Khyentse Norbu

Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche (Tibetan: རྫོང་གསར་འཇམ་དབྱངས་མཁྱེན་བརྩེ; born 18 June 1961), credited on his films as Khyentse Norbu, is a Bhutanese-born Tibetan Buddhist lama, writer, and filmmaker. He was born at Khenpajong in eastern Bhutan and is the eldest son of the Nyingma master Thinley Norbu Rinpoche and a grandson of Dudjom Jigdral Yeshe Dorje, the head of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism in exile.^[1]

At the age of seven he was recognised by Sakya Trizin as the third incarnation of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo (1820–1892), the Tibetan terton who, with Jamgon Kongtrul, founded the non-sectarian Rime movement. He was enthroned at Dzongsar Monastery, the traditional seat of the Khyentse lineage in Kham, eastern Tibet. He was educated at the Sakya College in Rajpur, India, and later spent time at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.^[2]

Outside his monastic role, Khyentse Norbu is one of the most internationally visible figures associated with contemporary Bhutanese cinema. His feature films have premiered at Cannes, Venice, Toronto, Busan, and Locarno, and his English-language books on Buddhism, beginning with What Makes You Not a Buddhist (2007), have introduced him to a wide non-monastic readership.^[3]

Family and Recognition

The Khyentse line into which he was recognised traces back to the founding teachers of the Rime movement in 19th-century Kham. His father, Thinley Norbu Rinpoche (1931–2011), was a senior Nyingma teacher who taught widely in the United States. His paternal grandfather, Dudjom Rinpoche (1904–1987), held the office of Supreme Head of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism from 1960 until his death and spent his later years partly in Bhutan, where he had close ties to the royal family and to senior religious figures.^[1]

Khyentse Norbu is also recognised as a tulku in the Sakya tradition, and he counts as his teachers masters from all four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism, including Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, who was for many years his principal teacher.^[2]

Monasteries and Foundations

Khyentse Norbu supervises the historical Dzongsar Monastery in Kham and the related Dzongsar Khyentse Chödzong shedras (monastic colleges) in Bir and Chauntra in Himachal Pradesh, India. In Bhutan he has overseen the establishment of monastic centres including Dzongsar Khyentse Chödzong in Bumthang.^[2]

He has founded three principal organisations:

• Siddhartha's Intent, founded in 1989, an international association of Buddhist study and practice centres organised around his teachings.
• The White Lotus Charitable Trust, founded in 1993, supporting education and welfare projects in Himalayan regions.
• Khyentse Foundation, founded in 2001, a non-profit funding monastic education, the translation of Buddhist canonical works, and academic chairs in Buddhist Studies at universities such as the University of California Berkeley and the University of Hamburg.^[4]

In 2006 he founded the Deer Park Institute in Bir, Himachal Pradesh, an educational centre devoted to the classical Indian wisdom traditions.

Films

Khyentse Norbu has directed six feature films. His first, The Cup (Phörpa, 1999), was the first internationally distributed feature directed by a Bhutanese-born filmmaker and was Bhutan's first submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Travellers and Magicians (2003) was the first feature film shot entirely inside Bhutan, in Dzongkha.^[5]

His subsequent films have moved between Indian and Bhutanese settings. Vara: A Blessing (2013), shot in Sri Lanka and adapted from a short story by the Bengali writer Sunil Gangopadhyay, opened the 18th Busan International Film Festival; it was the first time the festival had opened with a non-Korean and non-Chinese title.^[6] Hema Hema: Sing Me a Song While I Wait (2016) premiered at the Locarno Film Festival's Open Doors programme and is set in a forest where masked participants gather every twelve years; the film draws on Buddhist bardo imagery. Looking for a Lady with Fangs and a Moustache (2019) and Pig at the Crossing (2024) have continued his interest in stories shaped by Tibetan Buddhist cosmology, with Pig at the Crossing released through a virtual premiere on 11 May 2024 in Dzongkha and English.^[7]

Books

His English-language books, mostly published by Shambhala Publications, are aimed at general readers as well as Buddhist practitioners. They include:

• What Makes You Not a Buddhist (Shambhala, 2007)
• Not for Happiness: A Guide to the So-Called Preliminary Practices (Shambhala, 2012)
• The Guru Drinks Bourbon? (Shambhala, 2016)
• Living Is Dying: How to Prepare for Death, Dying and Beyond (Shambhala, 2020)
• Poison Is Medicine: Clarifying the Vajrayana (Shambhala, 2021)

What Makes You Not a Buddhist, his best-known book, has been translated into more than a dozen languages and is widely used as an introductory text in Buddhist Studies courses.^[3]

Reception and Place in Bhutanese Cultural Output

Khyentse Norbu's films sit at an unusual intersection of Bhutanese cultural identity, Tibetan Buddhist subject matter, and international art-cinema festival circuits. In Bhutan he is seen as a foundational figure in the country's young film industry, and outside Bhutan he is regularly grouped with directors who use cinema as a vehicle for Buddhist themes.

His public role as a teacher has not been without controversy. Critics within and outside Buddhist communities have at times challenged his more provocative writings and statements on the guru–student relationship, particularly in The Guru Drinks Bourbon? and Poison Is Medicine, which defend traditional Vajrayana frameworks against more reformist interpretations.

See Also

• Cinema of Bhutan
• The Cup (film)
• Travellers and Magicians
• Khyentse Foundation
• Dudjom Rinpoche and Bhutan

References

1. Khyentse Norbu — Wikipedia
2. Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche — Khyentse Foundation
3. Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse — Shambhala Publications
4. Khyentse Foundation — official site
5. Travellers and Magicians — Wikipedia
6. Busan Festival to Open With 'Vara: A Blessing' — Variety
7. Khyentse Norbu's Pig at the Crossing virtual premiere — Buddhistdoor Global