The Gyalwang Drukpa

My beloved father, commonly known as Zhichen Bairochana. Nowadays people call him Bairo Rinpoche, the 36th incarnation of the Lotsawa Vairochana. Lotsawa Vairochana was a renowned enlightened translator and he made all the Dharma teachings of three different Yanas available in Tibet through his enlightened skills, translating them into Tibetan language. My father's main seat or monastery is Zhichen Kharmar Sangag Tangye Ling in Gulok, one of the major branches of Kathog Dorje Dhan in eastern Tibet. Zhichen has its own group of over 20 branch monasteries throughout the region.

My father came out of his area, Gulok, in eastern Tibet in about early 1958 with out telling other people the truth where he was heading to, because people did not want him to leave them. But my father said he could foresee that there was not much point in continuing looking after all the affaires of monasteries and people back in Tibet. So he took his liberty and made his journey by way of Lhasa and down to the Bhutanese border from Lhodrak in the south of Tibet, where my mother was from. They met there for the first time when my mother was nineteen years old and they met again in a sacred place of Guru Padmasambhava known as Beyul (Hidden valley) on the Tibet and Bhutanese border after three years. They were in a retreat for a couple of years there. My birth took place when they were on their pilgrimage in India.

My father is a spiritual master for those who need him as guidance on their spiritual path of life. For me, it has been a great gift being his only son. I love him not only in relationship to him as a father but also as a father but also as a companion for every moment of my life. I have never felt lonely in my life despite having gone through a lot of difficulties in my younger days, and I now understand that it was him who gave me the strength to pass through all the difficult periods. I do not think anyone of us could possibly think of being as good a father as he was and is to me! When I was a child, he used to come up with lots of attractive toys that were invented by him out of the parts of broken watches, radios, tape recorders, etc. I never liked those other commercial toys. I found homemade toys were much more interesting than those expensive electronic toys. When I was a bit older, he had boundless energy and patience to play, jump and run after footballs, shuttlecocks, Frisbees and the like for hours with me. I also remember him making approximately one kilometer of winding road on a big hill next to our home and pushing me in a three-wheeler bicycle all day long up and down, pretending to be going up to see my parents and coming down with them back home to where I was. He would not give up entertaining me even on the rainy days. It seemed much harder for him to push me on the slippery muddy surface. So he would lift both me and the cycle up in his arm from behind and take me on the same journey, up and down imaginary hills, and make lots of noise to imitate the 4-wheel drive struggling with a steep muddy off-road climb. After becoming more of a man, I always liked horses and he often caught wild, unattended horses from the mountains for me to see and touch, and sometimes he even put me on the back of them if they were not too big and ferocious. He finally bought one for me to ride on. My father has given me virtually everything that I want in this world. It is such an honor to have not only a holy but a loving father like him and I feel more honored and content to realize the fact of him being such a nice father.