18 inch/ 43 cm Tsongkhapa | སྒམ་པོ་པ་བསོད་ནམས་རིན་ཆེན་ | 岡波巴

Known as Jé Rinpoche, Tsongkhapa was born to a father reciting the Expression of the Names of Mañjuśhrī each day and a mother who was always chanting the six-syllable mantra of Avalokiteśhvara — Oṃ Mani Padme Hūṃ, in 1357, in Tsong Kha region of Amdo Province, in eastern Tibet. Among six children, Tsongkhapa was the fourth son and is said to have been a fulfillment of the prophecy that Shakyamuni Buddha stated, as well as the dreams of his parents. 

In his previous incarnation, Tsongkhapa was a young boy who offered the Shakyamuni Buddha a clear crystal rosary and received a conch shell in return. It is said that the Buddha then called his disciple Ānanda and prophesied that the boy would be born in Tibet, would establish a great monastery between the areas of Dri and Den, and would present a crown to the statue of the Buddha in Lhasa along with being instrumental in the flourishing of the Dharma in Tibet. The Buddha gave the young boy the future name of Sumati Kīrti, or, in Tibetan, Losang Drakpa. The conch shell that the Buddha had given the boy was unearthed during the building of Ganden monastery and, until 1959, could still be seen in Drepung, the largest monastery in Tibet. The crown still rests on the head of the Buddha statue in Lhasa. 

After around a thousand years of Shakyamuni Budhha’s parinirvana, further prophesies were given by the Lotus-Born Master, Guru Rinpoche. He predicted that a fully ordained Buddhist monk named Losang Drakpa would appear in the east near the land of China. He said that this monk would be regarded as being an emanation of a bodhisattva of the greatest renown and would attain the complete enjoyment body of a Buddha.