Dza Patrul Rinpoche was among the greatest of the Nyingma masters of the nineteenth century. Considered the speech incarnation of Jigme Lingpa, he wrote a number of important works that are influential not only in the Nyingma school, but throughout Tibet. Born in the Dzachuka Valley in Tibet at the beginning of the nineteenth century, his root guru for Dzogchen teachings and transmission was Jigme Gyalwe Nyugu. Despite being recognised as a great master of the Dzogchen tradition, he was a wandering yogi, living the life of a simple beggar. In the latter part of his life returned to his home at nearby Dzakya Monastery, the seat of his root teacher.

His most famous work is The Words of My Perfect Teacher in which he advocates abstaining from eating meat and abstaining from making so called 'red offerings'.
In this work he writes on red offerings: "...It is said that offering to the wisdom deities the flesh and blood of a slaughtered animal is like murdering a child in front of its mother..."
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About eating meat he says: ..."Especially, nowadays most people crave meat and consume flesh and blood with a second thought, completely oblivious to all the diseases caused by old meat or harmful meat spirits. Unhealthy diets and lifestyles can also give rise to tumours, disorders of phlegm, dropsy and other diseases, causing innumerable deaths..."

"...Some people imagine that only the person who physically carried out the killing is creating a negative karmic effect, and that the person who just gave the orders is not - or, if he is, then only a little. But you should know that the same karmic result comes to everyone involved... Each person gets the whole karmic result of killing one animal. It is not as if one act of killing could be divided up among many people. "
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