Padmasambhava Tibetan: པདྨ་འབྱུང་གནས།, Wylie: pad+ma 'byung gnas (EWTS), ZYPY: Bämajungnä); Mongolian ловон Бадмажунай, lovon Badmajunai, Chinese: 蓮花生大士 (pinyin: Liánhuāshēng), Means The Lotus-Born, was a sage guru from Oddiyāna who is said to have transmitted Vajrayana Buddhism to Bhutan and Tibet and neighboring countries in the 8th century.
In those lands he is better known as Guru Rinpoche ("Precious Guru") or Lopon Rinpoche, or, simply, Padum in Tibet, where followers of the Nyingma school regard him as the second Buddha.
He is further considered an emanation of Buddha Amitabha and traditionally even venerated as "a second Buddha". He was born into a Brahmin family of Northwest India.
Padmasambhava said:
His Pureland Paradise is Zangdok Palri (the Copper-coloured Mountain).
Lama Gyurme (born in 1948), or Lama Gyourmé, is a Buddhist Bhutanese monk and musician.
He has lived in France since 1974, and he is the director of the Kagyu-Dzong center in Paris and, since 1982, the Vajradhara-Ling center in Normandy.
Born in Bhutan in 1948, he was entrusted by his family at the age of four to the monastery of Djang Tchub Tcheu Ling in Bhutan where his interest in sacred music appeared quickly. At the age of nine, he became a permanent resident of the monastery where he received Buddhist teachings, completed by an initiation to traditional arts, including music.
At the age of 20, he followed his first spiritual retreat of three years, three months and three days, necessary to the formation of Lama, at the monastery of Sonada in India of which the director is Kalu Rinpoche. During this retreat, he was given the title of "Oumze" — master of music — by Kalu Rinpoche. After a stay at the monastery of Rumtek in Sikkim, he fulfilled his religious education in Bhutan before obtaining his diploma of teacher of the Kagyupa tradition that was given to him by the 16th Karmapa.
Ani Choying Drolma (born June 4, 1971, in Kathmandu, Nepal), also known as Choying Drolma and Ani Choying (Ani, "nun", is an honorific), is a Buddhist nun and musician from the Nagi Gompa nunnery in Nepal. She is known in Nepal and throughout the world for bringing many Tibetan Buddhist chants and feast songs to mainstream audiences.
Ani Choying was born in 1971 in Kathmandu, Nepal, to Tibetan exiles. She entered monastic life as a means of escape from her physically abusive father, and she was accepted into the Nagi Gompa nunnery at the age of 13. For a number of years, the monastery's resident chant master (who was trained directly by the wife of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche) taught Ani Choying the music that she is famous for performing.
In 1994, guitarist Steve Tibbetts visited the nunnery and eventually recorded much of the Tibetan music with Ani Choying on two albums. The recordings, titled Chö and Selwa, were released to critical acclaim. Tibbetts and Ani Choying embarked on small performance tours, which included shows at several historical Tibetan monasteries.