Upon request by the people of Tromo to stay with them, Geshe Ngawang Kalsang rebuilt Dungkar Gonpa. With a white conch manifestation just below the monastery and another one from which issued the sound of a conch when blown into, Dungkar Gonpa has borne that name since 1662. Even before that, there was a temple there. Long before Domo Geshe Rinpoche took Dungkar Gonpa into his care, it belonged to a monastery in Sikkim. Being located not far from Rabtentse, the former summer palace of the Sikkimese kings in Tromo, there was a period in that country’s history when the King of Sikkim visited Dungkar Gonpa annually.

Geshe Rinpoche enlarged the main Buddha statue of the monastery and built another great Maitreya Buddha. The axial pillar (sog shing) for the Maitreya statue is said to have come from a branch of the Bodhi tree in Bodhgaya that fell down and landed next to Domo Geshe Rinpoche while he was giving teachings there. Behind the monastery a spring issued forth through Geshe Rinpoche’s presence and blessings. It dried up after the monastery was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Recently, when some local people, with Geshe Rinpoche’s help, started to rebuild Dungkar Gonpa, the water of the spring began to flow again.

After Domo Geshe Rinpoche enlarged Dungkar Gonpa, it attracted many more monks. Discipline was strict, and practice, in time, came to cover many more subjects than was common for a monastery its size (60 to 70 monks then and about 100 in the 1950s). Monks memorized many different kinds of texts and learned to perform ritual dances as well as ritual chanting with special melodies, to play many different kinds of musical instruments, to construct three- dimensional mandalas as well as the two-dimensional ones made from colored powder, to make elaborate butter sculptures, and to master many other art forms that relate to religious practice. Although small, Dungkar Gonpa had some of the best dancers and artists in Tibet. Some of the monks also learned about medicine and how to collect different ingredients of medicinal value.

High above Dungkar Gonpa, where a manifestation of a double Dharma-source had manifested, Geshe Rinpoche built a retreat called Ganden Khachö. There, Exalted Vajra Yogini, surrounded by countless Dakinis, actually manifested to him. In that circle, and in the presence of Maitreya Buddha, Geshe Rinpoche received blessings and transmissions from the unsurpassable master Je Tsongkhapa and his sons directly. The yidam came to him many times and also took Geshe Rinpoche to her heavenly field and, on one occasion, offered him holy gems.

It is said that it was in Ganden Khachö that Tashi Tseringma from Chomo Lhari appeared and offered Domo Geshe Rinpoche the precious snow- lion milk in a turquoise vessel, a most special container, since this substance burns through ordinary materials. To benefit all living beings, the kind Lama created a pill from many different holy substances that he collected in the Buddha’s sacred places in India and in pilgrimage places in the Himalayas and Tibet, from rare medicinal herbs and other famous holy pills, from relics, and from a great variety of unknown precious beneficial ingredients, including the snow- lion milk. Transformed by means of mercury, a very poisonous substance, in a process mastered by only a few, and together with many special blessings, Geshe Rinpoche’s rilbus became singularly powerful. They were said to reverse the effects of life-threatening poison and terminal illnesses, to protect against many different kinds of weapons, including bullets, and to guarantee at least seven human rebirths if administered at the right moment in the death process.

No other holy pills were as effective or became as famous and sought after all over Tibet as were Domo Geshe Rinpoche’s. These rilbus were not only medicinal and holy, but magical as well. Rinpoche himself carried a bag of rilbus that replenished themselves like relics in a holy place. He offered large bags filled with these holy pills to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and to the Panchen Rinpoche, and he handed them out freely to suffering sentient beings to alleviate pain and illness and to protect from danger. His great kindness and compassion became legendary.

Tromo had been a stronghold of the Bön faith in Tibet when Geshe Rinpoche arrived there. One after another of the wealthy patrons turned to Domo Geshe Rinpoche and became Buddhist. Pembö Lama, the owner of a Bön monastery, Yungdungkang, offered it to Geshe Rinpoche. It was renamed Tashi Chöling. The Lama and his sons became patrons and they prospered. Not all saw Rinpoche as the great virtuous one that he was. Already at the end of the Younghusband expedition in 1905, when Sir Charles Bell was governor of Tromo for a year, the local Bönpos complained to him that a great oracle had come to Upper Tromo and converted everyone to the Buddhist faith. They requested the governor to stop Domo Geshe Rinpoche from taking away the wealthy Bön patrons. Bell answered that he would not interfere in the internal religious affairs of the country. When taken to the courts in Lhasa, a similar answer was given: everyone is free to practice the religion of their choice.

But there was more than one attempt on Domo Geshe Rinpoche’s life. In 1918 and 1919 the Bönpos tried to cause physical harm to him repeatedly by means of black magic. Rinpoche foiled these attempts through his clairvoyance and crushed the evil by his superior powers. In one case he arose as Chenrezig Senge Tra and subdued the poisonous snake intended to kill him.

Domo Geshe Rinpoche tamed even more intractable beings. In the 1920s a Mongolian Geshe returned from pilgrimage in India and stopped at Dungkar Gonpa on his way to Lhasa. Rinpoche was away at the time and Umdze Sherab, who later became the famous abbot of Dungkar Gonpa, asked the Geshe to stay, as he had a high fever and was too sick to travel. But the Geshe did not accept the invitation. He wanted to be in Lhasa for the Great Prayer Festival (Mönlam Chenmo). On the steep road to Phari, he reached the end of his life. He sat down next to the road and the death process started. The Geshe did his practice, which was not completed when several Bönpos arrived. Well intentioned, they performed the transference of consciousness, since the dying man had stopped breathing. This interrupted the Geshe’s practice on the most subtle level of consciousness and he turned into a raging spirit who killed many Bönpos in Tromo. Several Buddhist practitioners tried unsuccessfully to appease the fury of this being. When Domo Geshe Rinpoche returned, he tamed the ferocious spirit, put him under oath, and called him Namka Bardzin. He became a special protector for the area of Tromo.

Tromo was changed completely by Domo Geshe Rinpoche’s presence. The Bönpos at Pemukang sent yearly New Year offerings to him at Dungkar Gonpa, as did the Nyingmapas from nearby Kyiruntsel, where a room was kept ready in the monastery for Domo Geshe Rinpoche. Eventually, Rinpoche instituted several practices that brought the people of Tromo together in greater harmony. One of these was a yearly joint reading of 12 collected works at Kampu Dzong in Upper Tromo by the different religious traditions.

Another practice was a special Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava) ritual. Dungkar Gonpa had acquired an especially holy Guru Rinpoche statue, said to have been blessed by Padma Sambhava himself. When the owner was on his way to India with the statue, it spoke when passing Dungkar Gonpa. “Take me to where that sound is coming from,” it said, as the long trumpets sounded from the monastery on the hill. The man did, and Geshe Rinpoche gave him what he needed. Not much later, it is said, Domo Geshe Rinpoche found a Guru “fulfillment of wishes” text near Dawa Trag, a rock not far from Dungkar Gonpa bearing a spontaneous manifestation of a moon. Shortly thereafter, someone came with many copies of the same text for sale. Geshe Rinpoche bought all of them and, once a year, the Dungkar Gonpa monks performed the ritual.

When His Holiness the 13th Dalai Lama returned from India in 1912, he stopped in Tromo. A meeting took place between His Holiness and Domo Geshe Rinpoche at Kangyur Lhakang in Galingkang. It is said that His Holiness mentioned to his attendants that he expected a very special visitor one afternoon. Domo Geshe Rinpoche, who always looked like a simple monk, had prepared special delicacies to offer to His Holiness. He spent a long time in private talks with him that afternoon. In the evening, His Holiness asked his attendants if they had seen the very special person who had visited him in the afternoon. Surprised, they said they had only seen a simple monk in dirty, tattered robes. His Holiness replied, “That is too bad. I saw Je Tsongkhapa himself.”

Since Domo Geshe Rinpoche introduced and spread the Buddhist teachings in the Himalayan regions like Je Tsongkhapa himself, His Holiness and the Panchen Rinpoche had special respect for him. Geshe Rinpoche enjoyed a close relationship with the Panchen Rinpoche Chökyi Nyima. Once a year he would send long-life offerings to the Panchen Rinpoche. From him Domo Geshe Rinpoche had received an especially holy object that was kept at Dungkar Gonpa: the mold for the famous image of Je Tsongkhapa called “Tsong-bön Geleg.” With it Rinpoche fashioned many holy Je Tsongkhapa statues. Some of them have survived the Tibetan holocaust and still exist in Domo Geshe Rinpoche’s monasteries in India and with some of his disciples in the Himalayan border areas.

Geshe Rinpoche had a close relationship as well with the great Kyabje Pabongka Rinpoche Dechen Nyingpo, from whom he had received many transmissions, initiations, personal instructions and comprehensive teachings. They also exchanged presents. People used to say that with Kyabje Pabongka Rinpoche in Central Tibet, the Panchen Rinpoche in Tsang and Domo Geshe Rinpoche at the border, the pure Buddhist tradition was safe and flourishing.

A very close and special relationship also existed between Geshe Rinpoche and Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche. Together they received teachings and initiations from Kyabje Pabongka Rinpoche, Lamrim teachings from His Holiness the 13th Dalai Lama and, together with Kyabje Pabongka Rinpoche, they received a very rare cycle of 108 initiations in 1921 from Tagdra Dorje Chang, who later became the Regent of Tibet. The initiations spanned the four classes of Tantra, and Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche said of that event, “Thus, the traditions of past successive lineages were observed correctly without the negligence of finding easy solutions” (Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche, Autobiography, p. 94).

Domo Geshe Rinpoche often went to India on pilgrimage to the holy places of the Buddha. For some time he went every year. At first, he went alone across the high mountain passes from Tromo to Sikkim, through Phedong to Kalimpong, and then by train from Siliguri to Gaya. Later he took with him people from all walks of life and his monks.

The Hindu Raja controlling Bodhgaya was very impressed with Geshe Rinpoche and trusted him completely. The great stupa was locked up, since people came to steal the offerings. Whenever Rinpoche visited, the Raja handed him the keys and turned over the stupa to him for the duration of his stay there. Still today, the committee that administers the great stupa at Bodh Gaya consists of a Hindu majority. However, at the time Rinpoche went there on pilgrimage, Hindus were in complete control and Buddhist practice was not welcome at all. Only Domo Geshe Rinpoche and the Sri Lankan Anagarika Dharmapala, founder of the Mahabodhi Society, represented Buddhist interests and regularly performed Buddhist practices at the great stupa. It was because of Domo Geshe Rinpoche’s help and influence that the ground for a Tibetan monastery near the stupa could be purchased by a Ladakhi monk without interference from the Hindu Raja and his militant followers.

Geshe Rinpoche’s disciples cleaned the area around the stupa on their visits, washed the Bodhi tree with purifying herbs and water and offered many, many butterlamps and other offerings. On the full moon of the eighth Tibetan month in 1916, after many early morning purification rituals, Domo Geshe Rinpoche performed the ritual bath offering using milk to bathe the statue of Shakyamuni Buddha and then covered it with gold. The holy body of the Buddha emitted nectar, an event witnessed by many. Geshe Rinpoche carefully collected it and used it for the benefit of sentient beings in holy objects and precious pills called rilbus, it is said.

Once, when Domo Geshe Rinpoche was in Bodhgaya and absorbed in deep meditation, five Dakinis came to take him to a Buddha field. That instant, a red Prajnaparamita, mother of the Buddhas, arose and urged the Dakinis not to do so and told them that the time for Rinpoche to leave had not yet come. Another time, towards the end of his life, at a holy lake near Chomo Lhari, the Dakinis came again to beckon him to come with them. It is said that he promised them to come, but at a later date.

On one of Geshe Rinpoche’s pilgrimages to the Buddha’s holy places, many good omens occurred on his way to Sarnath and near the stupa before he arrived there. When he did, the whole mandala of Demchog and the 62 deities manifested to Rinpoche. In Kushinagara, the place of Shakyamuni Buddha’s maha-parinirvana, Geshe Rinpoche made extensive offerings and offered prayers. The thousand Buddhas manifested and Rinpoche had a vision of the future. At Vulture’s Peak, the eight Medicine Buddhas and 16  Arhats manifested to him, and at Silwasel, the great protector Mahakala himself appeared.