Читать книгу Blazing Splendor - Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche - Страница 21
ОглавлениеAmong the many remarkable masters who were disciples of Chokgyur Lingpa, one of the foremost was the learned scholar Karmey Khenpo. He was regarded as a reincarnation of Shantarakshita, the great pandita from Sahor in India who was the very first master invited to Tibet for the construction of Samye monastery.
Karmey Khenpo started out as a Kagyu practitioner and the main khenpo-preceptor—abbot and chief teacher—at Karma Gön, one of the three seats of the Karmapa.
He was no ordinary person, and an ancient terma by Padmasambhava predicted he would become Chokgyur Lingpa’s main disciple. He became a very devoted follower and extremely realized. Yet he usually served as Chokgyur Lingpa’s attendant, even though he was said to be as learned as the renowned fifteenth-century master Karma Chagmey. The erudite Dudjom Rinpoche—one of the most outstanding masters of recent times—was amazed by Karmey Khenpo’s writings and once told me, “It’s so wonderful that someone like Karmey Khenpo could possibly exist in this world.”
My grandmother told me, “When I was young and went to see my father, if Karmey Khenpo was in with him, I would complain to my mother, ‘Now we have no chance of seeing Daddy. Karmey Khenpo just slipped in and for sure he’ll stay in there for at least an hour or two!’
“He seemed to have endless questions, and he always carried a silver ink pot, a bamboo pen and some blank paper, so that when he asked Chokgyur Lingpa questions he could write down the answers on the spot.62 He was an extraordinary master; he looked like one of the sixteen arhats in the traditional fresco paintings.”
Karmey Khenpo adhered strictly to the rules for a monk: during his entire life he never let meat or alcohol touch his tongue. It was also said that his hand had never even grazed a woman nor had he ever allowed a lie to cross his lips.
Even though he was so gifted and close to Chokgyur Lingpa, Karmey Khenpo never had the good fortune to receive the Three Sections of the Great Perfection from the great tertön in person. He was a bit upset at not receiving it. “Chokgyur Lingpa had so many termas,” Karmey Khenpo would lament, “but the one I regard as the real essence I haven’t had the good fortune to receive.” I was told he agonized over it. But after the tertön passed away, Karmey Khenpo had a vision of Chokgyur Lingpa’s wisdom-body and received the complete empowerments and transmissions of the Three Sections then. This restored his self-confidence.
“Even though I was never lucky enough to receive the Three Sections while Chokgyur Lingpa was alive, my transmission is unique,” he later told the Chokling of Tsikey, a reincarnation of Chokgyur Lingpa.63
“After Chokgyur Lingpa dissolved into the basic space beyond form,” he explained, “his immaculate wisdom-body appeared before me and transmitted the Three Sections to me in full. As I am the only one to have received this transmission mind-to-mind, it is not just unique but of a higher level than yours. Because of that, this lineage I now hold should not be broken. I could pass it on to whomever requests it, but I won’t. Since you are the tertön’s reincarnation, you should possess both lineages, so I will give the empowerment to you and you only.”64
“Karmey Khenpo was that kind of person,” added Tsikey Chokling when he told me the story.
When it came to debating, Karmey Khenpo was a match even for Old Khyentse.65 Sometimes at the end of a philosophical argument, Karmey Khenpo would act like the big winner, and Khyentse would play at being depressed, as if he had lost something of immense value. Khyentse would bemoan his defeat and shed crocodile tears, making everyone laugh.
There are many stories of Karmey Khenpo being thrashed by Old Khyentse. Once Khyentse even threw a torma at him, hitting him right in the head!
But it was all an act they were staging, one that made it look as though they could almost never talk without getting into an argument. Seen from the outside, they seemed to be picking a fight with each other. But from the inside, for anyone who really knew, they used this game to clarify subtle points of understanding, dispel hindrances and enhance progress on the path.
My teacher Samten Gyatso was one of Karmey Khenpo’s disciples, and he told me many stories about him, such as the following.
Once a year in Lhasa, a large tent was set up where all the major scholars, particularly from the three main monasteries—Sera, Ganden and Drepung—would gather to debate, to see who was the best that year. They would sit in rows of twenty facing one another in front of the head of Ganden monastery, who sat on a large throne. Each debate was judged until one scholar emerged as the champion.
One year, Karmey Khenpo happened to be in Lhasa at the time of these grand debates. He did not belong to any of the three prestigious participating monasteries, but one morning he had a strong sense that he should go and join the debating contest. He announced this plan to his attendants.
“Why do you want to do that?” one of them asked. “Won’t it inconvenience you?” This was a polite way of discouraging him—the attendant thought it would be embarrassing for Karmey Khenpo to lose.
“No, I must do it,” insisted the khenpo. “There’s no way around it.”
Karmey Khenpo then took a set of wooden plates of the kind used as book covers and tied them on his chest and back with some string. This was to symbolize that his body was the scripture and that he embodied the Dharma. Then he tossed his monk’s shawl over the wrong shoulder, held his rosary in the wrong hand and instead of wearing his hat with a peak like the other scholars, he flattened it on top of his head. He visualized Chokgyur Lingpa at the crown of his head and himself as the Lion of Speech, a particular form of Padmasambhava indivisible from Manjushri. Confident that he was undefeatable, he entered the debate grounds.
As his turn came, he beat one opponent after the other. When he had finally defeated them all, he found himself in front of the throne holder of Ganden, who declared, “You have won—you are victorious!”
This was quite an extraordinary feat; I doubt any Khampa had ever won before. Tradition has it that all one’s opponents must lay their yellow hats on the ground and then the winner walks over them as a sign of victory. But at that moment Karmey Khenpo thought, “One is supposed to respect even the tiniest shred of religious robes, so if I trample these hats I will be breaking my vows.”
So, instead of taking his “victory march,” he walked over into the shade, bowed his head, covered his face with his hand and slowly walked out. Still, he felt pretty good about himself, for not only had he beaten all the geshe-scholars, but he had also upheld the precepts.
Back in Kham, Karmey Khenpo met the great Khyentse, who was visiting Tsangsar Gompa at the time. After exchanging greetings, he said, “I have some really good news!” and proceeded to tell the story about the debate. He concluded by proudly stating, “And I didn’t even walk on their yellow hats!”
At that, Khyentse snatched up one of his vajras and whacked Karmey Khenpo on the head with it. “You faint-hearted coward! Instead of clinging to the idea of monastic precepts, you could have made the Kagyu and Nyingma teachings famous. What happened to your Khampa courage? Don’t you have any confidence in the view of the inner yogas? You’re supposed to be a Vajrayana practitioner! Your body is a deity, your voice mantra and your mind samadhi, so how can you cling to such low attachments? You are an utter good-for-nothing!”
Then he smacked him again. The khenpo slunk out and wasn’t seen for a while.
Just before his death, Karmey Khenpo said, “Khyentse Rinpoche beat me again and again, sometimes even knocking me to the ground with all his slaps and thrashings. Time and time again he hauled me over the coals. But by beating me he removed the obstacles to a long life; now I’m so old I can’t see—and I’m still unable to die!”
It sounded like a complaint when he said it, but actually it was praise.
Karmey Khenpo lived, I believe, into his early eighties and passed away at his hermitage above Karma Gön. He was then reborn as the son of my aunt.
There had been a prediction from the Lotus-Born master that both Karmey Khenpo and Kongtrul would manifest the rainbow body at the time of death, a sign of great realization. Perhaps it was due to their extensive efforts to benefit others—they were always busy with their many disciples—that neither ended up manifesting the rainbow body.
There are many factors involved in whether a practitioner attains the rainbow body. Karmey Khenpo, for instance, did reach the level at which all mental phenomena dissolve back into the basic nature of reality: the exhaustion of concepts and phenomena. But even though at that exalted level he should have displayed the rainbow body—the outward sign of this state of realization—he did not do so.
Likewise, the terma revelations of Chokgyur Lingpa predicted that Kongtrul would leave in a rainbow body when he passed away. But this was prevented because his activities on behalf of sentient beings were too encompassing. One major reason for this is that when there are a lot of disciples, then there are sure to be some broken samayas by some of them; broken samayas have consequences for the teacher and so can prevent the manifestation of a rainbow body. The tantric teachings describe the “rainbow body with remainder,” an occurrence that depends upon the purity of samaya of disciples and benefactors.
But there are exceptions: not too long ago, Nyagla Pema Dudul attained the rainbow body when he died in the middle of his camp of five hundred disciples; it seems none of them managed to prevent it. Still, most other teachers with the same level of realization, and who have taught openly and widely to numerous disciples, typically do not attain a rainbow body, despite the possibility that they would have done so if they had had fewer students.
That is probably why it is taught, “If you want to attain the rainbow body, don’t have too many disciples.”
Wangchok Dorje was one of Chokgyur Lingpa’s three children. One of our chant texts describes him as the “magical display” of King Jah, meaning that he was a reincarnation of the Indian king who, right after the Buddha’s passing, received the Eighteen Mahayoga Tantras from Vajrapani, the timeless lord of the tantric teachings. Wangchok Dorje and my grandmother, Könchok Paldrön, were born from the same mother, Lady Degah. The mother of the third child, Tsewang Norbu, was a niece of Old Khyentse.
After chanting hundreds of thousands of Manjushri mantras, and due to his training in former lives, Wangchok Dorje developed an incredibly sharp intelligence; his insights left people speechless. I have been told that his realization—where he was on the path and the levels he attained—was higher than even that of his tertön father. Wangchok Dorje was still very young when, entirely on his own, he spontaneously recognized the nature of mind.
17. King Jah—the master of Mahayoga
Later, when people would ask him for meditation teachings, he would reply, “I’m not the kind of person who can guide you to the nature of mind. I didn’t get up on the roof by climbing the stairs one at a time. I got here in one leap. Even if I were to describe my meditation state, you wouldn’t be able to grasp it.”
It had been prophesied that Wangchok Dorje would reveal all the remaining termas among the New Treasures that hadn’t yet been revealed by his father and ensure their propagation. He was of that caliber.
From childhood he could see the magical script of the dakinis as though it were right in front of his eyes and he could transcribe it, along with the connected teachings, at will, as they arose in the expanse of his mind. But despite the prophecy, this ability was never put to its fullest use.
People found Wangchok Dorje incredibly handsome; some even said he had the features of a god and that they had never seen anyone so beautiful. He was quite tall and very strong, with a noble bearing. His hair was very unusual; he wore it long, braided and wrapped around his head. It was described as a “magnetizing tiara,” which meant that it had never been cut and that a dakini dwelled in every strand. His hair shone with a dark blue luster and when he washed it, it never tangled, even if he didn’t comb it.
Being both the son and the lineage holder of Chokgyur Lingpa, Wangchok Dorje by tradition was supposed to have sons to carry on the family and the lineage. People say he had one hundred lovers. Wherever he went, word went around that girls who wanted a “body connection”—a very physical blessing—with the handsome tulku could just come by to see him. The young women would literally line up, waiting at his quarters each evening.
But Wangchok Dorje was also an accomplished yogi who had reversed the flow of the white essence and, unlike ordinary men, who ejaculate, he never made anyone pregnant. I don’t know whether this was good or bad, but that’s the way it happened. On the other hand, how often in the old days did you hear of someone who had one hundred girlfriends, yet never made even one of them pregnant?
Chokgyur Lingpa had immense confidence in the great master Paltrul and all his children—including Wangchok Dorje—became Paltrul’s disciples. After Chokgyur Lingpa passed away, Wangchok Dorje journeyed to Paltrul’s encampment. Since many of his disciples were masters in their own right, it was said throughout Kham that his camp was like a den of snow lions, who later spread the roar of the sacred Dharma in all directions.
Being the son of the great tertön, Wangchok Dorje arrived at the camp with great pomp and circumstance, on horseback and with a large retinue.
By contrast, Paltrul was a dedicated monk and of course had no consort. Rather, he would often speak about being “a child of the mountains, wearing the mountain mist as one’s garments” and about the virtues of following the simple lifestyle of the early practitioners of the Kagyu lineage.
One day, Paltrul spoke of following their example by giving up elaborate involvements. “To practice the true Dharma, one should always take the lower seat and wear castaway clothing,” Paltrul told the gathering. “It has never been said that one should put oneself above others and dress up in brocade.”
Inspired, Wangchok Dorje thought, “That’s fine by me!” So he shed all his brocade garments and wore a simple cloak made of inexpensive felt instead. He also dismissed his entourage and sent all his horses back to Chokgyur Lingpa’s monastery, keeping but a single attendant. He then shaved off all his hair and took monk’s vows from Paltrul. He remained there for three years, having abandoned all possessions.
But after he took the pledge to be a wandering renunciate with no possessions and had shaved off all of his wondrous hair, his majestic presence and splendor faded; he became just like an ordinary person. He turned pale and frail, and his back started to bend.
This austere way of life seemed to have a very negative effect on his status as the holder of the terma teachings. In particular, cutting off his hair broke a samaya bond with the dakinis. In order for a tertön to transcribe the sign script of a terma, the syllables have to hover clearly in his vision. But now, he found, they were blurred, darted about, and became smaller and smaller. As a result, he was unable to decode and write down a single terma.
Wangchok Dorje’s journey home was in stark contrast to his imposing arrival—in his father’s fashion—in the company of forty horsemen and a herd of yaks. Instead, he walked on foot all the way from Golok in the northeastern part of Kham, carrying only a staff like a mendicant beggar. He traveled with just two attendants and a single hornless yak as pack animal. All they carried were a few books and the makings for tea.
As they were walking down toward Dzongsar monastery in Derge, Wangchok Dorje fell ill. It must have been quite a severe illness, because in only five or six days he passed away at Khyentse’s mountain retreat, the famous Gathering Palace of Sugatas. No one in the world could prevent this sad event. A procession carried the body back to Chokgyur Lingpa’s seat. The tertön’s cook Pema Trinley, whom I knew as a small kid, was present when Wangchok Dorje passed away. He was then the monastery’s bursar and got stuck with the task of delivering the sad news to the great Khyentse, who was staying nearby.
Pema Trinley, who passed away near the age of ninety, gave me every detail of this story. Upon hearing of Wangchok Dorje’s death, Khyentse was deeply displeased. Feeling that there had been no need for the son of a realized ngakpa to cut his hair,66 he cried out: “Damn! Crazy Paltrul made Wangchok Dorje cut his hair and turned him into a renunciate—and now look what has happened! How tragic! This proves how little merit there is in the present age of decline. Padmasambhava himself made the prophecy that this son of the tertön would have spread his termas from the Chinese border in the east all the way to Mount Kailash in the west, benefiting beings like unfurling an immense sheet of white cloth. Now crazy Paltrul has messed everything up!”
Khyentse then slapped his fists against his chest, expressing despair in typical Khampa fashion. “The auspicious coincidence didn’t hold up,” he moaned with a very morose expression. “He was supposed to be the one to reveal and propagate the remaining termas.”67
Pema Trinley presented an offering on behalf of the deceased and said, “Rinpoche, please give us an indication of where we can find his rebirth. I have given you an offering and I need to return with the information.”
“Goodness!” replied Khyentse. “Before they were sister and brother; now they may be son and mother.”
The great Khyentse continued to look upset and beat his chest. That was all he said by way of prediction.
No more than a year had passed when Khyentse confirmed that in fact my grandmother Könchok Paldrön’s newborn son was Wangchok Dorje’s reincarnation.
“Listen up!” Old Khyentse said. “Isn’t it true that Könchok Paldrön has just given birth to a boy? I tell you, there is no doubt that he is Wangchok Dorje!”
Then Old Khyentse ratified it in writing.
Old Khyentse continued, “Her second son doesn’t have a long life, but naming him Immortal Vajra will provide an auspicious circumstance for prolonging his life.” And that is how my father got his name: Chimey Dorje.
Chokgyur Lingpa’s collected works—apart from the forty volumes of his termas—comprised two volumes and Wangchok Dorje’s writings a single thick volume. Both had been laboriously written out by hand rather than printed with woodblocks. I kept one copy of both these collections. After I left for Central Tibet, I wrote my monastery asking them to send me these texts. Later I heard that the caretakers of my monastery refused to send anything of value.68 You might wonder what they were thinking! The precious handwritten texts were left in Kham, but what was the use? This is what happens when woodblocks aren’t made!
A few years after the Chinese invasion, news went around of a coming boon to humankind: something called a “cultural revolution.” This deceit was what the hordes of liars who followed the invading soldiers propagated. Sure enough, when the wave of the Cultural Revolution swept over our country, enormous changes occurred: our monasteries were destroyed and all our literature was reduced to ashes.
Wangchok Dorje’s writings were probably destroyed, as most Buddhist scriptures were thrown into the flames. The Chinese communists were so menacing that they were able to coerce the villagers to gather all their books and toss them into a big fire. Then the occupation officials announced, “From this moment onward, if we find a single book in your house, the owner will be hanged. Each volume of scripture shall cost one life.”
At that, many frightened people threw their precious books into the rivers. But some were buried in the ground with the hope that they would one day be retrieved—but when they were later dug up unfortunately they had rotted away. Still, our country is so huge that I wonder if some won’t eventually turn up.69 In fact, one very beautiful text that Wangchok Dorje wrote when he was only sixteen, called Inexhaustible Garland of Lightning, did survive; we still use it daily in our monasteries. How wonderful it would be if even just a few more like that have survived.
Tsewang Norbu’s mother was Old Khyentse’s niece.70 The Lotus-Born master had also foretold that this consort would give birth to a reincarnation of Yudra Nyingpo.71
Since the Three Sections was the heart essence of Vairotsana, it was entrusted to his foremost disciple in Kham, Yudra Nyingpo. That is also why Yudra Nyingpo’s reincarnation, Tsewang Norbu, had to be the first to receive the empowerment. As Padmasambhava’s prophecies tend to be very precise, it was even predicted in the terma itself that “within one to three years he should be given this terma.”72
Tsewang Norbu was quite humble; he once told Samten Gyatso, “I’m nothing special, not at all. I don’t have any great qualities, not a single one, except for one thing: even though I was just six months old at the time, I clearly remember receiving the Three Sections from the two great treasure masters.” As a matter of fact, the Three Sections had just then been revealed.73
Twenty-five people were present at this event, including Khyentse and Karmey Khenpo. The moment the terma was revealed Chokgyur Lingpa called out to the child’s mother, “Bring the kid here!”
She brought the baby over, wrapped in blankets, and sitting on a tray of woven reeds covered with a layer of dried sheep droppings and then with a couple of layers of cloth. This was all in typical Khampa style for an infant, leaving the child free to pee whenever need be.
Tsewang Norbu sat right between Khyentse and Chokling while he received the empowerment. Chokgyur Lingpa first conferred the empowerment on the baby and only then upon Khyentse. But because of the command that this empowerment only be given one on one, no one else received it—not even Kongtrul. That is also why the many lineages for the Three Sections all went through Tsewang Norbu. Later on, he came to be the one who did the most to ensure the propagation of Chokgyur Lingpa’s termas.74
Until Tsewang Norbu was about a year old, an eagle perched on the roof of his parents’ house every single day. Later, the great Khyentse said this was the Eagle-Winged Goddess who guards the Three Sections.
Like his siblings, Tsewang Norbu was a disciple of the great Paltrul. Once in Kham, he had gone up on the mountainside near Paltrul’s encampment to spend ten days in a cave. As he didn’t intend to stay long, he only took a small bag of tsampa with him.
One night, there was a heavy snowfall and he was snowed in. The snow kept falling and falling. He failed to return; after a couple of months, word spread in Paltrul’s camp that Tsewang Norbu must have passed away. Finally, his death was taken for granted, and virtuous actions were done in his name, including the traditional burnt offerings of food to nurture the spirit of the deceased.
Six months later, the snow finally thawed. One day, someone let out a scream: Tsewang Norbu’s corpse was walking into camp! People began scattering right and left to get out of its way, afraid of being touched by the rolang, a Tibetan-style zombie.
“Don’t worry, it’s just me!” Tsewang tried to assure them.
Finally, after things settled down, someone had the chance to ask, “How is it you didn’t starve to death?”
“Why would I starve to death?” he replied, “When I was thirsty I ate snow and when hungry I ate from my bag of tsampa. You don’t starve if you have provisions.”
Later he explained that he had survived on a mere spoonful of tsampa a day. In other words, he wouldn’t admit to a thing. The truth was he had attained mastery in yoga, including full control over the subtle channels and energies, and so he probably spent most of the time in samadhi.75
He also mentioned one interesting point, “It seems there is good reason to burn offerings of tsampa and other foodstuffs during the seven weeks after someone’s demise. I personally found it quite helpful as I felt neither hungry nor cold during those forty-nine days. Even inside my cave I could sometimes smell the smoke from the offerings being made for me at the monastery.”
Tsewang Norbu was also extremely learned—the equal of Karmey Khenpo. He claimed that his scholarship was merely due to spending his early years with the great Khyentse. As Tsewang Norbu was Old Khyentse’s grandnephew, he could easily spend long periods of time with the master. So Tsewang Norbu received most of his early teachings at the feet of Khyentse.
“Staying with Khyentse when I was young made me a wealthy man—rich with teachings,” he would say. “Old Khyentse didn’t teach much during the day; he preferred just to relax with his disciples. At best, you might be able to ask a question or two during the day. But when evening fell and everyone heard the ring of the bell, they would gather at his hermitage. The empowerment began during the night.
“An hour or so before dawn, he would say, ‘Now it’s time for the old man to get some sleep. You better go and do the same.’ Only then would all of us disciples leave his room.”
Tsewang Norbu was eccentric and, like many a yogi, spontaneous and direct. One distinctive peculiarity of his was never to do what a dignitary or high lama told him to. For instance, not even Khakyab Dorje, the fifteenth Karmapa, had been able to force Tsewang Norbu to give him the transmissions for the New Treasures.
The Karmapa’s attendant and close disciple Jampal Tsultrim was an important teacher in his own right, as well as one of the chief disciples of the Karmapa. So Karmapa chose him to go to Lhasa, to try his best to compel Tsewang Norbu to give the sought-after empowerments.
“Since you’re the son of Chokgyur Lingpa, the Karmapa is sending you this white scarf and telling you to give him the transmissions,” he said.
“No way!” Tsewang Norbu replied, “Do you want a dog to put a paw on a human’s head? You’re talking nonsense. Don’t even bring it up, you little monk.”76 Thus, he compared the Karmapa to a mere human being and himself to a dog—and even called this important and famous lama “little monk.” In short, Tsewang Norbu couldn’t be coerced by anyone.
Jampal Tsultrim later said he had “never met anyone as stubborn as Tsewang Norbu. Karmapa is Avalokiteshvara in the flesh, so who wouldn’t rejoice in giving him Chokgyur Lingpa’s termas as an offering?” But Tsewang Norbu still wouldn’t cave in to such pressure.
Some years later, Samten Gyatso (who was Tsewang Norbu’s nephew,) went to Central Tibet to fulfill the Karmapa’s wish.
Tsewang Norbu was a monk during the first half of his life, but that didn’t last. At one point Old Khyentse told him, “You must go to Mindrolling and stay there.” So off he went, staying for eight years in one of the most important centers for learning in Central Tibet.
Despite his standing as the only living son of the great tertön, Tsewang Norbu’s style was to arrive unannounced, without the slightest pomp. So he enrolled at Mindrolling as a common monk to pursue his studies. But he must have made himself count somehow, since we find his name in the records of lineage masters who transmitted important teachings at Mindrolling. Without him, those teachings might have been lost.
Tsewang Norbu was not pushy, and he was a monk at heart—so during those eight years at Mindrolling the thought of marrying the head lama’s daughter never even entered his mind. So despite the terma prophecy, after eight years he returned to Kham, still a monk.
But when he returned to Kham, he was scolded by Khyentse: “You useless good-for-nothing, you didn’t do your job!”
“What do you mean I didn’t do my job?”
“A descendant of Chokgyur Lingpa was supposed to replenish the bloodline at Mindrolling. That’s why I sent you! But you’re useless!”77
“How am I supposed to replenish their bloodline? They are humans, but I am just a dog. It never occurred to me that humans and dogs marry.”
Still, Old Khyentse was set on Chokgyur Lingpa’s son having descendants one way or another. So he forced Tsewang Norbu to give back his monk’s vows and become a ngakpa. Moreover, Khyentse arranged for him to have a consort from a devoted family, but they didn’t have any children.
After that, another consort from a family in Derge was arranged, still with the same lack of results.
Sometimes Tsewang Norbu would complain with his wry sense of humor, “Darn! I’m totally useless. I didn’t keep the monastic precepts and so I’m a fallen monk. But I also haven’t produced any children. My life has been wasted—I’m a total failure!”
Some lamas, hearing this, would become quite unsettled by his deadpan humor. And in Nangchen there is now a saying about being “as useless as Tsewang Norbu” and not accomplishing any worldly or spiritual achievements.
In the later part of his life, Tsewang Norbu went to live in Central Tibet, where he became known for his strange behavior. While he was there, it happened that the thirteenth Dalai Lama went to India.78 One sign of Tsewang Norbu’s status was that the Tibetan government in Lhasa requested him to perform a ritual for repelling foreign invasions. He performed it meticulously at the Ramoche temple in Lhasa, which contains one of the two most famous Jowo statues in all of Tibet.
Although Tsewang Norbu had held the position of a very high lama in Kham, after going to Central Tibet he changed his ways radically. He would often invite beggars in for tea, long conversations and a few laughs—he was that kind of master. And in other ways he was known to act contrary; as the saying goes, “If they said HUNG, he would say PHAT.”
He usually wore a very simple sheepskin coat. But one day he put on a fine brocade robe. “Rinpoche, why are you dressing up like that?” his servant asked. “You never dress up.”
“Quiet!” Tsewang Norbu said. “Today we are going to meet the king of all tantric yogis in this world.”
“And who might that be?” the servant asked.
“Khakyab Dorje, the Karmapa,” was the reply. “I’m supposed to be a ngakpa, so today is a good day to dress the part.”
And he rode off to Tsurphu with great dignity. But the moment they got back to Lhasa, he immediately put his sheepskin coat back on.
When he was quite old, head chanter Trinley, who had been one of Tsewang Norbu’s disciples, told me the following story:
“Sometimes I just couldn’t understand what Tsewang Norbu was up to—I even wondered whether my teacher had gone crazy or something. Early one morning, Tsewang Norbu declared, ‘Today we are going to hold a great feast! Go to the meat market and invite as many slaughterhouse shepherds as you can.’
“These particular slaughterhouse shepherds were a motley crew; they were very poor and quite grimy. Their only job was to lead animals to the chopping block. After a while, fifty or sixty of them were standing in the courtyard. In the meantime, Tsewang Norbu’s disciples had set up a large table for food.
“Tsewang Norbu came out and told them all to sit down in lines, as if they were monks in a temple. First they were served a lavish meal, with Tsewang Norbu sitting right there among them, at the head of the row. He then asked for a text and, while they were all sitting in line eating, he started chanting the liturgy for the terma Embodiment of Realization.79
“These shepherds, to say the least, were unused to sitting in an organized group practice like a bunch of monks. They were trapped there, fidgeting a lot—but nevertheless enjoying the food.
“At the end, after the guests had left, I asked, ‘What are you up to, Rinpoche? In all of Lhasa, there are no worse people than those guys—they are the ones who lead the animals to slaughter. They push the poor animals the last few steps and afterwards help chop up the wretched animals’ carcasses. Why are you spending so much money on people like that?’
“‘Hey! Don’t talk like that,’ Tsewang Norbu replied. ‘Today I performed the feast offering in the company of several perfect bodhisattvas. Besides me, who has the merit to do so these days? I don’t have a flicker of doubt about this. Today was an auspicious day.’”
That’s just one example of the strange kinds of things Tsewang Norbu would do.
Tsewang Norbu also had amazing clairvoyant powers—to such an extent that he frightened people. Trinley, the head chanter, also told me this story:
One day, Tsewang Norbu went to perform a big smoke offering ritual for the longevity of a household in Lhasa. The father of the house had great faith in Tsewang Norbu; at the end of the ceremony he approached and asked, “I wonder how our luck and health will be next year.”
“Oh, yeah! Your luck and health?” Tsewang Norbu proclaimed, “You’ll be dead next year and not one month will pass before your wife will be dead too.”
“But what about our son? What will he do?” the man gasped.
“He won’t stay here without you; he’ll be distraught and leave. Next year your house will be empty,” Tsewang Norbu declared.
“Oh, no, here he goes again!” Trinley thought to himself, “Why did he have to go and do that? This is so inauspicious.”
The following year, Trinley heard that the man had died, then about a month later that the wife had died and, finally, that the son had left, leaving the house empty.
Though I never met him when I was young I saw a photograph of Tsewang Norbu that had been taken in Bhutan; it hung in Samten Gyatso’s private room at Fortress Peak. He was tall and stout like Dilgo Khyentse, and he was strikingly handsome.
At Tsikey monastery, Tsewang Norbu would often go for a walk outside by himself; in the afternoon he could be seen sitting for long stretches of time near the bank of the Kechu River.80
As a young boy, my father and some friends once saw the imposing frame of a man sitting very straight and alone by the river. My father, the leader of this gang of small monks, made a proposal:
“This big guy comes here every day to kill the poor fish. Let’s hit him on the head with a stone to teach him a lesson. Keep quiet now . . .”
They snuck closer—but just when they were about to throw the stone, Tsewang Norbu gave a loud cough, almost as though in warning. They immediately recognized who it was and fled in all directions.
“If he hadn’t coughed, I would surely have hit him right in the neck,” my father later said. “I was that wild. If it hadn’t been for Tsewang Norbu’s clairvoyance, I would have been responsible for hitting him with a stone! How would I have lived with that?”
A lot of what we now call Chokgyur Lingpa’s termas actually appeared through the combined efforts of Khyentse, Kongtrul and the tertön himself. They passed a lot of transmissions among themselves, but all these streams merged in Tsewang Norbu.
Once Khyentse and Kongtrul were requested to confer the empowerments for the Treasury of Precious Termas at Riwoche monastery, in the Chamdo province between Lhasa and Kham. Riwoche was a major center for the Dharma, so this was no small occasion.
“The Treasury is the quintessence of all the terma revelations of the hundred major tertöns,” the lamas at Riwoche repeatedly insisted. “We must receive this transmission.”
When told that Khyentse couldn’t come, they asked Kongtrul instead. But both Khyentse and Kongtrul were too old at this point. So the two masters discussed the invitation with each other and agreed to send Tsewang Norbu as their substitute.81
Tsewang Norbu went to Riwoche and transmitted the entire Treasury of Precious Termas. At the end, he continued right on transmitting all the New Treasures. The two reincarnations of Chokgyur Lingpa—Tsikey Chokling and Neten Chokling—both attended, as did Samten Gyatso and Uncle Tersey.
One of the last empowerments was for the Three Sections of the Great Perfection. Prior to conferring it, Tsewang Norbu said, “The Three Sections cannot be given in public nor even in small, private groups. There is a strict command of secrecy, the breaking of which will have severe consequences—as dangerous as picking something from inside the mouth of a poisonous viper. I can only give it to one of you at a time.”
He then made each of them hold on to his shawl and swear an oath, telling them, “You must only pass this sacred teaching on as a lineage restricted to a single recipient at a time!”
Tsewang Norbu also told the lamas, “After my death, people will search for my reincarnation. It may happen that someone will try to pin my name onto some unfortunate bardo spirit who has been floundering around and has just managed to come into a human body for the first time in a long while. Doing so will ensure his rebirth in the lower realms with no chance of escape. Don’t search for my tulku!
“If my next incarnation does serve Chokgyur Lingpa’s teachings, he will do so either directly or indirectly. You should definitely not try to find him! Take hold of my shawl and promise me that, all four of you!” He emphatically prohibited any recognition of his tulku, and so the four of them had no choice but to swear not to look for one after his death.
None of his main disciples dared to try to find him. I have heard that there have been some attempts lately to find a present incarnation, but thinking of that oath, I personally wouldn’t dare to ask any master for his location.
When he died, Tsewang Norbu was staying in Nyemo in the district of Tsang, to the west of Lhasa. I believe he was in his sixties. Just before his death, he told his attendant, “The main seat of my brother and me was Tsikey monastery. Send all my possessions there together with this note. And while you are at it, you might as well take along any bones from my cremated body.
“I have managed to compile a complete set of the New Treasures, so do not let anyone pilfer from it. My father’s reincarnation, as well as my brother’s rebirth, both live at Tsikey—you must hand-deliver this collection directly to them. And this note is my final will and testament. I do not have a single word to add besides what is written here, except that you must spread the word that ‘Tsewang Norbu died like an old dog in a village called Nyemo.’ Promise me that this is what you will answer if anyone should ask about me. Spread this message far and wide to all the lamas back in Kham.”
Tsewang Norbu’s personal copies of the New Treasures, his icons and his implements for empowerments were all kept at Tsikey until the Cultural Revolution.
Those who were present at his cremation were amazed to see a ray of rainbow-colored light extending from the funeral pyre to a point distant in the sky. I don’t remember if there were any relic pills in his ashes, but I heard that some of his bones were filled with sindhura powder—I’m not sure anyone would call that “dying like an old dog.”
