After the enthronement of the Yangsi of His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche in Nepal in December 1997, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche gave a talk on the meaning of the word "Khyentse".

In Vajrayana, the idea of the Guru is very special. And many of us are disciples of His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche and this is the enthronement ceremony of the incarnation of His Holiness. Just briefly, all the Khyentse reincarnations are considered as the incarnations of Vimalamitra and King Trisong Detsen.

scholar and saint, but he was also considered as one of the five king tertons. He had five emanations - body, speech, mind, quality and activity. And the emanation of the mind was His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche who also had similar qualities to the Great Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo.

The word "Khyentse" loosely means wisdom and compassion. And for those who have seen His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, the previous incarnation, I am sure you remember he is the embodiment of wisdom and compassion and he represents that. It is very difficult for us ignorant beings, even though we may be able to understand wisdom and compassion intellectually, to actually see the example of wisdom and compassion. It is very rare. But many of us had the opportunity, because of our past karmic deeds, to see the past incarnation and now we have this great opportunity to see his incarnation. And although I have been dragged into this [talk] by Tulku Pema Wangyal, I guess I should consider myself as someone who is very fortunate to have this chance to accumulate merit by saying a few Dharma words.

So I decided that I would say a few words on the words "khyen" and "tse" because we all know that there are Khyentse beings and we also somehow know that there are concepts called wisdom and compassion. Now, as I said, the word "khyen" refers to wisdom or understanding. Here we are not talking about an ordinary kind of wisdom or an ordinary kind of understanding. Wisdom here is the mind that knows the ultimate truth of all phenomena.

To give you some examples of why wisdom is necessary, generally our problems come when we do not know something. Our petty misunderstandings come when we do not have complete understanding. We have lots of misunderstanding or not understanding reality. We have that kind of ignorance because of the habits of our past lives. Although some people may have a little intellectual understanding of wisdom, it is very difficult to have wisdom because -- CONTINUE --