Kirti tsenshab rinpoche biography of william hill

April 1992

By Doc O’Connor

“When Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche comes outside, he never looks at the people around, he looks in front and goes straight, not like we do … That describes the mind … It’s kind of showing, living in what Lama Tsongkhapa’s prayer says, living in pure morality, having a subdued manner,” says Lama Zopa Rinpoche.

Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche was born to a nomadic family in 1926 in the fertile, green hills of Amdo in Eastern Tibet.

At the age of eight Rinpoche was recognized as the first reincarnation of Khensur Kramcho Phuntsog, a former abbot of Kirti Gompa in Taksum Lhamo, Amdo, who was highly realized and had generated the realization of emptiness.

Tsenshab Rinpoche spent 15 years in meditation.

He lived most of the year in a stone hermitage about six feet by nine feet, “big enough for a bed, prostrations and a stove.” Seven years were spent meditating on lam-rim, three years on seven-point though