Her Eminence Sakya Jetsun Chimey Luding Rinpoche (Jetsun Kushok) was born into the Dolma Podrang or Tara Palace of the Sakya Khon family in 1938, the year of the earth tiger. Jetsun Kushok is the third woman in the history of Tibet to have transmitted the Lamdre (the Path and Fruit) teachings and is a fully accomplished guru and lineage holder. She is known for her teachings on Vajrayogini and is considered an emanation of that yidam of enlightened feminine energy.
She began her dharma studies at the age of five. His Holiness the 41st Sakya Trichen was born when she was six years old. According to the tradition in her family, she took novice ordination when she was “old enough to scare crows away” at the age of seven. When she was ten years old, she accomplished her first retreat. She meditated on the form of Vajrapani known as Bhutadamara, and in one month completed one million recitations of the short mantra, and one hundred thousand recitations of the long mantra. In her eleventh year, her father, Kunga Rinchen, sent her on her first teaching assignment. She spent the fourth through the tenth Tibetan months among the nomads on the northern plains of Tibet, giving transmissions and teachings on phowa or transference of consciousness, as well as conducting torma offerings, performing lhasang or incense offerings, and giving other teachings and empowerments.
In 1951, during this teaching tour, she made one of the first of her well-known mos or divinations. There was a large monastery in the area where she was giving the teachings, and this was the time of political troubles surrounding the regent of Tibet, Reting Rinpoche. The abbot of the local monastery, Kardor Rinpoche, had sided with the regent and for this he had been imprisoned. An earnest and worried delegation from this monastery requested an audience with Jetsun Kushok and asked her to do a mo to determine when their abbot would be released from prison. She made a divination with dice and recommended that the members of the monastery perform the four-mandala puja of Green Tara and recite the Twenty-One Praises to Tara one hundred thousand times.
In 1952, during a visit to Lhasa when His Holiness the Dalai Lama recognized and confirmed her brother as the 41st Sakya Throne Holder, a group of monks requested an audience with Jetsun Kushok. They thanked her sincerely and profusely, and when she inquired the reason for their gratitude, they told her that they had followed her instructions, and that their abbot had been released the day after they had completed the one hundred thousandth recitation of the Twenty-One Praises.
Her younger brother had died when she was four years old. Her mother died in 1948 when Jetsun Kushok was nine and His Holiness the Sakya Trichen was two. Their younger sister died in 1951 at age eight and their father died less than a month later, during an epidemic in Sakya. This meant that the teachings that would normally be conferred by their father would have to be offered by another guru. Their aunt took them to Ngor Monastery, where they received the Lamdre from the great Khangsar abbot, Ngawang Lodro Shenphen Nyingpo, also known as Lama Dampa Rinpoche.
In 1952, the original plan to take teaching from the great Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro in Kham had to be altered since His Holiness the 41st Sakya Trichen could not venture too far away from Sakya and his duties. Instead, they went again to the great abbot of Ngor, Lama Dampa Rinpoche, who lived closer by, for the Lamdre Lobshe (the Path and its Fruit for close disciples), teachings central to the Sakya lineage.
Unfortunately, Lama Dampa Rinpoche passed away before he could complete various transmissions, and that task was taken over by the Khangsar Shabdrung, Ngawang Lodro Tenzin Nyingpo. Jetsun Kushok relates that from the time that His Holiness the Dalai Lama conferred recognition on her brother, “His Holiness [the Sakya Trichen] and I were constantly in each other’s company, and wherever he went, I went, and I was always with him.”
From this time on until they fled to India, they received the same teachings and made the same retreats. At the same time that she and His Holiness the Sakya Trichen received transmissions from the Khangsar abbots, they also received the oral transmissions for the biography of Ngorchen Konchok Lhundrup from the Ngor abbot of the Phende house, Phende Khenpo, Ngawang Khedrup Gyatso. This was 1953.
In 1954, they received the transmission of the Druptap Kuntu (Collection of Sadhanas) from the Khangsar Shabdrung, Ngawang Lodro Tenzin Nyingpo. The Druptap Kuntu is a large collection of empowerments and sadhanas from all four classes of tantra, compiled by Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo and his student, Jamyang Loter Wangpo.
When Jetsun Kushok was sixteen, she and His Holiness the Sakya Trichen undertook the full retreat of Hevajra. Their teacher also went into retreat with them. Although they did the retreat in separate rooms, they kept contact through notes passed back and forth, and began on the same day and ended on the same day. They performed all the requisite recitations of the different Hevajra mantras, as well as the mantras of Vajra Nairatmya. They remained in this retreat for seven and a half months, and followed it with a one-month retreat on Vajra Garuda, during which she recited the mantra one million, five hundred thousand times. When they had finished this retreat, Jetsun Kushok’s aunt requested her to do a seven-day retreat on Ling Gesar in order to develop her powers of divination by foreseeing the future in a mirror, and she completed this as well.
Soon after she left this retreat, in 1955, a crowd of monks from Kham arrived in Sakya, and requested the Lamdre teachings from His Holiness the Sakya Trichen, who because of his own schedule was unable to accommodate them. Their aunt then urged Jetsun Kushok, who was then sixteen, to give the teaching herself. The Lamdre is a complete cycle which encompasses the full range of Buddhist teachings, from Hinayana through Mahayana and up to and including Vajrayana. It revolves around the central mandala of Hevajra according to Virupa’s transmission. Jetsun Kushok bestowed the short version of the Lamdre by Ngawang Chodruk, as well as the oral transmissions for all the main practices and ceremonies connected with the Sakya lineage. The whole teaching lasted around three months. Thus she became the third woman in Sakya history to have transmitted the Lamdre, and in 1956 when she and His Holiness the Sakya Trichen went to Lhasa to receive the middle-length teaching on the Lam Rim from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, she led the procession, crowned with the Sakya hat worn by high Sakya lineage holders and proceeded by a golden umbrella.
It was also in 1956 that she and His Holiness the Sakya Trichen received the Nyingma transmissions of Longchen Nyingtik from Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro, who was in Lhasa at that time. Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro came to Sakya later that year to give them the Chak Mey Nam Zhi, or the Four Uninterrupted Practices, which those who have received the full Lamdre teachings are to practice on a daily basis. They are: 1) the Hevajra sadhana, 2) the Vajrayogini sadhana, 3) the Virupa Protection meditation, and 4) the Profound Path Guru Yoga meditation.
In early 1957, His Holiness the Sakya Trichen, Jetsun Kushok, and entourage went to India on a pilgrimage at the same time as His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama went to India. It was here that she first conceived the idea of learning English in a Western-style school, but her teacher wouldn’t hear of it. In 1958, her brother was formally enthroned at Sakya, Tibet, as its 41st Throne Holder. Several months after that, due to the changes in Tibet, His Holiness the Sakya Trichen, Jetsun Kushok, their aunt, and a handful of attendants fled to India.
In India, Jetsun Kushok studied the Nang Sum (Triple Vision) and the Dom Sum Rabye (Clear Differentiation of the Three Vows) by Sakya Pandita. However, it became increasingly difficult for her live with the outer discipline of a nun in India without the support of a monastery. She found herself the object of ridicule because of her shaved head and robes, and after consulting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and His Holiness the Sakya Trichen, she decided to give back her robes, although she continued in the inner deportment of a nun.
She began taking English lessons at a Christian missionary school, and there met Luding Sey Kushok, who is the brother of His Eminence Luding Khenchen Rinpoche. Since the Luding succession is a blood lineage, and the Luding family had close historical connections with Sakya Khon family, her aunt and several older attendants conceived of the plan that she should marry Sey Kushok. While she refused at first, she was convinced at last, and they were married in 1964.
Their third child, a son born in 1967, was different from the others. Jetsun Kushok reports that he didn’t cry like the other children and that he would wake up and amuse himself by making mudras with his hands and mumbling to himself as though he were reciting texts. When he was three or four, he showed real interest in becoming a monk and took delight in being around ordained people. During religious ceremonies, he would far prefer attending them than playing with other children. This was the child who became the Luding Shabdrung (and later, Luding Khen Rinpoche).
Leaving the four-year-old Luding Shabdrung Rinpoche behind in the care of his uncle, Luding Khenchen Rinpoche, for Dharma training, Jetsun Kushok went with her husband and other children to Canada and settled on a farm as laborers in Taber, Alberta in 1971. In 1973 they came to Vancouver, British Columbia. They now live in a suburb of Vancouver.
At first, Jetsun Kushok did not teach in North America, needing to care for her family and earn a living. However, when His Holiness the Sakya Trichen and Kyabje Dezhung Rinpoche began teaching in New York, they were repeatedly asked about women lineage holders. They both requested Jetsun Kushok to begin teaching again. Since then, she has founded a dharma center in Vancouver, Sakya Thubten Tsechen Ling; another in Oakland, California, named Sakya Dechen Ling; another in Friday Harbor, Washington, named Sakya Kachod Choling; and another in Germany, named Sakya Kalden Ling.
Jetsun Kushok has taught at various other centers in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. She is a role model and inspiration to all practitioners.