by Thomas Shor
‘When the pleasantries were over, the lama started steering the conversation towards—of all things—Beyul Demoshong. I was surprised since it had always been my father who had been speaking of Beyul, saying he was going to lead the way; but now he was silent, as if he didn’t know a thing, and just let this lama talk. I could tell there was something up. With my father, there always was. I’ve always been thankful he let me—as his only son—partake in so many interesting situations. He was crazy—sure! But there was always another angle—a perspective from which it all made sense, in the end.
‘Then my father, in an almost casual way, let it slip that he had been visited by Khandro Yeshe Tsogyal. You should have seen the Khampa lama’s eyes widen. He looked at my father in a new way. I could tell he was weighing something, on the verge of both rejoicing and disbelief. The pecha he was carrying described the five attributes by which the lama who would open Beyul Demoshong could be recognized. Not only would he be discovered in the western Himalayas where we were but he was to be originally from Kham. There were four other attributes: he was to be tall, have long braided hair, have eyes like a tiger and be a myonpa—which translates to madman or crazy person.
‘As he looked at my father, you could practically see him ticking off the attributes one by one. When he got to the last he hesitated, until he considered my father’s name, the fissure in the cliff face where we were all sitting, and the fact that he lived there with his wife, daughter and son.
‘Zurmang Gelong decided to get closer to the point, so he asked my father whether he’d ever heard of Dorje Dechen Lingpa.
‘“Of course,” my father replied, “I knew him as a child. He’s the one who coronated me and gave me my name.”
‘It was with a trembling hand that Zurmang Gelong unwrapped the pecha from its cloth cover. He described the meeting of tertons and read a few lines of the pecha’s description of Beyul.
‘My father reached into a cleft in the rock wall and took down a pecha written in his own hand, which he had written after his encounter with Khandro Yeshe Tsogyal. He unwrapped it and read the same lines, word for word, dictated to him by Yeshe Tsogyal during his vision of her.
‘Zurmang Gelong pressed the pecha to his forehead with tears streaming down his cheeks. “When you go to Beyul,” he implored my father, “you must take me with you. I’ve been praying for this for so long. It has been my dream.”’
Increasingly, people flocked to Tulshuk Lingpa to hear him speak of Beyul.
Kunsang remembers his father saying, ‘One day I must go to Shangri-La. Whoever wants to come with me, come but only if you have no doubts. If you have doubts, please don’t go. Stay here!’ Kunsang remembers him saying this especially when some jinda provided him with a big bottle of something nice to drink. Tulshuk Lingpa got a reputation from this, as you can well imagine. Some thought him mad; others pressed him, continually. ‘When will we go, Master? When?’ It was especially the people from Simoling, those with the greatest faith in the one who had delivered them from disfigurement and death at the hand of the female cannibal demoness, who wanted to go with him. Even his closest disciples pressed him continuously. But for years, he held them off.
‘The time is not right,’ he would tell them. ‘We must do more pujas; we must be purified and ready. Not one doubt can enter our minds. Then we shall be ready.’
‘When my father spoke of Beyul,’ Kunsang told me, ‘he spoke in the language of the scriptures, which in Tibetan is not comprehensible to the common people. So they used to come to me, and ask what he was saying.’
Kunsang burst out laughing.
‘At the time I was just a kid, a teenager. They’d gather around me, eyes full of wonder, and because I was Tulshuk Lingpa’s only son they’d ask me how we were supposed to eat in the Hidden Land, how we’d get clothing and what the weather would be like. I told them that to get to that place we’d have to cross over some high altitudes but once we got there it would be quite hot in some places—and cold in others.
‘Then they’d tell me, “It is uncertain how long your father will live once we reach Shangri-La but after he dies, you will take over. You will certainly take out ter in the Hidden Land!” They didn’t understand that you didn’t die in the Hidden Land, and I didn’t correct them.
‘They’d ask me how we’d enter the Hidden Land, and I used to tell them that Beyul cannot be seen with the naked eye. There would be a huge stone with a stream flowing over it, and you would jump into the waterfall and come out the other side. Others thought Tulshuk Lingpa would get to Beyul first, and then throw down a rope. Later my father’s two closest disciples, Namdrol and Mipham, told me that what I had been saying wasn’t true. They said there was no waterfall. “The way to Beyul,” they told me, “is really difficult: all snow and ice.” It’s true. My father said his route would be the most difficult. I spoke of the waterfall because I had heard of another beyul called Pemako, some hundreds of miles east of Sikkim where the Tsang Po River descends through the Himalayas in a series of hidden waterfalls to become the Brahmaputra.’
‘What did you expect to happen once you entered Beyul,’ I asked Kunsang.
He made the thumbs up. ‘Happy,’ he said.
People often told me that Tulshuk Lingpa held the key to Beyul, and it wasn’t always clear that they didn’t mean it literally. The key grew in some people’s imaginations until it was the size of a crowbar that they expected Tulshuk Lingpa to thrust through a chink in the world around us in order to open a crack into another.
Map 2. Sikkim and Darjeeling, showing important places from the story
CHAPTER TEN
The Reconnaissance
In 1959, the Chinese culminated their brutal attack on Tibet by taking control of the once-forbidden city, the capital Lhasa. Pleading with his people not to respond with violence to the violence and brutality the Chinese meted out (estimates are that over a million were murdered by the Chinese before their takeover was complete), the Dalai Lama fled south over the Himalayas and found asylum in India.
When word of this reached Tulshuk Lingpa, he knew the Tibetan dharma and people were in graver danger than they had ever been in before, and that therefore the time was drawing close for the opening of Beyul Demoshong. Together with his consort and a few of his closest disciples, he made a journey to Sikkim in order to get a feel for the landscape and—as we shall see—to encounter various deities and guardian spirits.
We have unusual insight into the inner realizations and visions Tulshuk Lingpa experienced during this trip in the form of a pecha, or scripture, in which he wrote about it. The text, which he describes as a ‘song of the road’, is titled The Creeper-Plant of the Mind and it was given to me by Kunsang. It is here, in his own words, that we get a glimpse of the extent to which Tulshuk Lingpa was subject to visionary states, from which he gained his knowledge and experience of the beyul.
The time has reached the highly degenerate state of the final five hundred years, in which the armies of the barbarians destroy the peace and happiness of humanity, when the teachings of the Buddha are destroyed from their very foundation, reducing the happiness and prosperity of the world to the size of a sun ray on a mountain pass.
Listen to this story of how I went to Demojong [Sikkim], rendered into a song.
If you sincerely follow what I teach, you will certainly be happy. Whatever I do, I do it not for my own interest. Nourishing the desire for the good and welfare of the many, I am little concerned with what others do—or with whether they praise or insult me.
Tulshuk Lingpa gives the exact day he set out with his small band of disciples:
In the evening of the twenty-first day of the eleventh month of the Iron Male Mouse year [Sunday, January 8, 1961], the year that was said to be harmonious with the four elements, I left my home in Pangao and went to the capital, Kulluta.
Kulluta is the local Buddhist name for the town of Kullu, the administrative center of the district, a rather large town about thirty mil
es south of Pangao.
One evening when I was in a mixed state of sleep and the true nature of mind, the deity Dorje Lekpa (a dharmapala) appeared before me in the guise of a monk. He smiled at me and addressed me thus:
‘Oh! Great and noble man! Though the negative forces burning with wrath might curse you, no harm can be caused to you by these evil spirits and demons. This is because of your pure heart and the strength of your noble aspirations. Since all things are empty and non-existent, you will live long and accumulate more merit, and your acts of benevolence will increase. However, you must be cautious not to associate with foolish people. Together with the retinue of your firm-hearted and devout followers, do your utmost to fight the forces that cause spiritual obstructions. Be sure to make offerings and to chant and pray as much as possible. Since you have accumulated much merit, you may go anywhere you like without fear. I will provide all the help you need to ward off impediments.’ As soon as he uttered these words, I woke up from my dream-like state.
For Tulshuk Lingpa, the landscape he passed through was only nominally of the early part of the sixth decade of the twentieth century. From Kullu, he and his retinue passed through Mandi which he refers to as ‘the palace of the Zahor king’, the Zahor king being the father of Padmasambhava’s consort in the eighth century who tried to burn him alive. They travelled 1200 miles by train east across the north Indian Plains, then reentered the Himalayas and went north towards Sikkim, stopping off just south of the kingdom at Kalimpong (which he calls Kalinka in the text) to see Dudjom Rinpoche, Tulshuk Lingpa’s root guru.
Chokshi, the young man responsible for bringing Tulshuk Lingpa to Simoling, was with Tulshuk Lingpa on this journey. He told me that they left secretly, and no one they met on their journey would have suspected the mission they were on—to lay the foundation for a journey to another world—or even that Tulshuk Lingpa was a lama. He wore regular clothes—only rarely would he wear robes—and his hair was long. When asked, they said they were on a pilgrimage.
Dudjom Rinpoche lived just outside the town of Kalimpong in the village of Madhuban. Chokshi described to me how Kalimpong was full of Tibetan refugees. Disoriented, frightened and traumatized by the brutality that prevailed a few days’ march away over the Jelepla, the main pass to Tibet on the Lhasa trade route, they were pouring into Kalimpong and other towns across the Indian Himalayas, living reminders of the importance of finding the beyul.
As they headed up the hill to Madhuban, then a small village on the edge of which Dudjom lived in a large British colonial house, they had a conversation that Chokshi told me went something like this:
‘Please, Master, we are going to meet a great lama. You are also a great lama. You cannot meet him wearing the old shirt and pants you’ve travelled in. Please, change into your robes.’
‘The clothes one wears don’t matter,’ Tulshuk Lingpa responded. ‘It is what’s inside that matters. Besides, it is always better not to show on the outside what one is inside.’
‘But Master, please, we are your disciples!’
Tulshuk Lingpa gave in to their entreaties, not because he was convinced they were correct but out of a sense of compassion. In the forest surrounding the village—Madhuban translates to Honey Forest—he took off his street clothes and put on his white robe.
Chokshi told me they spent three days with Dudjom Rinpoche, and that Tulshuk Lingpa disclosed to his master the reason for their journey, to investigate the vision he had had of Khandro Yeshe Tsogyal and the other signs he’d received along the way. Dudjom Rinpoche was himself a high terton, as well as a mature and learned lama.
Of his encounter with his guru, Tulshuk Lingpa wrote these lines: ‘He received me with a smiling countenance and addressed me thus, “Proceed. All the precious literary treasures and the prophecies of the Hidden Land of Demoshong are in conformity with your coming to this place.”’
Chokshi recalled that Dudjom also warned Tulshuk Lingpa to keep his mission secret and to take with him only people of unusual clarity and purity, and above all else to proceed slowly. He sensed in his young disciple an impatience that could prove troublesome. Time must mature before an opening can occur.
‘Those you take with you,’ Dudjom warned him, ‘will determine your success or failure. They will each have to leave everything behind, not only physically but in their inmost thoughts as well.’
From Madhuban they travelled a few hours to Jorbungalow, a small town near Darjeeling, and to the monastery of arguably the greatest Tibetan yogi practitioner of his day: Chatral Rinpoche. When Chatral Rinpoche heard Tulshuk Lingpa’s story, he gathered Tulshuk Lingpa’s disciples around him and read from a terma that was hidden by Padmasambhava and discovered long ago. It described Beyul in great detail.
Tulshuk Lingpa (R) with Chatrul Rinpoche
Then Chatral Rinpoche gave them some practical advice. ‘When you are in the high mountains to find the gate to Beyul, don’t make a fire at night. It will attract animals and spirits. Here, use this,’ and he gave them a human thighbone horn. ‘Blow this at night,’ he told them. ‘It will scare away the animals and keep the spirits from bothering you, too.’
“Trumpet made of a human thigh-bone”
from the Himalayan Journals of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, 1891
On the third day they were there, Tenzing Norgay came to see Chatral Rinpoche. It was Tenzing Norgay who, a few years earlier, together with the New Zealander Edmund Hillary, was the first to scale the highest peak in the world, Mount Everest. It was a feat that made him both world-famous and, though he was born in Nepal, his adopted home Darjeeling’s favorite son. He came to Chatral Rinpoche because one of his two wives was very ill. The doctors were unable to heal her and he wanted the great lama, of whom Tenzing Norgay was both a disciple and a sponsor, to help her. When he presented his case to Chatral, the lama laughed: ‘You are very lucky you came today. If you would have come tomorrow, the man who could help your wife would be gone.’
He then introduced the great mountain climber to Tulshuk Lingpa, telling him that this was the lama with the greatest abilities to heal and that he should take him to his wife. So Tenzing Norgay took Tulshuk Lingpa and his small retinue to his house in Darjeeling, where they performed pujas and administered Tibetan herbs. Tenzing Norgay’s wife quickly recovered, which earned Tulshuk Lingpa both a new disciple and a sponsor. ‘Whenever you are in Darjeeling,’ he told Tulshuk Lingpa, ‘you must stay in my house,’ which Tulshuk Lingpa did. Tulshuk Lingpa kept secret from Tenzing Norgay the real reason for their journey: that they were investigating the way to Beyul. Dudjom’s warnings were fresh in his mind, and Tenzing Norgay was a gregarious, famous fellow who would not have kept the secret.
From Darjeeling, they went north to Sikkim to begin their investigations. Before Sikkim became a state of India in 1975, it was a separate country: a kingdom that traditionally had been closely aligned with Tibet. So when Tulshuk Lingpa and his followers travelled from Darjeeling down through the tea estates to the Rangeet River, which formed the border between India and Sikkim, they had to pass through an immigration checkpoint on the other side of the bridge. Since Tulshuk Lingpa was Tibetan and had passed into India on the sly, he didn’t have proper papers. Therefore a bit of careful negotiation was called for, which Tulshuk Lingpa accomplished in his typical tulshuk manner—with a bottle of liquor. This left him and the officials not only drunk but also friends. This would prove useful in the future.
In Tulshuk Lingpa’s account of this journey, he tells us that they arrived in the town of Singtam on the first day of the twelfth month, or 17 January. In Singtam, he writes, ‘Amid a tremendous confusion, I saw a hoard of gods and demons showing their likes and dislikes towards me. However, I took no interest in their doings.’
They proceeded further and, ‘I inquired from people the name of the place and the history of its beginning. However, since I could not understand the local language, I resorted to sorcery, and went straight to the much-famed holy and secret cave o
f the dakinis situated there.’
That evening Tulshuk Lingpa conducted an ‘internal fire offering’. Then, he tells us,
I fell into a light sleep in which the world of appearance turned into the shape of a triangle, in the center of which a red-faced young woman, both smiling and wrathful, carrying a vajra knife and a cup made of a human skull, addressed me thus:
Proceed, proceed to the Hidden Land,
Do not, do not split from the friends you like,
Do not, do not listen to fools without faith,
Do not, do not forget the prophecies of Padmasambhava,
Attain realization, realization for the good of all beings,
Torment, torment the gods and spirits into keeping their sacred oaths.
Make them, make them develop an altruistic attitude towards others.
Generate, generate pure thoughts.
It is possible, possible that the door of the sacred place will open again.
Having said that, she touched my lips to the nipples of her two breasts three times and declared that I had then fully obtained the blessings, initiations and transmissions of the three Buddha bodies of the khandro. Then, showering me with absolute love, she vanished into space. I woke up from my dream in perfect joy.
From the cave of the dakinis, they proceeded to the holy center of the kingdom, the Tashiding Monastery. Set on top of a mountain at the end of a ridge, which falls off to where two rivers merge, Tashiding has a 360-degree view of the surrounding mountains and earns its name well, for Tashiding means Auspicious Center. Tashiding is the ‘center’ of Sikkim the way the heart is the ‘center’ of one’s being.