Dzokden

Khentrul Rinpoche has graciously agreed to bestow Karma Lingpa’s Zhitro Hearing Liberation empowerment and lead a Purification Puja to honor and benefit our departed loved ones. He iwll also give teachings on the Bardo and death.

This rare and powerful “hearing liberation” teaching belongs to the highest yoga tantra. Khentrul Rinpoche has a profound connection with this practice, having received this empowerment many times. It includes liberation prayers and various sacred rituals, requiring extensive preparation—making public performances rare. However, its blessings are immense, supporting life, the transition of death, the bardo journey, and rebirth. It is especially meaningful for expressing gratitude to our parents and ancestors.

The Nyedren Purification and Liberation Puja helps those who have passed away, whether recently or long ago, by guiding them beyond the bardo and the six realms of existence into the awakened state of Samantabhadra. Through prayers and ritual offerings, the consciousness of the deceased merges with the enlightened wisdom of the hundred deities. As a final act of dedication, we will burn name tablets of both the living and the departed.

Khentrul Rinpoche has undertaken the extensive preparations for this ceremony out of his boundless compassion. This is a rare and precious opportunity—seize the moment to participate and offer your heartfelt prayers. Life is uncertain, but through this sacred practice, we can bring profound benefit to our loved ones and ourselves. 

ABOUT ZHITRO
Zhitro, meaning “peaceful and wrathful,” denotes the assembly of forty-two peaceful and fifty-eight wrathful deities and was buried by Guru Padmasambhava in the eighth century. The teaching was revealed as terma in the 14th Century by the terton Karma Lingpa. These Buddhas are alternatively referred to as the bardo deities. The term ‘bardo’ signifies an ‘intermediate state,’ one of six such states, with the reference here being to the bardo of dying – the transitional phase between death and rebirth. During this phase, the one hundred Zhitro deities manifest themselves to the deceased to facilitate their liberation from the bardo. At some stages in the Bardo state, people need peaceful Deities; in other stages, people need wrathful ones to benefit their journey of awakening.

The teachings of Zhitro, as imparted by Guru Padmasambhava, establish a direct conduit for practitioners to engage with the bardo deities through dedicated practice and supplication. This empowerment is a blessing in our lives and prepares us for liberation in the bardo following our death. As per the Bardo Thodrol, a seminal text on the bardo in Vajrayana Buddhism (widely known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead), bardo deities present themselves to the deceased over a period of forty-nine days while the deceased is in the bardo. Initially, the peaceful deities appear, and if the deceased fails to recognize and attain liberation through these peaceful deities, the wrathful deities subsequently manifest. If the deceased cannot connect with the deities during this forty-nine-day period, their consciousness is drawn back into rebirth within one of the six realms.