This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Jamgon Kongtrul was born into a family practicing Bon, the indigenous Tibetan tradition that predates and coexists alongside Buddhism, at Rongyab Pema Lhatse in the Dergé region of Kham, a documented family origin distinct from the mature editorial project, the Five Great Treasuries, his first article covers. His path into Buddhist monastic life began only in his later teens, sent first to Zhechen monastery for initial training and then, at around age twenty one, to Palpung monastery at the insistence of the local chieftain who had sponsored him, a course of training directed by others and distinct from the voluntary, adult decision to gather and cross check every major lineage's teachings that defines the Rime project his first article describes.
At Palpung he took full monastic ordination and studied under Situ Pema Nyinche Wangpo, the reigning head of the Palpung lineage, receiving transmissions from him and dozens of other teachers across traditions including the Kagyu and Jonang, a documented and extensive formal education distinct from the conservationist, cross sectarian identity for which he later became known. The breadth of that training, drawn from teachers his family's own Bon background gave him no automatic claim to, laid the foundation the Rime project would later draw on.
That a boy born into a Bon household with no family claim on Buddhist standing was sent, not entirely by his own choosing, into training under one of the era's most significant Kagyu teachers, marks Kongtrul's Palpung education as a documented case where the eventual architect of a movement built to preserve every Tibetan lineage began his own religious life outside the tradition he would spend his life cataloguing.