Jigdal Dagchen Sakya Rinpoche (Tibetan: འཇིགས་བྲལ་བདག་ཆེན་ས་སྐྱ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ།, ZYPY: Jigchä Dagqên Sa'gya Rinboqê; alt.

Jigchai Dagqên Sa'gya Rinboqê; November 2, 1929 – April 29, 2016)[1] was a Tibetan Buddhist teacher educated in the Sakya sect.

Dagchen Rinpoche was in the twenty-sixth generation of the Sakya-Khön lineage descended from Khön Könchok Gyalpo and was regarded as an embodiment of Manjushri as well as the rebirth of a Sakya Lama from the Ngor sub-school, Ewam Luding Khenchen (The Great Abbot from the Luding family) Gyase Chökyi Nyima.

With these two teachers, Rinpoche studied the Tibetan alphabet, composition, classical literature, philosophy, and the Four Classes of Tantra (esoteric Buddhism).

After having successfully completed this training, Dagchen Rinpoche received from his father the Sakya-Khon lineage transmission of Vajrakilaya (a meditational deity whose name means the “Dagger of Indestructible Reality”), and the complete Lamdré Tsokshey (The Path and Its Fruit in its more esoteric form), which is the main teaching of the Sakya tradition.

In 1950, at age 21, Dagchen Rinpoche married Sönam Tsezom, who descends from a family of lamas and doctors of East Tibet (Kham).

Following that, over the next decade Rinpoche held several positions at the University of Washington, including working in the Anthropology Department and at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.

For the purpose of the preservation of Tibetan culture and religion, Dagchen Rinpoche oversaw the religious activities and administration of the Monastery from its inception.

Dagchen Rinpoche's interest in ecumenism stemmed from his training as a non-sectarian master, and from his experience as an immigrant who went to the United States seeking religious freedom.

Like the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Rinpoche encouraged inter-religious and interdisciplinary meetings and encounters for Tibetan Buddhists.

It was at the same site of pale earth some thirty years later, in 1073, that Khön Könchok Gyalpo (1034–1102), ancestor of Dagchen Rinpoche, built the first Sakya Monastery.

The Sakya patriarch, Chogyal Pakpa (1235–1280) was given temporal authority over Tibet through the patronage of the Mongol rulers of China.