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 began training in 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 sense of renunciation towards the mundane preoccupations of everyday life filled his heart when he was around seventeen years old. 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 one-to-one 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, a diligent young 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 often meet with Rinpoche, answering his questions and offering words of advice. Through their conversations, Rinpoche came to fully understand meditation and the mind, which made Lama Senge his root lama. His rapid development of meditative understanding, experience, and realisation impressed his lamas greatly, and 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 of 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 received teachings from the revered Khenpo Jigme Puntsok Rinpoche; 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 but a few.
Having received such a wealth of teachings, Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche invited Drupon Khen Rinpoche to teach at Thrangu Vajra Vidya Institute in Varanasi. Here he gave teachings on the treatises to the shedra students before being asked by Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche to become 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 eight and fifteen lamas in each cycle) of retreat at Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre.
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 to be the retreat master for the retreat centres on the Isle of Arran and Holy Isle. He has served as retreat master at Samye Ling since 2010. He also devised and taught a six-year shedra programme in Samye Ling. Rinpoche continues to visit and teach at Samye Ling on an annual basis.
In 2015, Rinpoche founded the Marpa Translation Society with the aspiration to make many of the untranslated Buddhist teachings accessible and affordable for those who genuinely seek them. To this end, Rinpoche has been training translators and offering guidance to those who are already able to translate. Rinpoche often reminds the translators that the dharma is more than just words, and if their translations are to convey the feeling and blessing of dharma, it is imperative that, first and foremost, they themselves become true dharma practitioners.
In 2021, Drupon Khen Rinpoche devised and initiated the 21-Year Study & Practice Curriculum in the Tantric Tradition of Marpa. The first ten years of this programme are dedicated to the study of sutra-level dharma, while the final eleven years focus on the study—and primarily the practice—of tantra-level dharma. One of the main purposes for initiating this programme is to reignite and strengthen the study and practice of the tantras transmitted through Marpa. Its primary purpose, however, is to provide a comprehensive dharma education and training to the students, young and old, under Drupon Khen Rinpoche’s loving guidance.
In 2024, Rinpoche founded the Thrangu Sekhar Institute of Meditation, a collaboration of Namo Buddha Centre of Meditation and Education and Lumbini University. The institute offers bachelor’s and master’s degree programmes, including courses such as Buddhist Mind Training.
Drupon Khen Rinpoche spends most of his time training practitioners at Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre in Nepal. At present, the retreat centre is home to a community of around three hundred retreatants, young and old, from almost thirty different countries. Rinpoche devised a six-year retreat programme especially for the international students. This consists of one year devoted to each of the following practices: the Great Seal preliminaries, mind training, Vajra Being (Vajrasattva), calm-abiding meditation, insight meditation concerned with thoughts, and insight meditation concerned with appearances.
Rinpoche now limits his time abroad to two months a year because he feels it is more beneficial to stay in one place and train a dedicated group of students. During this time abroad, he regularly visits Europe, Hong Kong, Singapore and Southern Africa.
At the request of Thrangu Shedra, Rinpoche also spends several days a month at Namo Buddha teaching and giving advice to all the Shedra Khenpos and students. He also presides over two one-week retreats each year in Namo Buddha, one for the Thrangu Monastery lamas who have completed a long retreat and one for the shedra students and faculty. He also presides over an annual one-week retreat at Thrangu Sekhar, which is primarily for lay practitioners.
Written by Kunga
14.05.2018, updated in August 2026
Read also : An Introduction to Rinpoche by Dónal Creedon