Drogon Tsangpa Gyare was born into the Gya clan at a place near Kule in the Tsang province of Southern Tibet.
As a young man, Drogon Tsangpa Gyare was a practitioner who studied the Sutra canon of the time, including Logic, The Way of the Bodhisattva, Metaphysics, the Transcendent Perfection of Great Wisdom and the Middle Path.