A Step Away from Paradise: A Tibetan Lama's Extraordinary Journey to a Land of Immortality

by Thomas Shor

  ‘Did this create problems?’ I asked. To understand what it might mean for a Geluk to be involved with a Nyingma, just imagine what it would be for a Catholic from a strict family to run off with a protestant—say a Baptist.

  ‘It wouldn’t have mattered in the least to my father,’ Kunsang said. ‘Such conventionalities didn’t touch him. But it would have caused a tremendous ruckus in their families. While his family was a long and arduous journey away, my mother’s was right there. How could she explain to them that she wanted to run away with this crazy Nyingma lama? No way! Eloping was the only answer. They left together telling neither of their families, travelling by foot over the high passes into India. Years later in India when they met some lamas from the Dalai Lama’s monastery in Lhasa and asked about my mother’s brothers living there and if they were still OK, the lamas exclaimed, “You’re their sister? They thought you died years ago.”’

  The young couple walked south over the high Himalayan passes into the hot plains of British India. This would have been in the late 1930s. They moved east to west visiting the principal Buddhist pilgrimage sites such as Bodh Gaya, where Buddha stopped his search for a teacher and a teaching in order to sit under a tree and examine his own mind until he reached the awareness of enlightenment. They went to Sarnath, where Buddha gave his first teachings in a deer park. Then they went to the place in the western Himalayas that at the time was probably the most important place specifically for Tibetan Buddhists in India, a sacred lake called Rewalsar and known to Tibetans as Tso Pema, in what is now the state of Himachal Pradesh but was then part of the Punjab.

  Tulshuk Lingpa during his early times in India

  Tso Pema is sacred because of Padmasambhava. Before Padmasambhava went to Tibet he went to Mandi, which isn’t far from Tso Pema, then known as the kingdom of Zahor. The king of Zahor had a daughter so beautiful that maharajas from near and far wanted her as their son’s bride. Her name was Princess Mandarava. Though the king was looking out for the best suitor, she was drawn to the spiritual life and a life of asceticism. She was not interested in any of the suitors her father presented to her. Padmasambhava was a wandering ascetic—decidedly not a suitable suitor for a princess. While passing through the kingdom, he met Princess Mandarava and they fell in love. She became one of his two main consorts. When the king caught wind of it, he was not happy. He had his daughter stripped and wrapped in thorns and put into a pit by the river. He had Padmasambhava brought to a flat open place where he was put atop a pile of wood, which was then set aflame. Instead of perishing in the fire, Padmasambhava transformed the fire into a lake in the middle of which he appeared with his consort—the Princess Mandarava—sitting in a lotus blossom. The king was so impressed that he not only approved of their union but allowed his kingdom to be converted to the Buddhist dharma. It was after this that Padmasambhava went off to Tibet.

  Tulshuk Lingpa must have been about twenty years old when they reached Tso Pema. Though he was young, he had already started to attract attention. At the monasteries clustered around the sacred lake and in the community of those who came there on pilgrimage—Tibetans and those of Tibetan origin from higher up in the mountains towards Ladakh—his spark was universally recognized. Wherever he went, people gathered who wanted to learn from him.

  With thorough knowledge of the deities and all their aspects and a steady, artistic hand, it was natural that he became an accomplished thangka painter. Soon he had disciples to whom he imparted his prodigious painting skills. He was asked by the lamas of the old Nyingma monastery at Tso Pema to paint the life of Padmasambhava on the walls of the temple, an undertaking he devoted two years to.

  He knew Tibetan medicine—the reading of the pulses, the use of herbs. He would perform rituals using a convex mirror made of brass and shined to a luster in which he would see things no one else could see, and through this means he could heal people. People with epilepsy came to him, and he cured them. Wherever he went his reputation as a healer preceded him, and people came to be healed. While other tertons and high lamas would have to perform pujas many times to effect a cure, Tulshuk Lingpa would only have to perform one. It was believed that when Tulshuk Lingpa performed certain rituals many—even those in the surroundings who weren’t at the ritual—would be healed. That was part of the shine that was upon him.

  Having been initiated into many tantric teachings, he knew how to manipulate subtle forces—deities and demons—through ritual means. He could dispel curses, predict the future and even knew how to make and stop rain. Lay people came for his consultation; lamas came for teachings.

  Kunsang explained to me that Tso Pema was a place of pilgrimage for Tibetan Buddhist people from Tibet as well as those from the upper valleys of Himachal Pradesh—Chamba, Lahaul and Spiti—which verge on Ladakh and the Tibetan Plateau. To reach these valleys one must cross dangerous passes, snowed in for much of the year. They are some of the most inaccessible places in India and—especially in those days—truly remote. Emissaries from villages in these high valleys, one more remote than the next, started arriving at Tso Pema with invitations for Tulshuk Lingpa to come to their villages and take over their monasteries. After refusing many offers, he agreed to go to a village in the Pangi Valley in Chamba district, and it was there he had his first monastery.

  ‘He and my mother lived in Pangi for fifteen years,’ Kunsang concluded. ‘My sister Kamala was born there, and so was I. It is the first place I remember.’

  The window behind Kunsang shuddered. The large wind-driven raindrops sounded like knuckles on the windowpanes. The cloud hit the window with a thud and it flew open. Kunsang sprang from where he was sitting cross-legged on his bed to close it.

  Then he sat, dried his hands on an old face-towel and poured tea from the metal flask. The steam merged with the fog that now permeated the room.

  ‘In this weather it is difficult to imagine the landscape of my childhood,’ he said. ‘Nothing could be more different from this cloud-heavy greenery. The valley in which I lived had hardly any vegetation: just steep slopes of stones, boulders and sheer rock faces rising to snow, glaciers and mountain peaks. The Chenab River, which originated in the high glacial peaks of Spiti, roared over huge rounded boulders in the valley. Above the village, on the valley’s upper reaches, snow leopards stalked the wild blue sheep.’

  Pangi was one of the most remote places in the Indian Himalayas. Travel in those days was by foot or by horse. It is a vast landscape and—at over 10,000 feet—the winters are harsh. The villages are few and become cut off from each other—not to mention the rest of the world—during the long winter. Life in the valley was as it had been for centuries. Whether administered by a local kingly chief, the British or independent India, what dominated life in the Pangi Valley of Kunsang’s youth was meters-deep snow, avalanches and stony fields of barley.

  Lahaul

  ‘And for me,’ he said, ‘that landscape will always be imbued with my father’s magic and his mastery of the ancient ways of mystics and tantrics. The world does not produce them any more.’

  I was suddenly jolted back to the present again when another rain-laden gust of wind blew open the window to reveal the jumble of fog-enshrouded roofs of the busy Darjeeling market. Dusk had fallen.

  When Kunsang told a tale, I often felt transported to the particular plateau or mountainside he was describing. How many times did I put on my mud boots, feel my way along the pitch-black corridor, raise my umbrella to the incessant rain and descend the steep stone steps to the alley, every surface green with monsoon mould. Entering that sea of bobbing umbrellas, hemmed in between the narrow jostling alleys, it was as if I were returning from a distant journey.

  I’d have a peculiar feeling, as if I were walking in two worlds.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Behind the Heart

  of the Buddha of Compassion

  One day Kunsang told me, ‘My father always had followers, and always there were people who thought him mad.’

&nb
sp; Tulshuk means crazy—but it also means fickle, mutable or changeable. So a man with a tulshuk nature would always be changing his mind—saying one thing in the morning, something else in the afternoon and contradicting both by evening. Though sober, he would get drunk, and when drunk he would act as if sober. Though a lama, he would have lovers, and when with them would still act as a lama. Though holy, he would be irreverent but while irreverent he would still retain his holiness.

  One day while Tulshuk Lingpa was in Pangi, he was called by a jinda, or sponsor, to the village of Triloknath, also known as Karshapapa. It is famous for its temple which houses a historically important statue of Chenresig, the Buddha of Compassion.

  The village was up the Chenab River Valley, a good day’s journey away by horse. Lamas make their living by performing pujas, or rituals, often at people’s houses. This was a big jinda, and the puja would last for days. Tulshuk Lingpa brought with him quite a few of his disciples, lamas in their own right who had gathered around him and now lived in his monastery in Pangi.

  In addition to the good food that would be served to the lamas at such home pujas, there would also be quite a bit of alcohol. While smoking cigarettes was strictly prohibited for lamas, many drank. Tulshuk Lingpa was famous for drinking more than anyone else and still being able to function.

  ‘One time, my father’s disciples tested him,’ Kunsang told me. ‘They plied him with so much alcohol that anyone else would have passed out. They set him up straight and put a pen in his hand and a piece of paper on his lap. Though he could hardly see, he commenced to write the words from an important scripture from memory—the Tibetan letters perfectly formed and even. Every time his hand strayed from the page and he dropped the pen without even being aware, they’d put the pen back in his hand and put the tip where he had left off—and he’d continue writing. To everyone’s amazement—including my own—he missed not a single letter or vocal mark. The words were formed perfectly across the page.’

  This was a theme Kunsang returned to repeatedly: his father’s drinking and subsequent craziness. Although I never saw Kunsang drink, his father’s prowess at drinking was an endless source of wonder and laughter for him.

  ‘Two of Tulshuk Lingpa’s closest disciples, Namdrol and Sookshen, were with him at the jinda’s house in Triloknath that time,’ Kunsang continued, warming to his story. ‘The jinda was plying them with meat and drink that night, and Tulshuk Lingpa got particularly drunk. He called Namdrol and Sookshen aside.’

  ‘“Tonight, we have big work to do,” he told them, “big work—but don’t tell anyone. We’ll have to stay awake half the night, so first you must sleep.” He produced a bottle of the jinda’s liquor and got his two disciples so drunk they curled up in a corner and fell into a death-like sleep.

  ‘At two in the morning, when everyone was fast asleep, Tulshuk Lingpa got up. He shook his two disciples to wake them but so much alcohol was still coursing through their blood they would not stir. He shook them harder but still couldn’t rouse them.’

  With this, Kunsang sprang from where he sat on his bed and jumped to his feet. He lay on the floor, curled up no doubt like his father’s drunken disciples, except that instead of sleeping he was shaking with laughter. Demonstrating with his own fist on his own skull, he continued his story from that vantage point.

  ‘My father made a fist of his hand and rapped on their shaved skulls as if he were pounding on a door, their heads resounding like coconuts.

  ‘Like this,’ he said, and he knocked his skull as if he were knocking a door. ‘This did the trick, and in a snap they were sitting up. Tulshuk Lingpa’s finger to his lips reminded them of the secret nature of their rude awakening.’

  This was a story Kunsang particularly loved to tell, and it must have been a dozen times that I saw Kunsang like this: lying on the floor, cracking his knuckles on his head and then rolling with laughter. He utilized pantomime, humor and dead seriousness in turn—and often with blinding speed.

  Kunsang sprang back up, and like a conjurer he was suddenly sitting cross-legged on his bed. He continued: ‘They followed silently, so not to wake the village dogs, and reached the village temple. Tibetan Buddhist temples and holy places have paths around them the faithful use to circumambulate, always in a clockwise direction, and recite the mantras. Called the kora, it is an important part of their daily life and ritual. They followed Tulshuk Lingpa, stumbling in the darkness, doing a kora of the ancient temple. The entire time Tulshuk Lingpa was looking at the temple wall. They circled the temple once; they circled it twice. The third time Tulshuk Lingpa stopped at the back of the temple and examined the temple wall.

  ‘“I’m drunk,” he said to his two disciples. “So you must help me. Last night in my dream I was visited by a dakini. She told me to look behind the heart of Chenresig.”

  ‘What the dakini’s cryptic instruction meant, and how to fulfill it was up to his own tulshuk nature to figure out. That was his crazy genius.

  ‘“Where do you think the heart of Chenresig would be?” he asked his disciples. He was referring to the Buddha of Compassion, whose statue inside the temple was on the altar on the other side of the mud and stone wall he was examining.

  ‘Namdrol said, “Well, the statue is in the center of the altar, and it is so big. His heart would be here,” and he pointed to a place on the wall. Sookshen said, “No, I think the statue is a bit bigger than that. It would be up there,” and he pointed a bit further up.

  Statue of Chenresig, Triloknath Temple, Lahaul

  ‘“You’re both wrong,” Tulshuk Lingpa said, picking up a stone. “It would be here!” and he scratched out a circle on the dry mud wall. “Get a hammer, something we can smash the wall with!”

  ‘“But Master,” Sookshen gasped, “this isn’t our temple. We can’t just smash the wall.”

  ‘“Get me something to smash the wall with!”

  ‘“But Master, where can we find a hammer? It’s the middle of the night.”

  ‘While Sookshen was thus arguing with Tulshuk Lingpa, Namdrol knew what to do. He had been with Tulshuk Lingpa longer and knew that when a terton tells you to do something, you do it. You don’t ask questions—no matter how tangential to logic his request might appear, no matter how irrational. He went around to the front of the temple and got the thick iron rod that was used to bar shut the temple door.

  ‘When he returned to the back of the temple, Tulshuk Lingpa commanded him to smash the wall.

  ‘So he did. With one blow of tremendous force, Namdrol hit the center of the circle Tulshuk Lingpa had drawn with the stone, and a huge chunk of the wall crashed to the ground.

  ‘Namdrol dropped the bar with a clang, shocked at the damage his single blow had caused.

  ‘Sookshen looked around to make sure no one had witnessed this act of vandalism.

  ‘Tulshuk Lingpa looked into the hole as if he were looking not into a mud wall but into a hole in reality itself, his eyes as fierce and fearless as when he was a child and had grabbed the purba in the cave in Tibet. He reached into the hole and took from it a tiny rolled piece of yellowed paper. It was the size of the tip of your little finger.

  ‘“Ter,” both Namdrol and Sookshen gasped.

  ‘Tulshuk Lingpa unrolled the paper and on it were a few “letters”, scratches really, of an alphabet only a terton could understand.

  ‘“Now I have work to do,” Tulshuk Lingpa said. “Fix the hole. You have till daybreak. No one must know what has happened here.” With that, Tulshuk Lingpa left.

  ‘Namdrol and Sookshen mixed some earth with water from a nearby stream to make mud, which they used to patch the hole in the temple wall. They smoothed their work, and then threw a layer of dust on it to hide its recent construction. Just as the sun was tingeing the sky with pink they fell asleep—exhausted—beside the temple, which is where villagers found them a little later as they came to do their morning kora of the temple.

  ‘My father didn’t sleep that night. The light was on in h
is room right past the time of the rising sun which he hardly noticed, so engrossed was he in unfolding the meaning contained in those few obscure letters of a language only he could understand. It took some days for him to fully unfold the meaning of the scratches found on that ancient and tiny scroll. When he was through, he had produced two pechas, or scriptures, of 300 pages each. Coming directly from Chenresig, a great and glorious heart, they told about the ending of suffering.

  ‘What happened to this book?’ I asked. ‘Do you have a copy?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Kunsang said. ‘The original text, in my father’s own hand, was hastily written. So he gave Namdrol the first book for him to make a copy by hand lettering it in proper Tibetan. Namdrol copied it and when he gave it back, my father gave him the second to copy. When—after a month or two—Namdrol hadn’t finished copying the second book, I remember that my father became angry.

  ‘Though I was only a boy at that time, I was curious. I went to where Namdrol was living, and he was sitting there—cross-legged on a cushion with a low table before him, copying the text. I asked him in all innocence what it was that he was copying. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone,” he said, “but since you’re the master’s son, I can tell you. It is a very important ter that your father found,” and then he told me the whole story I just told you, of the ter in the temple wall.

  ‘What he didn’t tell me was why he was taking so long to copy the second book and get it back to my father, though the truth finally did come out. After he had begun copying the second book, he had been approached by some Khampa lamas who were living in Dharamsala and had money in their pockets. They were after some of my father’s ter. They said to Namdrol, “Tulshuk Lingpa has spent so much time here, he must have taken out some ter. Tell us about the ter he has taken out.”