Drupon Khen Rinpoche
As a child, Drupon Khen Rinpoche Karma Lhabu was always very concerned for others and especially protective of animals.
At the age of seven, he started to receive training at Tsabtsa monastery, learning the rituals and procedures for many of the Vajrayana practices. At fourteen, Rinpoche went forth and took novice ordination from Khenpo Palga.
A deep renunciation toward the mundane preoccupations of everyday life filled his heart when he was around seventeen years old, and so he decided to go to retreat. He was given the opportunity to enter one of Tsabtsa Monastery’s retreat centres, in which a cycle of retreat was due to start when he was eighteen.
Being eager and unable to wait, Rinpoche went to practise in a hut at the edge of the retreat centre’s boundary. Here he received teachings from the retreat master, Drupon Rinpoche Karma Sherab, and from Lama Senge, and he practised the preliminaries before entering the retreat centre proper a year later.
These two lamas were exceptional yogi meditators who had spent decades in solitary mountain retreats. They took a special interest in Rinpoche, this young and diligent monk who soaked up everything they taught. Drupon Rinpoche Karma Sherab gave the instructions to Rinpoche and the other lamas for the formal retreat practices, and Lama Senge would meet with Rinpoche often, answering his questions and offering words of advice. Through their conversations, Rinpoche came to fully understand meditation and the mind, making Lama Senge his root lama. His rapid development of meditative understanding, experience and realisation impressed his lamas greatly, such that they composed songs of praise and joy about their beloved heart son.
Although he was still young, the abbot of Tsabtsa Monastery, Drubgen Rinpoche, together with these lamas, appointed Rinpoche as the retreat master for the next cycle of retreat. The monastery decided that the retreat centre should follow the more traditional Karma Kamtsang retreat programme, so they sent Rinpoche to Drupon Rinpoche Yeshe Junge of Palpung to receive the necessary transmissions.
After his lamas had passed into nirvana, Rinpoche went to receive teachings from the revered Khenpo Jigme Puntsok Rinpoche, from the Dzogchen guardian, Khenpo Munsel, the highly learned Khenpo Pentse, Adzom Drukpa Rinpoche, the Milarepa-like Khenpo Choying Kunkhyab, Khenchen Tsultrim Lodro, Khenchen Chime Rigzin, and Khenchen Sherab Zangpo, to name a few.
Having received such a wealth of teachings, Rinpoche was then invited to teach at Thrangu Vajra Vidya Institute in Varanasi. There, he gave teachings on the treatises to the shedra students. Later, Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche requested Drupon Rinpoche to be the retreat master for Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre, a newly built retreat centre at a Milarepa pilgrimage site near Bhaktapur, Nepal.
He has also taught in the Thrangu Monastery Shedra (a Buddhist college) and in the nunnery, Thrangu Tara Abbey.
To date, there have been ten cycles (with between 8 and 12 lamas in each cycle) of retreat at Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre. In 2008, at Lama Katen’s suggestion, Rinpoche was invited to Kagyu Samye Ling monastery in the UK. Akong Rinpoche and Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche requested that Rinpoche devise and teach a part-time shedra course at the monastery and serve as the retreat master for the retreat centres on the Isle of Arran and Holy Isle. To date, he has been the retreat master for one four-year cycle of retreat and presided over a six-year shedra programme. Rinpoche continues to guide the retreats and gives teachings in Samye Ling annually.
In 2015, Rinpoche founded the Marpa Translation Society with the noble aspiration to make many untranslated Buddhist teachings accessible and affordable to those who genuinely seek them. To this end, Rinpoche has been training translators and offering guidance to those who can already translate. Rinpoche often reminds the translators that the dharma is more than just words, and if their translations are to carry the feeling and blessing of dharma, it is imperative that, first and foremost, they themselves become true dharma practitioners.
On a trip to Zimbabwe in 2017, a group of devoted Buddhists from the Democratic Republic of Congo travelled to see Drupon Khen Rinpoche to receive his teaching and to request his spiritual guidance for their community. They subsequently sent five of their children, three boys and two girls, to study with Rinpoche in Nepal. In 2024, he ordained a further 40 monks, founded Drolung Fondation Bouddhiste Internationale and began the construction of a monastery for them.
Drupon Khen Rinpoche spends most of his time training practitioners at Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre in Nepal. It currently supports a community of around 280 retreatants, young and old, from over 25 different countries. Rinpoche devised a six-year retreat programme especially for the international students. This consists of a year devoted to each of the following practices: the Great Seal preliminaries, mind training, Vajra Being (Vajrasattva), calm-abiding meditation, and two years on insight meditation.
With deep concern for the Vajrayana teachings, he also devised a 21-year study and practice programme, with 10 years devoted to sutra studies and 11 to tantra studies and practice. For the younger monks and nuns, a preliminary 5 years of basic education precedes the 21-year programme, making a 26-year programme.
Rinpoche now limits his time abroad to two months a year because he feels it is more beneficial to stay in one place to train a dedicated group of students. During this time abroad, he regularly visits the UK, Europe, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and also travels to Southern Africa and North America.
Since 2018, at the request of Thrangu Shedra, Rinpoche has also spent several days each month at Namo Buddha, teaching and offering advice to all the Shedra khenpos and students.
In 2023, Drupon Khen Rinpoche founded the Thrangu Sekhar Institute of Meditation, a collaboration between Namo Buddha Meditation and Educational Centre and Lumbini University. The Institute offers a four-year BA course in Buddhist Mind Training, the curriculum for which Rinpoche formulated himself.
Written by Kunga
14.05.2018
(Updated 3.12.2025)
For more information please visit druponrinpoche.org