Fearless in Tibet: The Life of the Mystic Terton Sogyal (35 page)

CHAPTER 24

CONTINUATION
of
BLESSING

Khandro Pumo was the last to leave the deep peace that pervaded the tertön’s room. For the next three days, few words were spoken. Others in the encampment knew that Tertön Sogyal’s consciousness had left his body, though nobody spoke of it. Prayers and rituals were being conducted in the temple. Khandro Pumo and Rigdzin Namgyal prayed near the body, and Tsullo, Lama Trime, and Kunzang Nyima sat in meditation as well. A messenger was dispatched to Nubzor Monastery summoning Trashe Lama to come with his monks.

Rigdzin Namgyal and Tsullo bathed their teacher’s body after a week with consecrated saffron water, and then they attached various written mantras, drawn mandalas, and tantric texts to the energetic centers, such as the heart and crown. The body was wrapped in a white shroud and scented with herbal water before being dressed in tantric attire and positioned in the meditation posture, with the legs crossed in the lotus position, and a bell and dorje placed in the hands. Tertön Sogyal’s consciousness had arrived in the Luminous Sphere of Padmasambhava’s Pure Land, which is no other place than the ultimate fruition of meditative realization, buddhahood itself. Although the tertön’s mind had departed the body, the final rites were an opportunity for the disciples to accumulate positive merit, purify their minds, and confess any misdeeds. The adorned body was placed on a simple throne in the temple, and for weeks the yogis, yoginis, monks, and nuns chanted rituals and made offerings to the lineage. When the senior lamas and monks of Nubzor Monastery arrived, a cremation stupa was built next to Tertön Sogyal’s house. On the day of the cremation, the body was placed on a wood pyre in the conical-shaped dome, rainbows arched over the Ja Valley, and melodious singing was heard from the sky. A sweet aroma descended like mist.

Lamas and monks sat in the four cardinal directions of the stupa, arranged like a mandala with the guru in the center. As prayers and verses of purification were chanted, Rigdzin Namgyal set the pyre alight. Offerings of grains, butter, flowers, and other substances were made into the raging fire that consumed the tertön’s body. Villagers circumambulated the ceremony and prayed to Tertön Sogyal. The cremation ritual lasted for half the day, after which time the stupa was sealed for three days. When the cremation stupa had cooled and was opened, many spherical relics—both small white
ringsel
and the pearl-size, five-color
dung
—were found within the ashes, an indication of Tertön Sogyal’s attainment of the five wisdoms of buddhahood. Tertön Sogyal had transformed his ordinary existence and the death of his body into evidence of enlightenment for the devoted. The relics were distributed to close disciples, and some were placed inside a newly constructed stupa at Nyagar. In the 1960s, the Chinese Communist army destroyed the stupa and small temple at Nyagar after they invaded Golok. Tertön Sogyal’s devotees rebuilt the stupa in 2008.

Within a month of the cremation, Khandro Pumo and Rigdzin Namgyal and his family, along with other students, collected Tertön Sogyal’s belongings and left Nyagar, traveling southwest to Trango, through Kandze, and finally home to the Kalzang Temple in Nyarong. Woodblocks of Tertön Sogyal’s 20 volumes of collected treasure revelations were housed at Kalzang Temple.

Sogyal Rinpoche is one of the most prominent Tibetan Buddhist teachers in the world, one of the two simultaneous reincarnations of Tertön Sogyal, and author of
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
.

The lineage holders of Tertön Sogyal’s treasure teachings, some of whom were also his own teachers, included the Thirteenth Dalai Lama (Thubten Gyatso), Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo, Jamgön Kongtrul Rinpoche, the Fifth Dzogchen Rinpoche (Thubten Chökyi Dorje, Dzogchen Khenpo Pema Vajra, Ju Mipham Rinpoche, Nyoshul Lungtok, Dza Choktrul Rinpoche, Lama (Tertön) Trime, Katok Situ, Minyak Khenpo Kunzang Sönam, the Third Dodrupchen Rinpoche (Jikme Tenpe Nyima), Demo Rinpoche, Dorje Drak Rigdzin Nyamnyi Dorje, Minling Trichen Rinpoche, Sakya Trichen, the Fifteenth Karmapa (Khakhyab Dorje), Tertön Kunzang Nyima, and Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö.

Dodrupchen Rinpoche passed away at the age of 62, a few months after Tertön Sogyal left his body. After 49 days, Dodrupchen’s body was cremated amid wondrous signs. His remains were preserved in a two-story-high golden stupa near his monastery.

The Thirteenth Dalai Lama continued to rule Tibet from Lhasa. In the year preceding the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s passing, he urged his countrymen to prepare for hostile forces that would attack Tibet. His concerns were consistent with Padmasambhava’s prediction and exactly as Tertön Sogyal had repeatedly warned. The Tibetan leader was well aware of the Communist Revolution in Mongolia, as refugees arriving in Lhasa from Ulan Bator spoke of Stalin’s atrocities. And the civil war that had destabilized China eventually gave rise to Mao Zedong’s rule. At a teaching at Reting Monastery in the year of the Water Monkey (1932), the Dalai Lama told the congregation that he was speaking as a father would advise his son:

The Dalai Lama died in the year of the Water Bird (1933), a year after giving this speech, six years after Tertön Sogyal’s passing. Mao Zedong’s Communist armies invaded Tibet less than 20 years later.

The Hayagriva-Vajravarahi life-force stone was delivered to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama in Lhasa within a year of Tertön Sogyal’s passing, in 1926 or 1927. Tsullo says it was Rigdzin Namgyal who delivered it, while Keutsang Rinpoche’s biography claims that he was sent by the Dalai Lama to retrieve it in 1926. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche said that as the stone approached Lhasa, the Dalai Lama determined with astrological calculations the exact time to receive it and summoned abbots and monks from the Sera, Drepung, and Ganden monasteries, senior government officials, and other spiritual masters to ceremonially escort the stone into the city. The Dalai Lama came down from Keutsang Monastery to the Norbulingka Palace and received the stone. The stone, which was said to have the warm breath of the dakinis still upon it, was kept in the inner sanctum of the Kelsang Dekhyil chamber of the Chenling Palace, protecting the Thirteenth Dalai Lama until his death. When the 19-year-old Fourteenth Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959, he took the Hayagriva-Vajravarahi life-force stone as his protection from the bullets of the Chinese army. His Holiness recalls, “There were quite a number of sacred things that remained in Potala, but I left from Norbulingka. So when I left, those things that were available in Norbulingka, I took them. I carried with me that life-force stone, [which] the Thirteenth Dalai Lama kept in the Norbulingka, and one vajra and one phurba.”

Tertön Sogyal’s spiritual wife, Khandro Pumo, spent her later years in a simple hermitage high in the mountains of Nyarong. She was a great practitioner of Vajrakilaya and recited
Om Vajra Kila Kilaya Sarwa Bighanen Bam Hum Phat
300 million times during her life. Khandro Pumo became renowned for her clairvoyance and her ability to avert frost or bring rain. She often recommended healing prayers or rituals to the sick who came to her. Sometimes she would tie a protection cord around their necks; it was noticed that if she gave such a protection cord, it meant the person would live, but if she gave them spiritual medicinal pills, it meant that their illness was fatal. Khandro Pumo died in 1949; there is a stupa with her remains at Kalzang Temple.

Rigdzin Namgyal and his wife, Sonam Drolma, lived near Khandro Pumo. Their child, Pema Chöpel Gyatso, became famous in Nyarong and Kandze as a scholar-monk and used to stay for long durations at Lumorap Monastery. The Chinese Communists jailed him in Dartsedo in 1957, along with many other incarnate lamas. Ama Adhe, the heroic Khampa resistance fighter, was in prison with Chöpel Gyatso. She said that seven incarnate lamas, including Chöpel Gyatso, died one evening in prison, but that it was not at the direct hand of the prison guards—rather, the lamas decided to eject their consciousness and die so as not to allow the Chinese Communists to incur negative karma by beating them. There is a stupa dedicated to Chöpel Gyatso near Kalzang Temple.

Tsullo lived at his monastery of Shukjung in the Do valley for the rest of his life, traveling to teach in the region on occasion, and became a great scholar, authoring eight volumes, including the secret biography of Tertön Sogyal. The secret biography was based on the tertön’s journals of his mystical visions and prophecies and his wide-ranging travels, and includes many of his own words. Upon the completion of the biography in 1942, Tsullo concluded with an homage to Tertön Sogyal that in part reads, “The secret life story of the liberation of Tertön Sogyal, which is like a miracle, is now complete. You, my guru, will take other miraculous rebirths according to your wishes. In all direction and in all times there will be billions of places where you will manifest to benefit beings; may I simultaneously attain the power to see you on all those occasions and in all those realms. Now, to you who are in the Luminous Sphere of Padmasambhava’s Pure Land, in the presence of the Great Guru from which all the buddhas emanate, purified from all defilements, where there is great bliss, I emanate a great host of boundless offerings, and through this I pray that I will remain inseparable from you.”

Three people in particular urged Tsullo to write the biography of Tertön Sogyal—Chöpel Gyatso, Tertön Sogyal’s grandson, made his request with a “cloth of the gods,” Yamantaka and Vajrakilaya texts, and a new set of monk’s robes; Khenpo Lekshe Jorden, an important teacher from Katok Monastery, accompanied his request to Tsullo with an offering of a bell and dorje; and the nun Jamyang Chodren, the aunt of Garje Khamtrul Rinpoche, made her request with a white offering scarf, representations of enlightened body, speech, and mind, along with precious turquoise and sapphire, and, importantly, with paper, pens, and ink. Jamyang Chodren’s request especially inspired Tsullo to write about the immense kindness of Tertön Sogyal as demonstrated by his life.

The last lines of the colophon of Tertön Sogyal’s 725-page secret biography states, “People like us have a hard time fathoming the profound minds of realized beings like Tertön Sogyal, whose life cannot be framed conceptually. His accomplishment and qualities are like a vast heap of precious gems equal to space that emanate light rays of enlightened activity. In this world where there are an infinite number of scholars and yogis, the life story of someone like Tertön Sogyal, whose clarity and perfection are without compare, justifies being told. His entire life was lived to benefit all beings through accomplishing the intent of the undeceiving treasure prophecies. This secret biography is based on the terma prophecies themselves; it is not just random stories or what people have said here and there. I, Tsultrim Zangpo, known as Shilabhadra, who has received the particles of dust from the feet of the great Tertön Sogyal Rinpoche upon my head, who is the lowest of all of his disciples, completed his secret biography nearby the great monastery of Dzogchen Samten Orgyen Choling, at the retreat mountain of Osel Lhundrup, in the spring of the year of the Water Horse [1942] on a very auspicious day. May it be auspicious.
Sarvada Kalyanam Bhavantu.
”