Fearless in Tibet: The Life of the Mystic Terton Sogyal (11 page)

Though Tertön Sogyal had already contemplated these four thoughts for years, he realized even more profoundly how fortunate it was that he had met teachers who could transmit the precious Dzogchen teachings. Inspired by this realization, Tertön Sogyal never lay down but rather meditated throughout the night, contemplating repeatedly the preciousness of his human birth and accepting the inexorability of death, the nature of cause and effect, and that there is no lasting happiness to be found in samsara. Tertön Sogyal’s practice during this period was known as “when the day and night continuously meet,” for he was never separate from the most profound states of meditation. Just as he had done with the instruction of Nyala Pema Dündul and Lama Sonam Thaye, he did not leave the teachings as words on the page, but rather progressively applied each and every instruction so that it became part of his being.

Tertön Sogyal proceeded through the foundational practices of the Dzogchen training. During this period, he had only one robe and nothing on which to sleep. He lived among the forest animals, sleeping on the ground or flat rocks just as they did. He had no pans with which to cook, so his daily sustenance consisted of roasted barley porridge mixed with crystal water from a nearby spring. He endured these austerities without saying a word to his teacher. When Nyoshul Lungtok became aware of Tertön Sogyal’s asceticism, the teacher ordered him to take up residence next to the tent-kitchen.

After Tertön Sogyal completed the foundational practices, he began his uncommon yogic training. Nyoshul Lungtok imparted instructions, section by section, sending Tertön Sogyal away to meditate after each teaching. Nyoshul Lungtok looked for signs when his student returned to report his meditative experiences and dreams, and then he gave the next section attuned to Tertön Sogyal’s experience and deepening realization. This experiential-oriented instruction responds to the predisposition of the student in an immediate and character-altering way, just as a wish-fulfilling jewel grants whatever is desired. Nyoshul Lungtok’s teaching was not in written form, but rather transmitted by whispering the pith instructions into the student’s ear so that it remained uniquely private and profound. Like many of the doctrines taught in Tibet, the transmission that Tertön Sogyal received from Nyoshul Lungtok, who had received it from Patrul Rinpoche, can be traced in an unbroken verbal conveyance of enlightened beings such as Padmasambhava, the saints of India and Tibet, and indeed back to the time of the Buddha.

Nyoshul Lungtok continued to grant the uncommon Dzogchen teachings to Tertön Sogyal, whereby a yogi develops the spontaneous ability to distinguish precisely between reality and delusion. Through this practice, Tertön Sogyal became intimately conscious of the root cause of his own and others’ suffering, which fundamentally is the lack of awareness of the nature of mind. Radical practices are then employed to cut through the ignorance brought on by perpetual clouds of thinking and habitual patterns, to expose vividly the ever-present and all-pervading nature of mind.

Nyoshul Lungtok sent Tertön Sogyal into uninhabited forests where the calls of wild animals echoed throughout the night, and to charnel grounds to meditate where the stench of death was palpable. Sometimes Tertön Sogyal dug a shallow pit into the hillside, creating a low-angle lean-to where he stayed for months, his gaze fixed in the vast sky, merging his awareness with space. With unshakable confidence in the master’s instructions, Tertön Sogyal meditated and engaged in yogic practices until exhaustion overwhelmed both body and mind and he collapsed. Then, lying like a corpse, Tertön Sogyal rested in thought-free wakefulness, allowing the clarity of his lucid awareness to meet face-to-face what is present when thinking is not.

Returning to Nyoshul Lungtok to further clarify specific meditational experiences, Tertön Sogyal received even more refined pith instructions. Applying the instruction to his meditation, Tertön Sogyal continued to purify his body and mind, releasing his inner wisdom from the bonds of subtle ignorance of reality. In solitary retreats, he would assume yogic postures and repeat a mantra while visualizing luminous syllables entering into and dissolving all inner and outer phenomena, including his own body. Then, letting go of all recitations and visualizations, he rested in that which remained present, the spacious and luminous primordial nature of mind.

At night Tertön Sogyal did not drift in mindless dreams but rather remained unaltered in pristine awareness, even as his body went to sleep. As images and emotions from his dreams arose in his mind, he was not led astray like an ox with a nose ring, nor did he fear them like a nightmare. The images and feelings in his dreams flowed by as if in a mirage, where Tertön Sogyal was not attached or averse to them but simply vividly aware of the appearances. After practicing this form of dream yoga, the mental repository from where Tertön Sogyal’s dreams arose was soon emptied. His awareness was freed from his thoughts, which made no more impression on the mind than the writing in a pool of water with a finger. And what remained when his conceptual mind completely collapsed was a constant flow of pure awareness itself—this was the practice of Dzogchen.

Dzogchen is not only an ancient teaching; it is the state of total awakening, buddhahood itself. To practice Dzogchen is to abide in the recognition of one’s primordial nature—and that which recognizes the primordial state is the nature of mind. Though meditation techniques are taught and insights cultivated along the spiritual path, Dzogchen takes the goal of the path as the path itself. Enlightenment is the path, and the path is nothing other than abiding in the natural state. Dzogchen meditation is the recognition, in the present moment, of one’s indwelling perfect buddhahood. Buddhahood, or awakening, is not to be sought in any other place than in the nature of one’s own mind. Tertön Sogyal recognized through his training with Lungtok, again and again, that he was never actually separate from the primordial state of buddhahood.

In order to recognize one’s inherent buddha potential, the student depends upon a realized master’s introduction to the nature of mind. When Lungtok introduced Tertön Sogyal to the nature of mind, it was not as if the master gave the disciple anything he did not already possess. Rather, Lungtok simply pointed out nakedly and vividly what had always been present but had not yet been recognized. It is as if the master holds up a mirror of wisdom and says to the student, “Look, this is your true nature. This is who you really are.”

Donning the yogic mantle of Padmasambhava under Nyoshul Lungtok, Tertön Sogyal embodied the essence of the yogi’s Dzogchen practice. Padmasambhava was once asked how yogis in the future should behave, and he responded:

Though Tertön Sogyal was engaging in profound Dzogchen practices, he still had to maintain his usual chores, including chopping wood for the fire and hauling pails of water to his teacher’s kitchen. One day, Tertön Sogyal returned from the mountainside after a week’s retreat on the
Hum
-syllable recitation—a yogic practice that releases the mind of grasping at the external environment, and at thoughts and emotions, as real and independently existing. When Tertön Sogyal attempted to fill the wood-slat pails at the riverside, they could not hold water. The pails appeared perfectly intact upon examination, but still the water would flow right through the sides. Tertön Sogyal was anxious, seeing the smoke from Nyoshul Lungtok’s kitchen rising and knowing the cook was waiting to boil water for the master’s tea. Nothing that Tertön Sogyal could do kept any water in the pails. Finally, he left, despondent.

Tertön Sogyal walked directly to his teacher’s residence and, bowing down, apologized.

“If I can’t even carry out a menial task like fetching water for tea, how can I realize the highest Dzogchen teachings?”

“Sogyal, my son, do not be ashamed. This is what happens when one accomplishes the Dzogchen
rushen
practice of the syllable
Hum
,” Nyoshul Lungtok said with a broad grin. “It is the sign that you are not investing objects with a false sense of reality.”

Later, when Tertön Sogyal reported to Nyoshul Lungtok that he actually shattered a clay pot in the kitchen with the power of his mantra recitation, the teacher replied, “When Mingyur Namkhai Dorje was in training using the
Hum
-syllable, none of the containers in all of Dzogchen Monastery would hold water!”

Tertön Sogyal was purifying his psychophysical constituents through his meditation practice. The knots in the body’s subtle channels that tend to become constricted were opening so that the inner prana energy flowed smoothly. Signs of this purification manifested in his ability to see through solid objects and prescience.

One morning, Tertön Sogyal saw in his mind a horseman riding toward the encampment. The horseman was a few hours away and, at one point, dismounted to relieve himself. When he got off his horse, the wooden cup inside his overcoat fell to the ground. The man jumped back onto his horse without seeing the cup and continued riding. When he arrived at Nyoshul Lungtok’s tent to pay traditional respects, Tertön Sogyal offered him tea, chuckling, “You’ll have to use one of our bowls, as you won’t find yours inside your coat!”

“Go on, Sogyal, tell him where he lost it,” Nyoshul Lungtok said.

When the nomad returned to where Tertön Sogyal told him, he found the wooden cup.

Studying alongside Tertön Sogyal was Lama Ngakchen. Of Nyoshul Lungtok’s many disciples, they became known as his sun and moon students. They first met while studying together with Lama Sonam Thaye and continued their friendship under Nyoshul Lungtok. One of the similar qualities they developed was a mastery over philosophical and scholarly treatises with little or no study. When wise scholars from the surrounding monasteries such as Katok and Palyul met Tertön Sogyal or Lama Ngakchen, they were immediately struck with the erudition of these men who had not engaged in extended academic training. For Dzogchen yogis, who spend their time in retreat and devoutly serving their master, their meditative experience allows wisdom to unfold from within, awakening the luminous clarity of the mind. This incisive clarity can know all aspects of reality, so even yogis who have studied very little can become omniscient because they see reality as it is.

Privately, these cordial yogi brothers would challenge each other by seeing how far they could move their teacup with telekinesis, or how long they could remain suspended in levitation. Though highly accomplished spiritually, Tertön Sogyal and Ngakchen were not beyond mischief. Once, when Nyoshul Lungtok was away at a local monastery, Tertön Sogyal and Ngakchen skipped a meditation session, led their horses down a secluded tree-lined gulch, and rode into town. They heard from a kitchen hand that a group of Chinese travelers was passing through the area. When the two yogis passed by the Chinese camp, there were two girls in the fields picking flowers.

Tertön Sogyal asked his Dharma brother, “If I can magnetize those girls to come here, what will you give me?”

“Whatever you want.”

“Well, you know that copper Padmasambhava statue in your tent that you meditate on? How about that?”

“I challenge you,” Ngakchen said with a slap on the shoulder.

In a captivating gaze, Tertön Sogyal enticed the Chinese girls to them, hooking them with silent magnetizing mantras emanating from his heart and a majestically slow hand movement. The women walked joyfully toward the two yogis. After flirting briefly with the girls, Tertön Sogyal and Ngakchen were back at the hermitage before Nyoshul Lungtok returned from his ritual duties.

One day Nyoshul Lungtok decided to send Tertön Sogyal on a mission close to Derge in the Tinlung Valley. In this valley there had once lived a wealthy family with large herds that grazed in the meadows above their terraced barley fields, and they had been tormented by a series of severe natural disasters and disease. The family’s yaks and sheep were decimated and their crops were ruined. The family members died one by one. One of the daughters had been reborn in the Tinlung Valley as a vicious and harsh witch. The witch was wreaking havoc in the surrounding valleys with her curses, causing even more death and destruction. Villagers had employed a local shaman to duel the witch. This only encouraged her malevolent deeds. Finally, the village leaders went to Nyoshul Lungtok to ask what should be done.