Fearless in Tibet: The Life of the Mystic Terton Sogyal (34 page)

“We will meet each other again in the pure realms,” Tertön Sogyal said.

“The great Khyentse prophesied that I would live only to be fifty years old,” Dodrupchen said. “But I have crossed well beyond my sixtieth year. Tertön, this is thanks to you.”

“You should not think of going to the pure realms anytime soon,” Tertön Sogyal encouraged his spiritual brother. “I too will also try to live long.”

The two masters touched their foreheads together in a mutual sign of respect and love. Tertön Sogyal rose quickly and departed.

CHAPTER 23

The
NYARONG LAMA’S LAST ENCAMPMENT

N
YAGAR
, G
OLOK
, E
ASTERN
T
IBET

Year of the Wood Rat to the Fire Tiger, 1924–1926

Tertön Sogyal and Khandro Pumo with their family and Lama Trime departed Puchung House to travel to Shukjung Monastery. Tsullo had returned from his trip to Lhasa and escorted the group to his monastery. There he requested that Tertön Sogyal consecrate a newly installed statue of Padmasambhava. After the consecration, Tertön Sogyal announced to the monks and villagers that he was authorizing Tsullo to give empowerments and the oral transmission for all of his treasure revelations and teachings. Tertön Sogyal spoke about Tsullo’s becoming a lineage holder.

“The time and circumstance did not align for the two prophesied holders—Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo and Thubten Gyatso, His Holiness the Dalai Lama—to receive my collected treasure revelations in their entirety. But this devoted student, Tulku Tsultrim Zangpo, who has the correct view, has also been prophesied to become a lineage holder.”

Tsullo accepted his role and said, “As I have seen your golden face in reality, Tertön Sogyal Rinpoche, I accept this fortune you have bestowed.”

While staying in Shukjung Monastery, Tertön Sogyal met with Dodrupchen’s nephew, Kunzang Nyima. They already had a close relationship, and Tertön Sogyal had earlier recognized him as a reincarnation of his teacher, Lama Sonam Thaye. Kunzang Nyima brought to Shukjung the chieftain of the Washul Kaduk tribe to meet Tertön Sogyal. The chieftain told Tertön Sogyal that he was offering him a permanent residence and that he had already built a small temple and housing for the tertön and his family in a valley called Nyaknyikil Peldeu near Sertar. Tertön Sogyal saw that the chieftain benefactor’s offer accorded with the prophecies that told him to find a place to settle down. Tertön Sogyal accepted and said they would depart in a fortnight.

When they were packing their few belongings and loading the yaks for the move, a monk named Namgyal from Khamgon Monastery arrived. He respectfully offered a quill pen and paper and requested the tertön to write a prayer for causing the Buddha’s teachings to flourish.

Tertön Sogyal was just beginning to write when a vision of a red dakini appeared and said, “Wait! When the time comes, I’ll speak the prayer to you!” Tertön Sogyal placed the pen on the table and told Namgyal that he would have to wait for the prayer, and then invited him to come and live with his family.

Tent poles on the backs of yaks formed a V silhouette against the skyline as the caravan moved out from Shukjung to the new encampment. Black yak-hair tents and other cargo were strapped to the sides of the animals. Mastiffs used to protect the camp from wolves and bandits barked and ran alongside the caravan. A dozen yogis and yoginis in the party walked. Proceeding slowly on a white horse, after a quarter century of travel and pilgrimage, Tertön Sogyal knew he was riding to his last encampment.

When they arrived a few miles from the encampment, Tertön Sogyal dismounted to rest and have tea. Facing south and west on the hillside, the Ja Valley was deep and thick with pine and juniper forests. To the northwest, a single yak trail disappeared into the windswept pass that leads to Larung Valley. From the east, glacial water flowed from the peaks of the eight holy lakes of Dzongdün. The sky was vast, the air thin.

Tertön Sogyal sent Khandro Pumo and their son ahead to prepare the house by burning purificatory juniper smoke in all of the rooms, and to instruct the monks to begin praying in the temple. After cleaning the rooms, Khandro Pumo unrolled in the small shrine room the wolf pelt that Tertön Sogyal had used for decades as his meditation rug. Their few belongings were unpacked. Tertön Sogyal remained on the hillside in meditation for some hours. It was as Tertön Sogyal had told one of his students:

Tertön Sogyal rode toward the hillside that would become known as Nyagar—the Nyarong Lama’s encampment. Near the perimeter, where the mastiffs guarded, Tertön Sogyal dismounted and circumambulated the site 21 times, with everyone following him in a slow movement of prayer, Kunzang Nyima holding Tertön Sogyal’s hand to keep him steady. Tertön Sogyal approached his two-room stone house from the east, and Khandro Pumo, Rigdzin Namgyal and Sonam Dolma and their son, Chöpel Gyatso, Tsullo, Lama Trime, Kunzang Nyima and the chieftain, and a dozen disciples with pure samaya and devotion gathered around their teacher. With folded hands, Tertön Sogyal led them in a prayer to Tara before entering the house:

After bowls of yogurt and roasted barley were served, the Washul chieftain appointed two scouts to remain at the camp as guards while the newcomers became acquainted with the valley. The chieftain asked if he could take his leave. Tertön Sogyal thanked him for offering him a home, saying, “This house made of earth and stone with a beautiful appearance and its colorful painting is like my own illusory body; they both will collapse and dissolve without a trace.”

“May you live one hundred and eight years,” the chieftain said, bowing his head.

Tertön Sogyal reminded his patron that a person cannot escape the impending results of his actions, so one should never cease in striving to benefit others. “Endeavor with all your might to make great use of your precious human birth!”

Later that day, Tertön Sogyal called Kunzang Nyima into the house and said, “Take my black yak-hair tent with you. It is yours now.” Kunzang Nyima was overjoyed and immediately set up the tent next to Tertön Sogyal’s house. He would later say, “Why would I sleep in a house when I can sleep every night in the home of the Dalai Lama’s guru!”

Tertön Sogyal settled into a routine of meditation and ritual practice. Sometimes he would teach in the morning if his students had questions, especially regarding yogic exercises to gain mastery over the subtle body, rendering the body a perfect vessel for the mind to recognize its own clarity. For his own practice, he concentrated on long-life deities and making offerings to the dakinis. In the evening, he would have a barley torma set out and call his wife and family into his room to chant and offer a ritual feast. There were other wrathful practices and mantras that he recited, to which nobody was privy. When yogis and monks from the region would arrive, Tertön Sogyal taught them whatever they requested if they promised to apply the teachings he gave.

At the end of the Wood Ox year (1925), monks from Nubzor Monastery arrived and requested that Tertön Sogyal come to give empowerments and transmissions; despite the arduous horseback journey, Tertön Sogyal agreed. An escort party returned two weeks later to take Tertön Sogyal on a white horse decorated with colorful silk tassels to the monastery; there he dismounted onto a
svastika
design—the ancient Indian symbol of deathlessness—drawn with white rice powder on the ground. Though Tertön Sogyal tired quickly, he finished all the empowerments, including
The Most Secret Wrathful Vajrakilaya
and
Dispelling Flaws in Interdependence
, concluding with the long-life empowerment of Amitayus, the Buddha of Infinite Life. Tertön Sogyal and his family returned to Nyagar after the few days of empowerments at Nubzor.

Soon after they returned home, Tertön Sogyal called his daughter-in-law to help him walk above the dozen stone huts at Nyagar. Sonam Drolma held the hand of the 71-year-old tertön as they circumambulated mantra-carved stones on the north end of the encampment and then continued up the grassy knoll to take in the expansive view. Tertön Sogyal’s breath was labored, but his eyes were clear and soft. Among the black-lipped pika, musk deer, and soaring lammergeier of Nyagar, Tertön Sogyal sat quietly looking into the distance with Sonam Drolma by his side. After some time, he told her that he was going to die within a week, but that she should not despair.

“All that is born must die. I have done all that I could for the people of the Land of Snows.” He told Sonam Drolma not to cry.

“As for the twelve treasure teachings of mine that remain unfinished, I will summon the treasure guardians and they will return the treasure objects among the lakes and grottoes of all the places I have traveled throughout Tibet. My future incarnations will rediscover them.”

That evening, Tertön Sogyal prepared the two life-force stones that still needed to arrive in the hands of the Dalai Lama. He wrapped them in five-colored silk cloth and placed them inside a box and sealed it shut with his wax seal. Tertön Sogyal told his son to accompany them to Lhasa and make sure that the Dalai Lama personally received the stones.

For the next week, Tertön Sogyal sat unmoving in meditation throughout the day and into the night. He called Khandro Pumo into his room one morning and handed her a piece of paper with a prayer written on it, and said, “I dreamed I was in the Crystal Cave of Padmasambhava last night when a dakini appeared and spoke this to me. Please be sure that young monk Namgyal receives a copy.” She looked down at the prayer Tertön Sogyal had written, touching it to her crown.

“These words are the mother’s last advice,” Tertön Sogyal said, referring to the One-Eyed Protectress of Mantras
,
who had guided and assisted him throughout his life. “There is still much more to this, and it will be explained, when the time is right.”

On the tenth day of the first month of the Fire Tiger year (1926), Tertön Sogyal was helped by Khandro Pumo and Sonam Drolma to sit upright in his bed and cross his legs in meditation posture on his wolf pelt. Rigdzin Namgyal and Tsullo and Kunzang Nyima sat on the floor. Khandro adjusted a wool blanket over Tertön Sogyal’s shoulders. A profound peace settled as the tertön rested his hands on his knees and entered a deep stillness. His body was like a mountain, his gaze as vast as the sky.

Khandro Pumo and her family and the close disciples sat in silent prayer with Tertön Sogyal. They all knew their teacher’s mind would soon be released from his body. Emotions arose and washed over them. Precious moments in their life with Tertön Sogyal flashed through their minds—his wordless teachings, his fierce love, and his undying compassion. Tears of devotion and longing fell from their eyes.

The great tertön was motionless, abiding in the expanse of the luminous clarity of his mind. His piercing eyes were at once gazing outwardly to the world with compassion, while inwardly abiding in natural great peace, resting in his own pure nature. As the valley’s mist blew into the encampment and dissolved in the morning sunlight, Tertön Sogyal exhaled his last breath.