Shechen Rabjam Rinpoche: Dilgo Khyentse's Heir and Bhutan

Shechen

Shechen Monastery was founded in 1695 in Derge, in Kham in eastern Tibet, by the first masters of the Rabjam line of incarnations. It became one of the six great monasteries of the Nyingma. It was destroyed in the upheavals of the 1950s and 1960s; the 6th Shechen Rabjam died in prison in the early 1960s.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche and Bhutan

The lineage was carried into exile above all by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche (c.1910–1991), one of the most revered Tibetan masters of the century and head of the Nyingma school from 1987. First invited to Bhutan in the early 1960s, he returned in 1965, and Bhutan became his principal home. That year, at Kyichu Lhakhang in Paro, he gave an empowerment to the ten-year-old Crown Prince, the future Fourth King, and he became a spiritual adviser to the royal family.

He died in 1991, and in November 1992 he was cremated near Paro, in the presence of the royal family and some fifty thousand people. His reincarnation, the Dilgo Khyentse Yangsi, was born in 1993.

The 7th Shechen Rabjam

Shechen Rabjam Rinpoche was born in 1967, a grandson of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, who raised him. Dilgo Khyentse recognised him as the combined emanation of three Shechen lamas who had died in prison — the previous Rabjam, Shechen Kongtrul and Shechen Gyaltsap — and the 16th Karmapa confirmed it.

Since the early 1980s he has been abbot of Shechen Tennyi Dargyeling in Boudhanath, Kathmandu, where he added a monastic college, a school of sacred dance, a school of thangka painting and a clinic. He oversaw the upbringing of the Dilgo Khyentse Yangsi. In 2000, with the monk and author Matthieu Ricard, he co-founded Karuna-Shechen, a humanitarian organisation working in India, Nepal and Tibet.

In Gelephu

In the Gelephu Mindfulness City, Shechen Rabjam Rinpoche leads one of the first spiritual projects granted by Royal Kasho, Kesang Do Nags Shedrupling. In 2026, on Her Majesty the Gyaltsuen’s birth anniversary, his representatives, with Kesang Do-Ngak Shedrupling and the Shechen Dharma Society, offered Nu 1,393,986 to Project 108 with prayers and aspirations. The full list of masters is in Project 108 Masters.