Читать книгу Blazing Splendor - Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche - Страница 22
ОглавлениеMy grandmother, Könchok Paldrön, was an unusually gifted person, very talented and wise. In our region, women were rarely educated as well as she was. It was hard to find anyone so accomplished in so many ways.
Grandmother knew all the chants and melodies as well as the correct use of ritual implements, having learned them directly from the tertön himself, who often received these melodies in his visions. If it weren’t for her, the authentic tunes and procedures of our lineage would have been lost. She even knew the special ways of blowing the gyaling trumpets. Grandmother was extremely skilled at using the gyaling and everyone at Tsikey who was learning to play it would ask for her critique.
She also transmitted the complex mudras for each of the hundred peaceful and wrathful deities, and the rituals connected to them, which she had learned at Mindrolling monastery according to the thousand-year-old oral tradition. Her grasp of ritual tunes and the use of musical instruments remains the backbone of the New Treasures to this day.
Grandmother was also a respected herbal doctor who dispensed medicine to patients every day. She was an astrologer as well and an expert in several painting styles.82 She was extraordinary.
Grandmother overcame any and all disadvantages of being a woman in our male-dominated Khampa culture. She was so impressive that there were no other women like her around where I grew up.
My first strong memories of my grandmother go back to when I was around seven years old, and she was staying at our family home, the Tsangsar mansion. I went to see her almost every day during those three years. My face must have had a darker, bluish tinge in those days for she nicknamed me Blue Face. She nicknamed my older half-brother Penjik, Pale Face, because of his light complexion.
Later, Grandmother moved to a small nearby chapel for a year and then farther away to lofty Fortress Peak, where she spent three years with her son Samten Gyatso. During that time, I wasn’t able to see her much, since I had gone to stay with my father at his retreat place, Dechen Ling, which was two days’ journey on horseback. She was very generous, always giving me gifts like dried apricots, small bags and other things. She also taught me proper table manners and how to behave in the company of others.
My father was the only son to produce grandchildren and, as I seemed to be her favorite, she lavished me with affection. She would regularly keep me with her to chat and would often share her tsampa with me—passing me small morsels that I would sit and wait for, then happily gobble up. She loved me as though I were her own child.
There was no one who knew the art of torma making as well as Grandmother did. It was really she who taught me how to make the tormas for the New Treasures. Because of her, I had so much experience with rituals that I later served as my father’s shrine master for many years. Although I was still in my teens, he put me in charge of preparing all the necessary objects for the rituals.
The tormas were my particular responsibility; I can’t count how many tormas I made as a teenager. I had first begun to learn the art of torma making from Penjik, who was quite deft with his hands. But there inevitably comes a point in the art of torma making when adjustments and refinements are necessary, so I would go to my uncle Sang-Ngak, who taught me many of the finer points. But when Samten Gyatso brought me along to Tsikey, he told me, “The ultimate arbiter of Chokgyur Lingpa’s torma style is your grandmother.”
One day, she gave me her stamp of approval. When my buddy Dudul and I showed her our tormas, she told me, “While Dudul’s style leans more toward the Mindrolling tradition, yours follows purely the New Treasures. In the future, you can be the backbone of our ritual lineage.”
When I was nineteen, I went to visit her at Tsikey. She would have been about seventy years old by then and was slightly ill. I stayed about two months and received the final teachings from her on how to make tormas. At the end of the two months, I had become quite adept at making all the different tormas used in the rituals for the New Treasures and received Könchok Paldrön’s personal blessing. She told me, “You are actually the best torma maker in this terma tradition.” Today I have no special qualities at all, except I really know how to make those tormas.
My grandmother’s way of correcting people was not by scolding or rebuke; instead she would give advice on “what a good person would do.” It was then up to you to decide to act accordingly.
I never saw or heard of her striking anyone. I remember her saying to us children, “Using small lies as jokes to tease people is not a virtue, but hurtful and wrong. Don’t tease in a mean way. Don’t bicker.”
She would make small suggestions like, “Don’t talk with food in your mouth. Eat gently and quietly. When you talk, don’t yawn or make other unnecessary sounds. Don’t raise your voice without cause; you don’t have to yell when you are talking to the person next to you. Speak like a gentleman: take the time to find the right words, then speak. By rushing you only end up sounding like a lunatic.”
Such was the sort of advice she gave me as a small child. Every single time I went to see her, I got some such guidance.
Despite her noble heritage, my grandmother—or Precious Mother, as we addressed her—was incredibly humble, always taking the lower seat. Various lamas and important disciples of her father came to pay her their respects. Invariably she would say, “There is no need for you to come and see this old lady. What has gotten into you lamas?”
The only way anyone could bow to her was by doing so outside her room, before entering. She would never remain seated as they greeted her with joined palms; if they bowed down she would get up and move away, saying, “What kind of lamas are you—bowing down to this old woman?”
While Grandmother was living at Fortress Peak, the lamas from Gebchak, the impressive nunnery nearby, would come to pay their respects to the daughter of the great tertön. Samten Gyatso would enter her room to announce which lama had come and she would say, “Why are they here? There’s nothing they can get from me. Don’t even bring it up again! They don’t need to meet me.”
Of course, Samten Gyatso couldn’t tell an important lama to just go away, so he would arrange some seating for them in the meadow and then invite Grandmother to come outside and enjoy the weather. The lama was then told to approach slowly, from the other side, as if just strolling by, and then they could begin a conversation. Otherwise, there was no way to meet her; she was simply too humble.
Maybe her sincere humility was the reason the Chokling of Tsikey, who compiled Chokgyur Lingpa’s biography, could find no way to approach her, let alone hear her stories. Whatever the reason, he didn’t tap her memory when writing the official version of the tertön’s life story.
Despite all the great masters she met earlier in her life, Könchok Paldrön’s root guru was her own son, Samten Gyatso. He was the one who gave her the essential meditation instructions. Of course she had received transmissions from other masters, including her brother Wangchok Dorje, who passed away at an early age. But it was Samten Gyatso who pointed out mind essence to her so that she recognized it unmistakenly—and that defines a root guru.
This is quite astounding if you think about it: her own son!
Samten Gyatso told me that he was amazed by his mother’s level of meditation. When her life was drawing to a close, she had reached the level known as collapse of delusion, at which point there are no more dreams during sleep; the dream state is totally purified. Indeed, the tantric scriptures mention that at a certain point the stream of dreaming ceases, so that throughout day and night the continuity of luminous wakefulness is no longer interrupted.
She was truly amazing! People often said that their trivial thoughts and worries would immediately subside the moment they entered her room. One would feel very lucid and quiet. It was extraordinarily palpable.
This daughter of Chokgyur Lingpa was unusual in so many ways. For instance, she had three visions in which she met Tara as if in person—as though they were just having a conversation. This was not public knowledge, as she never mentioned a thing to anyone but my uncle Samten Gyatso. She didn’t even tell me herself; I heard it from him.
18. Tara—the female buddha of compassion
The local people trusted her deeply. They would often ask for some grains of barley she had blessed, to carry in a small amulet bag on their body. They would also tie her protection amulets around the necks of their goats and sheep. Some people even tested whether her protection actually worked by shooting rifles at their goats.
“Each time I hit the goat,” one of them told me, “after the impact it would cry out in pain, “Baaaaah!” But on closer inspection, I couldn’t find a bullet wound anywhere. The amulet made my goat bulletproof—and I’m not lying!”
This test was perhaps not so bad; it made people trust in her protection.
Könchok Paldrön also remembered once traveling with her mother to Old Khyentse’s main residence in Derge, when Khyentse, Kongtrul and Chokling were all still alive.
The three masters performed an elaborate drubchen practice together—continuing for nine days and nights without interruption—probably using the terma known as Embodiment of Realization.83 She and her brother Wangchok Dorje sat in. When it came time for the feast, the great Khyentse said, “As an auspicious coincidence, you two siblings must wear the tantric ornaments and bring the plates of feast offerings.”
Grandmother remembered the two of them standing up and holding the plates in front of the three masters while they were singing the slow and melodious feast song. “My brother looked like a little god,” she recalled, “and he had such a beautiful face—beyond belief!”
At the end, Old Khyentse joined his palms and said, “These children are certainly the offspring of a vidyadhara lineage.”
My grandmother also remembered meeting the great Paltrul.
Paltrul and her father, the tertön, met at Dzogchen monastery in the neighboring Derge kingdom. At the time, the tulku of Yongey Mingyur Dorje was the tertön’s attendant, serving him tea and cooking his meals.
At dawn, Chokgyur Lingpa told him, “This morning the great master Paltrul Rinpoche is coming to see me. Please make special preparations.”
A while later, when Yongey came out of the master’s room after pouring him tea, he saw an old man at the door. Dressed in Golok style instead of lama’s robes, he wore a simple sheepskin coat with the hairless side covered in red cloth. He had a large frame and a prominent nose.
“I must see Chokgyur Lingpa!” was all he said. Then he proceeded to walk in.
As the tertön’s visitors never entered his quarters unannounced, Yongey blocked the door, saying, “Wait! Wait! It’s not that easy. I must first announce you to the lama.”
“Get out of my way!” the old man said and began to push Yongey aside.
Yongey grabbed the old man’s sleeve and insisted, “You can’t just barge in like this.”
The old man pulled in the opposite direction and they began to tussle. Suddenly Yongey thought to himself, “Maybe this is not an ordinary old man from Golok. Perhaps I should go inside and ask.”
What he had been told earlier about the day’s visitor then dawned on him, but he had assumed that someone looking more like a great master would be coming.
When he turned around, he discovered Chokgyur Lingpa there on the floor prostrating to the old man—who then began bowing down in return. Yongey later said that “after they bowed to each other, they touched heads like two yaks.”
The Dzogchen monastery had invited Chokgyur Lingpa to be a guest of honor, the recipient of auspicious offerings. Since Paltrul was then the master in residence, he was asked to write the formal speech before the offerings.
You can find this talk in Chokgyur Lingpa’s life story. Extremely elegant, the speech showers the tertön with praise, referring to him as the emissary of Padmasambhava.
During this visit, the tertön began to call Paltrul “Dzogchen Paltrul”—a name that stuck—and also gave him the empowerment for his terma containing teachings on the Great Perfection entitled Heart Essence of Samantabhadra. This transmission took place at the retreat center located high above the snow line overlooking the monastery’s Shri Singha College.
Conversely, Chokgyur Lingpa placed Paltrul on a high throne and received the Way of the Bodhisattva from him. So the two masters were definitely connected.
My grandmother recalled that Tsewang Norbu wasn’t there, but Wangchok Dorje was a witness, as was Chokgyur Lingpa’s consort.
Paltrul practiced this particular teaching on the Great Perfection and later said, “I am usually the type of person who gets no visions, signs, nor any other indications of progress, but while practicing this terma something did happen, even for me. This teaching must be for real!”
My grandmother could imitate Paltrul’s strong Golok accent as she recited what he said when giving mind teachings to an old man from that region: “When you don’t follow the past and don’t invite the future, there is nothing else to sustain but the uncontrived, unbridled and free state of your present, ordinary mind.”
In that short statement, he had given the essential teaching of the Great Perfection.
But the old man from Golok then pleaded, “Give me a blessing to ensure that I won’t end up in the hell realms!”
But Paltrul merely replied, “Unless you take care of it yourself, no one else can send you to the pure lands, as though they were just flinging a stone.”
My grandmother reached perfect realization before she passed away at eighty, quite an advanced age for someone in our region. One of my last memories is of her telling me, “I am leaving shortly. I want to leave my body at Tsikey, where my father’s and brother’s remains are kept.”
Grandmother died at Tsikey a few years later.
I didn’t visit her much while she was there, but from time to time I did receive presents from her—small delicate boxes in various colors and other things youngsters like.
Grandmother left her body while sitting up very straight. I remember her cremation, which was performed outside at a distance from Tsikey monastery itself. There was a large funeral pyre shaped like a stupa, in the traditional way. The head lama was Dzigar Kongtrul, a prominent lama in the region. During the cremation, five separate groups performed elaborate sadhanas, each based on different mandalas. Afterward, we discovered large quantities of sindhura powder in the ashes.