Fearless in Tibet: The Life of the Mystic Terton Sogyal (13 page)

In the eighth month of the Fire Dog year (1886), when Tertön Sogyal was 31 years old, he stayed with Khyentse Wangpo at Dzongsar.

“You have really reached a level where you know all the teachings, sutras, and tantras. There seems to be nothing that is not within the scope of your knowledge. Tell me, how did you come to know all this?” Khyentse asked, knowing that Tertön Sogyal had not studied formally at any of the great monastic universities.

“All I have done was to complete the training in the
nyongtri
—the experiential-oriented instructions of Nyoshul Lungtok. That’s all.”

When Khyentse heard this, he praised the lineage masters, saying, “That extraordinary nyongtri method can awaken a student’s inner wisdom in such a manner that they can become a master of all teachings without even having to study them.”

One morning Khyentse called for Tertön Sogyal, and as soon as he walked into the presence of the lama, Khyentse handed him a piece of paper and said, “Write, just write what I’m saying!”

Khyentse then said, “
Mahasukha jnana kaya ya!
Extremely pure, the one of great bliss, immovable throughout the past, present, and future, the ever-enduring body, supreme wrathful lord, I will bestow upon you the method of protection from the fear of birth and death. Samaya!”

Tertön Sogyal wrote quickly as Khyentse continued to speak in the form of prophecy about sacred medicinal pills that Padmasambhava had concealed as a terma substance. He narrated where they were hidden and how, if certain rituals and mantras were accomplished, the sacred pills could be discovered and then multiplied.

When Khyentse finished speaking, Tertön Sogyal asked, “What is this? Did someone else tell you this, or did you just reveal a prophetic guide from your mind?”

“Oh, why try to say this or that about what you just wrote down?” Khyentse responded. “I have just spoken whatever came to mind. But yes, the meaning is flawless. You see, I know where the treasure substances are located. The medicinal pills are a share of treasure that Padmasambhava hid for me to reveal, but I have not been able to find them. The pills, which are named the
Boiling Dew of Nectar
and the
Essential Drop of Immortality,
are substances that, when combined with pith instructions and mantras, can grant liberation to yogis and yoginis.”

“What has to be done to retrieve these treasures?”

“Go tomorrow to the Crystal Lotus Cave and try to extract the pills from the cave wall!”

Tertön Sogyal left just after midnight so that he could arrive at the cave by sunrise. He climbed a dozen steps up the side of a rock wall to access the cave entrance. In a space large enough to fit a dozen monks, Tertön Sogyal lit a butter lamp and took a seat on the cold granite floor. After meditating for a short time to gain clarity about where the treasure was placed, Tertön Sogyal withdrew his phurba dagger. As he pointed it toward the wall, a small door opened by itself in the rock; therein lay a square bronze casket. Tertön Sogyal took the casket, replacing it with a small statue he drew from the fold of his gown, and closed the door. He descended from the cave and rushed with the casket to present it to Khyentse. They found the
Essential Drop of Immortality
medicinal pills in the container as well as a yellow dakini scroll about six finger-widths long and two finger-widths wide.

Khyentse handed the scroll to Tertön Sogyal and told him to return to the room where he was staying at the monastery and to decipher the meaning. Later that morning, as Tertön Sogyal was deciphering the dakini script from the scroll, an old monk suddenly appeared in his room and declared, “Sogyal, Khyentse Rinpoche said that you should go and retrieve a terma from White Ah Cave.” Then the monk walked out the door. Tertön Sogyal thought the intruder was joking and ignored the directive. The next day, as Tertön Sogyal was reciting morning prayers in his room, the same monk appeared. As Tertön Sogyal thought,
Who might this be again, and where did he come from?
the monk walked out the door in the way that a rainbow fades and disappears.

Ahh, this is just a spirit trying to trick me,
he thought, and he recited the mantra of Vajrakilaya,
Om Vajra Kila Kilaya Hum Phat
… and cast a gaze of a wrathful deity.

Two days later, the same monk appeared.

“Who are you?” Tertön Sogyal yelled.

“I am an attendant of Khyentse Rinpoche.”

“No, you are not! I have never seen you around here.”

“I normally stay inside. You wouldn’t know.”

As the monk disappeared through the door, grayish clouds formed in his wake. Tertön Sogyal got up and looked out the window and saw the monk transform into Rahula, the nine-headed protector of the Dzogchen teachings. With his serpent-like lower body, Rahula slid down the steps from Tertön Sogyal’s room and across the courtyard. Tertön Sogyal smelled something burning, and a small earthquake shook the buildings at the monastery. One of the monastery’s abbots came running down from Khyentse’s residence to Tertön Sogyal’s room and, out of breath, said, “Now! Now is the time to go to the White Ah Cave!” Tertön Sogyal grabbed his phurba and rushed from the room, jumped on a horse, and rode straight to the cave in a side valley northwest of the monastery. No sooner had he dismounted at the cave’s entrance than Rahula slid toward him and handed him a treasure
vajra
, a phurba, and the
Boiling Dew of Nectar
medicinal pills.

Such was the relationship that Tertön Sogyal had with the great Khyentse. It was as if the master were ensuring that the young tertön acquired the necessary esoteric skills and confidence, so that he would be ready when the time arose for his most significant revelations that could protect Tibet and the Dalai Lama.

Some months later, after Khyentse had bestowed a series of empowerments and teachings with Kongtrul and other eminent masters present, Khyentse told Tertön Sogyal to go back once more to the Crystal Cave of Padma to reveal a lock of Yeshe Tsogyal’s hair that had been hidden as a treasure. When Tertön Sogyal returned to Khyentse with a small rock casket, it opened spontaneously to reveal a curl of hair and a scroll with dakini writing. Khyentse immediately understood the meaning contained in the scroll, and he bestowed the empowerment and instructions upon Tertön Sogyal.

Tertön Sogyal asked, “When you see dakini script on the scrolls, how do the instructions appear to you? Does each syllable progressively become other words, or do you comprehend all of the dakini syllables together at once?”

Khyentse responded, “How do you think this dakini script represents such vast teachings? In reality, the true meaning in these few syllables arises unmistakably through the power of the tertön’s memory, and that elaborates by itself.”

Tertön Sogyal could only bow in silent reverence, for it was not only the words that his guru spoke, but it was his presence that was the teaching. In Tertön Sogyal’s mind, Khyentse was inseparable from Padmasambhava.

Nearing the end of the Fire Dog year, in Tertön Sogyal’s 32nd year, Khyentse bestowed a long series of ripening empowerments and liberating teachings to a gathering of students. After Khyentse had given a commentary on the
Heart Essence of Chetsun
to only a few close disciples, he asked them what other teachings they wished to receive. The group unanimously requested him to give once again the very same teaching they had just received on the
Heart Essence of Chetsun
. Khyentse agreed. After every session, Tertön Sogyal wrote down from memory what had been taught. At the end of the many days of teachings, Tertön Sogyal presented his notes to Khyentse, who looked at them and commented, “This is exactly what I said, without anything missing or added.

A scroll painting of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo with his hand. and footprints.

“To this commentary, from time to time you yourself do a consecration ceremony upon the text,” Khyentse told Tertön Sogyal. “Then make a final proofreading. In the future, nobody should make any changes.”

At the conclusion of the empowerments and transmission, Khyentse told Tertön Sogyal that in order to increase his treasure revelations, the tertön from Nyarong needed to have a long life. Khyentse decided to bestow a longevity ritual upon Tertön Sogyal. Tertön Sogyal was placed on a high throne in front of the congregation of monks and yogis at Dzongsar, and offered symbols of the enlightened body, speech, mind, qualities, and activities. Monks dressed as dakinis, summoning longevity and vitality and banishing obstacles to his life, performed ritual dances around Tertön Sogyal. At the end of the joyful ceremony, a life-size effigy of Tertön Sogyal, which was attired in the tertön’s shirt that he had worn for six months, was taken out from the congregation and ritually offered to the harmful spirits as a ransom payment against meddling with the tertön in the future.

“I have spent many months throughout the last years with Tertön Sogyal Lerab Lingpa. Our connection is not a mundane one; rather, it is in the realm of the revelation of treasure teachings. We have understood together how to accomplish all of the outer, inner, and innermost activity,” Khyentse said.

“Sogyal has never wavered in his diligence of hearing, contemplating, and meditating upon the long Oral Transmission lineage and the shorter Treasure Transmission lineage of the Nyingma school. There is a saying that when you are near a great being, everything around you will be well and pacified. Just like that, while I was bestowing the innermost cycle of empowerments, and Sogyal was my ritual attendant, it was not as though he did it with half-understanding or pretense; rather, without a trace of fault, he carried out everything to perfection. Not only that, but he also looked after me by making the fire, pouring me tea, cleaning, and doing all kinds of activities. For this I am immensely grateful. To an old lama like myself, Sogyal has looked upon me as if viewing dust as gold. For me to have had Sogyal as my attendant was like using the finest precious sandalwood staff to stir a fire.”

As the great master concluded his speech during the ceremony, Tertön Sogyal remembered that from the first time he met and received teachings from Khyentse to the present moment, he had never, not even for an instant, had a single thought of competition nor felt anything but unconditional love for him.

CHAPTER 7

FINDING HIS SPIRITUAL CONSORT

D
ERGE AND
G
ONJO
R
EGIONS
, E
ASTERN
T
IBET

Year of the Fire Pig, 1887

The ripple of Tertön Sogyal’s activity was widening as his treasure revelation career unfolded. Each revelation and subsequent practice endowed Tertön Sogyal with additional power to benefit others. As his power increased, so did antagonistic views toward him, including a sense of resentment over the termas he revealed. The ill will that some people directed, like the umbrage of a poisonous tree’s shadow, caused Tertön Sogyal to become very sick in the Fire Pig year (1887). Chinese and Tibetan herbs were given to restore his vital energy, which had been disturbed. Esoteric rituals were also employed to avert the harmful situation, attempting to ricochet the negativity back to destroy the malicious attitude that sent it. One of Tertön Sogyal’s teachers, Dza Choktrul from Katok, and his elder Dharma brother from northern Nyarong, Tertön Rangrik Dorje of Lumorap, visited him at a village in the Garje region. They came to perform long-life empowerments and ablution rituals and administer medicine to ward off the cause of his sickness. Stricken with illness as he was, Tertön Sogyal took the occasion to meditate deeply on the practice of giving away his own happiness and taking upon himself others’ negativities. He contemplated repeatedly the verse, “I offer my joy and happiness to all mother-like sentient beings, and secretly take upon myself all of their harm and suffering.” He meditated like this for many days in an attempt to actually remove the suffering of others.

The great Khyentse told Tertön Sogyal two years prior, “When you are about to achieve great accomplishments, intense obstacles will rise up in the Pig year [1887].” Khyentse’s long-life ceremony at that time was an antidote to such obstacles. And he had reminded Tertön Sogyal to be aware of others’ ill will and jealousy, even among so-called disciples. As Jamgön Kongtrul stated, “These days the merit of disciples is too low for auspices to occur spontaneously, wrong views are rampant, doubts are manifold, disciples treat their guru like a normal friend, and their samaya commitments are ruined. In these times when those who follow and place trust in a guru find fault in everything he does, the arrangement of good auspices is difficult.”

With the combination of Khyentse’s blessing, the averting rituals from the lamas, and Tertön Sogyal’s own purification meditations, his health eventually improved. Villagers were relieved of their worries that the young treasure revealer might die, and it was said that “the moon has escaped Rahula.”

When Tertön Sogyal recovered, he went to see Khyentse. Tertön Sogyal told him he had received signs that the time was right to search out his prophesied dakini consort, Pumo of Gonjo. The time had come. If Tertön Sogyal could find that consort, Padmasambhava said, “Your activities will increase, but if you do not meet her or even if you delayed, then your life will be shortened.” A prophecy that Tertön Sogyal found at the granite arête known as White Rock Sword stated that there would be a consort who is known as “the one bestowing great bliss,” and if he could find her, “You will have power over wealth and prosperity, your life will be prolonged, and you will have power to retrieve many termas.” The same prophecy warned that if Tertön Sogyal failed to find her, “You will be poor, decrepit quickly, be unsuccessful, and you won’t retrieve your share of treasures.”