Sogyal Rinpoche

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Sogyal Rinpoche was born Sonam Gyaltsen Lakar in 1947 in the Trehor region of Kham, Tibet, and would go on to become one of the most widely read Buddhist teachers in the Western world. His book, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, has been printed in 30 languages and 56 countries and sold more than two million copies. He founded Rigpa, an international network of over 100 Buddhist centres spanning 23 countries. He assisted in organizing the Dalai Lama's first visit to the West in 1973. And yet in 2017, the Dalai Lama stood before a conference in Ladakh and said of him: "Sogyal Rinpoche, my very good friend. Now he is disgraced."

  This documentary traces how Sonam Gyaltsen Lakar became a global spiritual figure, how he built one of the largest Tibetan Buddhist organizations in the world, and what was happening inside that organization while its public face remained carefully polished. It asks how someone recognized from childhood as a reincarnated saint could also become the subject of a $10 million lawsuit, a twelve-page letter from senior students detailing years of abuse, and a formal report from a UK law firm upholding most of the allegations against him.

• 2. A Recognized Child

  ›

  According to his mother, the man who recognized the young Sonam Gyaltsen Lakar as a reincarnated master was Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö, who was described as the patron of his courtesan aunt and de facto stepfather. Chökyi Lodrö identified the boy as the incarnation of Tertön Sogyal Lerab Lingpa, a visionary saint of the 20th century. He then supervised the boy's education at Dzongsar Monastery and appointed Khenpo Appey as his personal tutor.

  From that monastery, the boy's education expanded outward across cultures. He attended a Catholic school in Kalimpong in India. He then studied at Delhi University before eventually arriving in the West. In 1971, he was granted a place at Trinity College, Cambridge as a visiting scholar in comparative religion. The academic detour did not pull him away from Tibetan teaching; he continued studying with masters from all schools of Tibetan Buddhism, especially Dudjom Rinpoche, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, and Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche. He first served as translator for Dudjom Rinpoche in Kalimpong and later continued in that role across Europe and during a tour of the United States.

  The year 1973 brought a milestone that revealed just how far the Tibetan lama from Kham had traveled. He assisted in organizing the Dalai Lama's first visit to the West, held in Rome, where the Dalai Lama had an audience with Pope Paul VI. In 1998, the abbot of Kalzang Monastery in Tibet, Sherab Özer Rinpoche, formally offered Sogyal Rinpoche the throne of Tertön Sogyal's home monastery, in a ceremony held in France.

• 3. Building Rigpa

  ›

  Sogyal Rinpoche began teaching in London in 1974, working out of a house in Kilburn originally called Orgyen Chöling. In 1979, he chose a new name for his expanding work: Rigpa, which means the innermost, essential nature of mind in the Tibetan tradition. The name would come to identify one of the largest Tibetan Buddhist networks outside Asia.

  Dudjom Rinpoche asked Sogyal Rinpoche to take charge of his centre on Rue Burq in Paris, which opened in 1978. Rigpa then developed an annual cycle of longer retreats across multiple continents. The first winter event at Kirchheim in Germany was held in December 1986. Annual retreats at Tiona Park in Australia began in 1989. The first Thanksgiving retreat in the United States was held in Oakland in 1988.

  In 1987, Sogyal Rinpoche accepted an invitation to become spiritual director of a centre in County Cork in the west of Ireland, which became Dzogchen Beara, Rigpa's first long-term retreat facility. He founded Lerab Ling near Montpellier in southern France in 1991, and the first three-month retreat there was held in 1992. A centre in Berlin named Dharma Mati was formally opened in October 2007. By the time of his retirement in 2017, Rigpa comprised over 100 centres and groups across 23 countries.

• 4. The Book on Death

  ›

  In 1983, Sogyal Rinpoche met Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, Kenneth Ring, and other figures working in caring professions and near-death research. They encouraged him to develop his teachings on the Tibetan understanding of death into something accessible to Western readers. The project took years to take shape.

  In 1989, while in Nepal, he met Andrew Harvey and invited him to help. Co-editor Patrick Gaffney described the writing process in terms that suggested its unusual scale and collaboration: "Probably, a book has never been written in such an unusual way."

  The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying was first launched in the United States in September 1992 to high acclaim, spending several weeks at the top of the bestseller lists. It was then released in the United Kingdom, Australia, and India, with early translations into German and French following. More than two million copies have since been printed across 30 languages and 56 countries. Death and dying remained a central theme in his public teaching for the rest of his career, a thread running from early encounters with Kübler-Ross through his final years on the conference circuit.

• 5. Teaching Style and Influence

  ›

  Stephen Batchelor described Sogyal Rinpoche as known for his sense of humour, indefatigable energy, forthrightness, and periodic eccentricity. In his teachings, he returned often to what Tibetan tradition calls the nature of mind, pristine awareness, or rigpa, treating meditation as the means for ultimately realizing that nature.

  He placed himself consciously in the tradition of the non-sectarian Rimé movement, which rose to prominence in eastern Tibet in the nineteenth century and was associated with figures such as Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo and Jamgön Kongtrul. He drew on teachers and texts beyond the Tibetan tradition, including the Dhammapada and the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki. He wrote that the Rimé vision offered a model of how the Dharma must continue in the West and in America, "with total respect for our separate authentic traditions, and yet with an eye to the creativity and resourcefulness of different branches of Buddha-dharma as they have settled into the American landscape."

  He was a regular conference speaker across two decades. In 2004 he gave a keynote address at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Barcelona, where over 8,000 religious leaders and lay people gathered. In 2011, he spoke at the Global Buddhist Congregation in Delhi, which drew 800 scholars, delegates, and observers from 32 countries. Charles Tart noted that, despite the enormous emphasis Tibetan Buddhism places on devotion to one's teacher, Sogyal Rinpoche encouraged students to direct their devotion toward his teachers rather than toward him personally. Rinpoche often quoted Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, who said: "Devotion is the essence of the path."

• 6. Allegations and Reckoning

  ›

  In 1994, a $10 million civil lawsuit was filed against Sogyal Rinpoche, alleging that he had used his position as a spiritual leader to induce a female student into sexual relations. The complaint included accusations of infliction of emotional distress, breach of fiduciary duty, and assault and battery. The lawsuit was settled out of court. Related allegations were raised by journalist Mary Finnigan in 1995 and again in 2011.

  In 2014, Marion Dapsance reported on a seven-year investigation. In 2016, an article in l'Obs published the account of a long-term female attendant identified as "Mimi," detailing the sexual and psychological abuse she and fellow attendants had endured. On the 13th of June 2017, another victim spoke on the Dutch current affairs program Brandpunt.

  On the 20th of July 2017, the Buddhist publication Lion's Roar published excerpts from a letter sent to Sogyal Rinpoche by eight current and former senior Rigpa students. The twelve-page letter, dated the 14th of July 2017, described sexual, physical, and emotional abuse extending over a long period. The signatories included directors, a former board member, and personal assistants to Sogyal Rinpoche. The letter stated that students had been beaten severely, were asked to perform sexual acts, and were asked to lie to conceal his behavior. It also described his lavish use of donations and the extensive effort by his inner circle to hide his conduct from the wider Rigpa community.

  Matthieu Ricard, a close adviser to the Dalai Lama, stated that the behavior described in the letter was "obviously unacceptable from the point of view of ordinary morality, let alone that of Buddhist ethics." On the 1st of August 2017, at a conference in Ladakh, the Dalai Lama called Sogyal Rinpoche "my very good friend" and then added: "Now he is disgraced." On the 11th of August 2017, Sogyal Rinpoche retired from his position as Rigpa's spiritual director with immediate effect. On the 3rd of August 2017, the French Buddhist Union suspended the membership of Rigpa France and its Lerab Ling centre; the suspension was lifted in 2019. On the 5th of September 2018, Rigpa released a report by UK law firm Lewis Silkin LLP, which upheld most of the allegations. Sogyal Rinpoche did not respond to that report, but had stated: "I am clear in my own mind that I have never, ever, acted towards anyone with a motive of selfish gain or harmful intent."

  Sogyal Rinpoche died on the 28th of August 2019 in Thailand, where he was being treated for colorectal cancer. He was 72. The cause of death was a pulmonary embolism. A 2022 German-French ARTE documentary, Buddhismus: Missbrauch im Namen der Erleuchtung, by Elodie Emery and Wandrille Lanos, examined the abuse allegations, keeping the reckoning part of the public record after his death.