The Hagiography of Khumbu Beyul’s “Flying Yogi” Lama Sangwa Dorje Reassessed in Light of Vajrayāna Dzogchen Materials and a New Thangka Series at Pangboche Pal Riwo Monastery

Abstract

Abstract Author: Ariel Lewin Dissertation Advisors: Professor Michael Witzel and Professor Francis X. Clooney Title: The Hagiography of Khumbu Beyul’s “Flying Yogi” Lama Sangwa Dorje Reassessed in Light of Vajrayāna Dzogchen Materials and a New Thangka Series at Pangboche Pal Riwo Monastery This dissertation investigates the paradox surrounding the 16th to 17th century “Flying Yogi” Lama Sangwa Dorje, who founded Pangboche/Pal Riwo, which was the first monastery in Khumbu, Nepal. The Lama was a documented, religious authority of Terton Ratna Lingpa’s Southern Treasure lineage. He was the first to institutionalize the Dumchod (deity mandala offering) ritual in Khumbu, which is also regarded as a beyul/hidden refuge land. The Lama is the most famous religious figure in Khumbu Beyul, but the written materials about him are scarce. The Lama is locally recognized as establishing the oldest, continuous Vajrayāna Dzogchen lineage in the region, and was an influential Ponlop/ “ruler” who is still referred to as the “King of Khumbu Beyul”. However, he lacks a conventional written hagiography, because his original handwritten namgur/poetic autobiography was lost. Furthermore, previous researchers, who gathered local oral histories about the Lama, did not evaluate his legacy within the context of his Vajrayāna Dzogchen framework, or visit his five, key yoga caves, study his sacred body prints, or incorporate his monastery’s chayik/charter, which was the first one written in Khumbu. I am the first researcher who was permitted to examine Lama Sangwa Dorje’s Pangboche monastery chayik. Consequently, earlier scholars, who did not read the chayik, often dismissed the religious culture of Pangboche monastery as an informal, folk religion, particularly due to Pangboche’s monastic model of mixed celibate and non-celibate membership. This dissertation argues that Lama Sangwa Dorje has a sacred presence, which has endured in Khumbu that does not derive from his missing written hagiography, but from the living transmission and continuous practice of his Vajrayāna Dzogchen rituals. Therefore, his sacred presence is embodied in his Dumchod ritual, local oral-visual histories, in his kujey/sacred body prints and relics, and in visual practices such Thongdrol (liberation through seeing). This combination of factors, which includes the Lama’s previously inaccessible chayik along with the pilgrimage to his five, key yoga caves, reveals a structured religious culture at Pangboche’s Pal Riwo monastery, and challenges prior scholarly dismissals which assume that Pangboche’s mixed celibate and non-celibate membership indicates an informal folk religion. Furthermore, this study demonstrates the primacy of material, spatial, and lived modes of transmission over textual authority in Himalayan Buddhism and how a hagiography in the form of consecrated artwork opens new constructed spaces that facilitate experiencing sacred presence and esoteric pilgrimage via gaze. My method included pilgrimages to the Lama’s five, key yoga caves in Khumbu, studying and documenting his kujey as well as observer-participation in the 2024 Drubchod (Dumji) ritual, and examinations of previously unpublished documents from private Sherpa collections that I was permitted to study. Trust-based collaborations were made with Pangboche ritual specialists, and a Pangboche master artist, Khapa Nyima Dorje Sherpa, who is recognized by the local Sherpa community as a specialist in creating Buddhist thangkas and clay deity sculptures. This collaboration resulted in a new consecrated hagiographic thangka series for Lama Sangwa Dorje, which was revealed as a Thongdrol during the 2024 Drubchod. In October 2025, the thangka series was installed as series of permanent murals. This series is a living archive, which sequentially maps the Lama’s local oral-visual history and provides an interface for intimate experiences of the Lama’s sacred presence. Significantly, the series is a spiritual support for the Nyingma practice of Thongdrol and is publicly accessible. This study integrates the theoretical approach of Robert A. Orsi regarding his framework of lived religion and “abundant presence,” David Morgan’s theory of religious visual culture and the “embodied eye” and “sacred gaze” as well as Jonathan Z. Smith’s concepts of “place-making” and the “construction of sacred space”. These lenses reveal how oral-visual narratives actively create sacred space and bridge the incongruity between scholarly textual expectations and the richer territory of lived practice. In conclusion, Lama Sangwa Dorje’s Vajrayāna Dzogchen transmission tradition, rituals, relics and oral-visual elements at Pangboche sustain his presence more powerfully than through a written hagiography. The chayik further demonstrates that Lama Sangwa Dorje instituted a structured religious culture with specific rules, rituals and doctrine that challenges prior assumptions. This study significantly relied on trust-based collaborations with the Pangboche Sherpa community. By combining that with the access to rare, privately held materials, this study contributes to South Asian and Himalayan Buddhist studies by foregrounding embodied, material, and spatial modes of transmission in non-text-based hagiographic traditions that rely on key oral-visual elements.