Sontar Chonchok Rinpoche

Display of Namkhai Nyingpo, venerable Dharma Ratna.

This line refers to Sontar Chonchok Rinpoche, a great renunciant meditator who spent most of his life in mountain hermitages, focusing on nothing but meditation practice without the distractions of any mundane undertakings. He was an emanation of Namkhai Nyingpo, one of Padmasambhava’s twenty-five close disciples. Chonchok is the Tibetan equivalent of the Sanskrit name Dharma Ratna.
Chonchok Rinpoche was a close Dharma friend of Samten Gyatso, but at the same time they were also each other’s guru and disciple. When clearing up doubts on experience, Samten Gyatso would ask Chonchok Rinpoche. My father, Chimey Dorje, regarded Chonchok Rinpoche as his root guru. In fact, it is due to his great kindness that Chonchok Rinpoche is included in this supplication to the golden garland of masters in the lineage of New Treasures.
Sontar Chonchok spontaneously became a notable realized master. During the latter part of his life, he attained perfection in his meditation training and reached what is called ‘the collapse of delusion’, the last of the four visions, and was said to have arrived at the stage of nonmeditation. Samten Gyatso told me that Sontar Chonchok had attained a level of realization that corresponds to the rainbow body and, though he didn’t exactly leave in a rainbow body, his body did shrink quite a bit after he died — he definitely went beyond delusion. Apparently, when he passed away, there were lights and sounds, ringsel pills and some wondrous designs of rainbow lights in the sky — just like the great Dzogchen scriptures describe. That’s why even Samten Gyatso was amazed.
After Chonchok passed away, my father had a vision of him giving many profound instructions. I can still remember my father’s respect and devotion upon merely hearing Sontar Chonchok’s name mentioned. His devotion was so deep that he would get all choked up if he had to say his name.

--extract from Blazing Splendor, the momoirs of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche