Mipham and the White Lotus

Some teachers are remembered for one great deed. Jamgön Ju Mipham Gyatso, a monk of eastern Tibet who lived from 1846 to 1912, is remembered for hundreds of them, nearly all made of words. Among them is a short book called Pema Karpo, "White Lotus": his explanation of the Seven-Line Prayer.

Jamgön is an honorific for a scholar thought to embody wisdom itself. Mipham was his name, and Ju was his family's clan.

A boy from Derge

He was born in 1846 in Derge, a kingdom in Kham, the far east of Tibet. His father, Gönpo Dargye, belonged to the Ju clan, which tradition says descends from deities of light. His mother, Singchung, was the daughter of a Derge minister.

At about six he memorized a long text on the Buddhist vows. By ten, his biographers say, he read and wrote without hindrance and was composing short texts of his own. Some traditional scholars even say he wrote his famous poem Beacon of Certainty at seven, though historians are more careful.

At twelve he became a novice monk at Ju Mohor, a branch of the great Nyingma monastery of Shechen. There he became known as the little scholar-monk.

Eighteen months with Manjushri

Manjushri is the bodhisattva of wisdom, one who has vowed to awaken for the sake of all beings. He is pictured holding a flaming sword that cuts through confusion and a book of the Buddha's teaching on wisdom.

At about fifteen, Mipham went into retreat on Manjushri for a year and a half at a hermitage in Junyung. He later told some of his students that from then on he could understand any text he read. Manjushri stayed at the center of his practice all his life, and many of his writings open with a verse of praise to him.

Wars, roads and teachers

Then war came to Derge, and around 1859 the young monk left with his uncle for Golok. From there he went on pilgrimage to Lhasa and spent a month at Ganden, a great Geluk monastery famous for its debate.

One story: a Geluk teacher began explaining a difficult Indian text on the Middle Way. Mipham asked only to hear it read once, then explained it himself from start to finish. The teacher admitted, it is said, that he had not a fraction of this young man's intellect.

In Kham he met two teachers who shaped his life. The first was Patrul Rinpoche, the wandering master whose own story is on this site. Patrul taught him Shantideva's Way of the Bodhisattva in only five days, and Mipham understood it so fully that he later wrote a celebrated commentary on its chapter on wisdom.

Years later someone asked Patrul which of them was more learned. About even in the sutras, Patrul answered, but in the tantras Mipham was far greater.

Mipham's main teacher was Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo of Dzongsar Monastery. Mipham served him in every way. It is said he gave his teacher everything he owned seven times, waited on him like an ordinary attendant, and offered him years of practice.

Once, Khyentse seated Mipham on a high throne before volumes of scripture, made offerings to him, and entrusted the teachings to his care. He was to keep them alive by explaining, debating and writing. That day Khyentse gave him a new name.

With Jamgön Kongtrul, the two became known as the three Jamgöns of Kham, at the heart of the Rimé movement, a renewal that honored teachings from every Tibetan school.

A life of writing

Mipham wrote on almost everything: philosophy, medicine, astrology, poetry, art, the epic of King Gesar, and the deepest Nyingma teachings. More than three hundred of his Dharma works survive, filling over thirty volumes.

He wrote partly out of worry for his own tradition. He feared its teachings were becoming "like a painted butter lamp" (Treasury of Lives, Douglas Duckworth): lovely to look at, but giving no light. So he set out the Nyingma view clearly and defended it in serious, often friendly debate with scholars of other schools.

The White Tigress's Lair

Most of his books, his colophons suggest, were written in the breaks between retreats. Treasury of Lives says he spent thirteen years in retreat at Karmo Taktsang, "the White Tigress's Lair," a cliff hermitage northeast of Dzongsar, probably in the 1870s and 1880s. Tradition says Guru Rinpoche himself meditated there and hid treasures in the rock.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche writes that in that solitary place a dakini, a female wisdom being, appeared to Mipham and sang him the Seven-Line Prayer in a beautiful melody. From that meeting came A Shower of Blessings, his much-loved practice of the prayer. How the dakinis first gave the prayer to the world is told in The Dakini and the Origin of the Seven-Line Prayer.

After one retreat, Mipham told Khyentse how hard he had worked to perfect both study and meditation. His teacher laughed. The great master Longchenpa, he said, taught simply to rest naturally. Doing that, he had never seen the face of mind as something with rosy cheeks, yet if he died right now he would have no fear at all. Mipham took it as a teaching for life.

The White Lotus

The Seven-Line Prayer is the short invocation of Guru Rinpoche, Padmasambhava, that Nyingma practitioners recite more than any other. Mipham's explanation of it is White Lotus.

Its colophon, the closing note in which an author tells how a text came to be, holds a quiet story. As the Tibetan text reads, Mipham first wrote it in his twenty-fifth year, the Iron Horse year of 1870. Something stirred him, it says, and the hidden meanings of the prayer rose in his mind all at once. He finished writing them down within the month, and Khyentse Wangpo praised the work.

Mipham meant to polish its youthful wording. Then the draft was lost.

Here an attendant enters the story: Sherab Ösel, who had served him for many years and whose faith in Guru Rinpoche was unshakable. The colophon says he had recited the seven lines 1,300,000 times. He tracked down the old draft himself and asked Mipham again and again, with offerings, to finish it and to explain the prayer on every level.

Mipham agreed, out of care for him and for all who follow Guru Rinpoche, and completed the revised White Lotus in the sixth Tibetan month of the Iron Ox year, 1901, in a small room at Shri Singha, the college of Dzogchen Monastery. A further note records a few additions in 1910.

Other dates are sometimes given for the work, but the colophon names 1870 and 1901, and Rigpa Wiki's timeline agrees on 1901.

Petals, honey and fragrance

White Lotus opens with the story of how the prayer first came into the world. Then it goes through the seven lines, first in their outer sense, as the story of Guru Rinpoche's life. After that, as teachers present it, it opens their hidden meanings and further levels, showing the short prayer as a whole path.

Those deeper meanings are given by a qualified teacher, in person, and this page does not try to explain them. If you feel drawn to them, the Find a Teacher page is a good place to begin.

Mipham's closing words describe the book with an image fit for its name. Like a lotus, it has petals, its words, laid out clearly and simply; honey, its hidden meaning; and fragrance, the blessing it carries for practice. His English translators, the Padmakara Translation Group, note that his words suggest a gongter, a "mind treasure" that rises from within rather than being composed. In the same verses he credits the blessing of Manjushri.

The book has been treasured ever since. Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö wrote dedication verses for it, calling it "the treasure mine of the vajra words' hidden meaning" (trans. Adam Pearcey, Lotsawa House). Teachers still explain the prayer from it today.

Last years

Mipham's last years were not easy. In verses written near the end, he said he had borne a severe illness for seventeen years and had stayed on only for the sake of others.

Shortly before he died, Rigpa Wiki records, he spoke openly to his attendant Lama Ösel. He was not an ordinary person, he said, but a bodhisattva born through his own aspiration, and he would not need to take birth in this troubled world again.

He passed away in 1912 at his hermitage at Ju, north of Dzogchen Monastery. Rigpa Wiki's timeline gives the day as the twenty-ninth of the fourth Tibetan month, the same date it gives for his birth. The sources used here describe no wonders at his passing, so none are told.

Devotion did not end there. Several children were later recognized as his rebirth. And not long before, he had blessed a little boy and given him a name. That boy grew up to be Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, who later wrote Mipham's life story.

A lotus left open

A scholar's commentary might have stayed among scholars. Mipham finished his explanation for a devoted attendant and left it for everyone who says these seven lines. At its heart is still the simplest act: asking Guru Rinpoche to come.