Today, he lives primarily at Pharping (Yangleshod), an important pilgrimage place in Nepal where Guru Rinpoche took the form of Vajrakumara, and attained the Vidyadhara stage of Mahamudra realization. Rinpoche refrains from any involvement in monastic or bureaucratic structures and maintains a hermit tradition. He has numerous disciples from Tibet, Bhutan, India and Nepal, as well as many from the West.

In remembering the first time that I met Kyabje Chadral Sangye Dorje Rinpoche, it was during the New Year's Day of the Tibetan New Year (Losar) of the Earth Snake Year (February 7, 1989) while I was doing my pilgrimage at Pharping, Nepal. Other Dharma brothers and sisters from Hong Kong and Taiwan, together with me and my wife, all paid our respects to Kyabje Chadral Rinpoche in his gompa. We told Rinpoche that we were the students of Guru Lau who brought us along to pay our utmost and humble respects to the Kundung of Kyabje Dudjom Rinpoche II. Rinpoche was very happy to learn that Guru Lau had come to Nepal and he asked for the name of the hotel that Guru Lau was staying. Then, three days later, when we and Guru Lau came back to the hotel after our daily practices at the Dudjom Gompa at Boudhanath, there was a message left behind for Guru Lau saying that Kyabje Chadral Rinpoche had come to visit Guru Lau but he did not meet him. So the message mentioned that Kyabje Chadral Rinpoche would return to the hotel again and visit Guru Lau the next morning.

Photo 1.28 Kyabje Chadral Rinpoche's message for Guru Lau in 1989.

Hence, Guru Lau waited for Kyabje Chadral Rinpoche the next morning in the lobby of the hotel, and it was such an auspicious moment when the two of them met each other, and they paid their respects to each other by putting their heads together, and then presented katags to each other. Then we also presented our katags to Kyabje Chadral Rinpoche, after which we all went to the cafetaria for breakfast. It was in their conversations that I came to realize that, in fact, they had known each other for thirty years, when both of them were in Kalimpong, India receiving teachings from Kyabje Dudjom Rinpoche II in 1959, but had never met each other again ever since.
Yet time and space did not separate them at all and they were chatting and laughing as if they were back in the old days in Kalimpong. They talked almost everything, from Tibetan history to Chinese history, from Zen Buddhism to Dzogchen, from the Samye Monastery to the present conditions in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the whole world. I was very amazed by the words of wisdom of these two Great Masters for almost two hours. Before Kyabje Chadral Rinpoche departed, he presented to Guru Lau three volumes of Dzogchen teachings of the Longchen Nyingthig tradition. Later, Guru Lau remarked to me personally that Kyabje Chadral Rinpoche is, indeed, a Great Master in his own way and that he is totally out of this world, in terms of his non-attachment to worldly dharmas.
Indeed, I came to remember the words that Father Thomas Merton had written in his "Asian Journal" about his meeting with Kyabje Chadral Rinpoche, on November 16, 1968, as follows : "... and there was Chatral, the greatest rimpoche I have met so far and a very impressive person. Chatral looked like a vigorous old peasant in a Bhutanese jacket tied at the neck with thongs and a red woolen cap on his head. He had a week's growth of beard, bright eyes, a strong voice, and was very articulate, ... We started talking about dzogchen and Nyingmapa meditation and 'direct realization' and soon saw that we agreed very well....The unspoken or half-spoken message of the talk was our complete understanding of each other as people who were somehow on the edge of great realization and knew it and were trying, somehow or other, to go out and get lost in it - and that it was a grace for us to meet one another. I wish I could see more of Chatral.... I was profoundly moved, because he is so obviously a great man, the true practitioner of dzogchen, the best of the ..CONTINUE ..