, uncles, aunts, and other relatives and friends espoused influenced OT Rinpoche so profoundly that it became the very fabric of his life. Rather than teaching extensively and establishing dharma centers around the world, he considers his only activities to have been taking care of his father’s new monastery in Bir following the latter’s premature death in 1973, and maintaining the Nyingma tradition of drupchens so dear to Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. In terms of traveling abroad, he accompanied Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche to Europe and America on several occasions between 1975 and 1991. In the 1990s, he began to visit France on an annual basis, often with over 30 monks, to hold drupchens at the dharma centers established by Tulku Pema Wangyal and Sogyal Rinpoche. He has never traveled for the purpose of taking care of dharma centers and a sangha; his dharma trips have always been simply in service of his vajra siblings.

During the drupchens in France, OT Rinpoche would give talks to inspire the practitioners and instruct them in the practices. Over the years, Rinpoche has spoken mostly about Vajrayana practice. He has repeatedly said that he has no wish to teach, and that holding pujas is his main way of contributing to the dharma. He explains that the only reason he gives dharma talks at the Rigpa centers is to support Sogyal Rinpoche’s efforts to bring the dharma to the West, as he considers him to have been an heir of Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö, his own root teacher. Once his summer trips to Europe are over, OT Rinpoche goes back to his monastery in India, where he engineers yet more drupchens.

Rinpoche is passionate about preserving the authenticity of Tibetan Buddhism and helping people with their dharma practice. With his uncanny intelligence and idiosyncratic way of thinking, he gives unique teachings that many dharma practitioners are keen to consult over and over again.

Can you share some more examples of OT Rinpoche’s unique style?

Some teachers take their audience step-by-step from their listeners’ own standpoint to a profound dharma understanding that challenges our ordinary views. OT Rinpoche, on the other hand, starts with the perplexing or—his favorite—the unacceptable. No sugar coating, no massaging: Rinpoche is a puncher. He shocks you with a statement, and then explains with dharmic wisdom and stories of the great masters. His talks are very faithful to the traditional teachings, their structure and logic, as are the teachings of all the great masters.

When I began to translate for him, some friends suggested I ask Rinpoche for a copy of his notes, or at least to tell me what he was going to say and what references I should consult beforehand, what material I should have in front of me. I did it once and he really didn’t like the idea! I assumed then that it was because he was teaching spontaneously, but over the years I discovered that he carefully prepares his talks, tailoring them according to the time available, choosing what to say, what to skip, and what to simply allude to. Owing to his uncanny memory, he has no need of notes.

So—the translator enters the arena without any preparation, except his general dharma knowledge and experience. This is deliberate on Rinpoche’s part. Rinpoche also really doesn’t like to repeat himself. How did a young Frenchman with an approximative command of English, a limited understanding of Tibetan, and almost no dharma knowledge, and, above all, who was petrified in front of a crowd end up in my position? When Rinpoche noticed that my translation was better in private than in public, he suggested I wear a Spiderman mask on stage so that I wouldn’t see the audience. Sogyal Rinpoche saved me on that occasion. He had also noticed the issue, and advised me: “If you translate for him, embody him! Visualize yourself as OT.” At the next teaching, I did as he had suggested. It was an incredibly freeing moment and I have never had stage fright since.

How did the idea to publish OT Rinpoche’s talks come about?

At the end of 2012, Rinpoche called me to Bir to translate for Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche’s transmission of the Damngak Dzö [Treasury of Instructions]. I was experiencing financial difficulties at the time and was preoccupied with my next “career move,” thinking what could be the best translation project for my CV, how to generate income, how to woo sponsors and others. But then OT Rinpoche gave me a priceless piece of advice. One day, as I was walking up to him with some question or other, he stopped me in my tracks with a bark: “And you think you are a translator!” As always in those moments, the ego goes into panic mode: “Do you mean I am arrogant, Rinpoche?” As if I wasn’t there, he had already turned back to the offerings he was setting up. At long last he replied, “I guess ego is always involved. My point is that you should rather think of yourself as a yogi, a practitioner.” I did as Rinpoche instructed, and as a result, the way I approached my life choices drastically changed.

After the Damngak Dzö I translated two sutras for 84000, The Jewel Mine and The Questions of Brahmavisheshachintin, while trying to fundraise for the translation of Tertön Sogyal’s biography, which OT Rinpoche had suggested I work on. I wasn’t very successful in fundraising, to say the least. Then one day, someone I had approached told me: “I don’t care much about Tertön Sogyal’s life; what we want is OTR!”

I really liked the idea of going back to the talks I had translated orally for OT Rinpoche and correcting my numerous mistakes, omissions, and additions. I wanted to do better justice to Rinpoche’s amazing teachings and to publish those translated by others. Janine Schulz agreed to edit my drafts into good English and Philip Philippou to help with editing; Eszter Hoffmann would assist with setting up the website, Sam Horwood with the design, and Anette Cyran with the transcripts. We decided to make all Rinpoche’s most relevant teachings available online on a dedicated website. Books take a long time to produce and require a format that doesn’t particularly lend itself to Rinpoche’s way of teaching; he tends to give short, independent talks that can be published immediately online. A website also has the undeniable advantage—from a dharma point of view—of allowing us to offer the teachings for free.

We set up the website and published the first talk in May 2015. After a few publications, the sponsor backed out and I was again left in a tricky financial situation. A few months later, thanks to Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche’s kindness, Khyentse Foundation offered to support the website and the project was saved.

I have worked on OT Rinpoche’s teachings ever since, at first publishing at a pace of roughly one a month. We have now published more than 70 talks and teachings on the website, as well as two books that contain teachings by Rinpoche: Sublime Lady of Immortality and Gesar: Tantric Practices of the Tibetan Warrior King, which features a lengthy presentation by Rinpoche on how to approach the practice of the tantric deity Gesar. The website has also become a platform that Rinpoche sometimes uses himself for posting either messages or talks.

Besides working on OT Rinpoche’s teachings, I also translate whatever sadhanas, drupchen texts, and related instructions that Rinpoche suggests so that people can join the group practices he organizes. Due to their tantric nature, however, I rarely publish them online.

What’s next?

After talking about Rinpoche, when I hear this question I’m reminded how Tibetans think that talking about one’s project will attract obstacles. Besides, OT Rinpoche, for whom the ideal way to live is as a yogi, often says he doesn’t know what he’ll do beyond the next 2 or 3 days; he is only concerned with the present and with the immediate future—the rest is just distraction.

Read OT Rinpoche’s talks on the ALL—OTR website!

See Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche’s message asking us to practice for OT Rinpoche’s wellbeing and longevity.

[i] Arnaud Desjardins, Himalaya, Terre De Sérénité, “1-Le Lac Des Yogis” 4:10–12:05.

Featured image above: Orgyen Tobyal Rinpoche with Gyurmé Avertin at Lerab Ling, France, 2018. Photo by Philip Philippou.