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Rinpoche took his Getsul vows (novice monk vows) in front of the Regent, Taktrag Rinpoche, who gave him his name Ngawang Losang Chokyi Nyima.
Rinpoche was a very diligent student although at first he did not like to be at Drepung where he suddenly was one out of 10.000 monks, where as before he was the centre of a whole estate and a big household, that was there only for him, which made him feel like a prince. He also found it very difficult to study due to his young age. The other monks in his class were around 18 years old when they started.
 Although Rinpoche was very young and it had already been decided by the Tarab Ladrang who should be Rinpoche's main teacher, Rinpoche followed his own will and went by himself to ask Ven. Khensur Pema Gyaltsen Rinpoche, with whom he was very impressed, if he would be his teacher. Khensur Rinpoche was surprised and taken by this small strong-minded lama and accepted if the Tarab Ladrang would agree - in this way the later famous teacher and Abbot of Drepung University Monastery became Rinpoche's principal teacher.
Apart from helping Rinpoche through the formal academic studies Khensur Rinpoche also taught Rinpoche the yogas. Tarab Rinpoche tells: "When I was ten or eleven Khensur Rinpoche, started to formally train me and three other lamas to work with the dream state. He did not teach us the complicated formal practices of the Dream Yoga, but a simpler method. This was visualizing Manjushri (the Deity of Wisdom), repeating his mantra before going to sleep, and then in the dream state we would experience Manjushri and ask him the questions our teacher had prepared for us. We were then expected to wake up with an answer."
"We did this for about a month, asking questions about different people's health and so on, every night on going to sleep. At the end of this time Khensur Rinpoche told me I had special abilities for working with the dreams in the dream state. He must have told some of his other students too, because many people started to come to me asking questions about their health, how to survive specific illnesses, and what to do in certain situations. I took their questions into my dreams trying to find answers and to gain clarity about their situation through my dreams".
"Khensur Rinpoche kept me busy taking questions into my dream state each night to find answers. The next morning I would tell him the answers and he would teach me to interpret them. I did this every day for about three years. When I was thirteen I received the formal teachings of the Six Yogas, including the Dream Yoga. So from this time on I started to practice the Tantric way of working with the dream state, attaining the full abilities of lucid dreaming and using the dream state for my spiritual development. I continued the dream work alongside many other practices as well as my formal studies. Mainly based on my experiences in working with dreams in the dream state, and through refining my dream state abilities, I later developed theories and practices to deal with dreams for the purpose of either personal development or psychotherapy - that for many years have been part of my teachings for western students."
Rinpoche received a comprehensive traditional education in Buddhist 'Science of Mind and Phenomena', metaphysics as well as the meditation disciplines including tantra, and finished this education at the age of twenty-four with the highest academic degree of a Lharampa Geshe. Early during his training he was recognized for his inquisitive intellect. Rinpoche was never satisfied with the formal teaching, he was always asking further questions, which enabled him to slowly but surely penetrate deeply into the universal aspects of Buddhist 'Science of Mind and Phenomena' already forming the basis for his later development of Unity in Duality. At the age of thirteen Rinpoche started to teach at Drepung. He became well known as one of the very best scholars and debaters and for his great compassion with his opponents - he therefore had many students in Tibet before he had to leave in 1959 at the age of twenty-four.
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Tarab Tulku in Lhasa
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