by Thomas Shor
‘If one truly believed in the reality of Beyul, if one believed that Tulshuk Lingpa was the one chosen by Padmasambhava, if one knew that he had the key—then one would have no trouble turning back to await the right time and conditions. Pushing forward, it seemed to me, was a sign not of faith but of doubt. Since it was this lack of faith that was causing the obstructions, I felt I had to tell Tulshuk Lingpa that we should turn back. But I did not have the courage. Though I feared—and even foresaw—disaster, how could I contradict him? Wouldn’t this in itself be a sign of a lack of belief? Isn’t the ultimate test to follow the guru no matter what, even as conditions spiral out of control?
‘I was torn within myself those last days, unsure whether I lacked the courage to tell him my conviction or whether it was my faith that was lacking. While I was thus torn, the others were pushing Tulshuk Lingpa ever harder into going—especially after Wangyal returned from his excursion with Tulshuk Lingpa having seen the snow give way to fragrant greenery.
‘Did I correctly sense that Tulshuk Lingpa was himself wanting to turn back but was being swayed by his disciples? While I couldn’t muster the courage to speak to Tulshuk Lingpa, I tried to convince the others that we should turn back.
‘“Wangyal has seen it,” I said to them. “We can no longer doubt its existence. Since Tulshuk Lingpa is the one destined to open the beyul, as long as he is with us, we will always be able to go. The obstacles tell us that this is not the time. Therefore we should not push Tulshuk Lingpa, and we should turn around.”
‘The others were thinking differently. Since we had come so far and had left our homes and were willing to lay down our lives, they thought we should keep going at least to have a glimpse like Wangyal had.
‘“The need to see it can only come from doubt,” I pleaded with them. “Since Tulshuk Lingpa is with us and he is definitely the one destined to open Beyul Demoshong, we can go there any time. At any time it is accessible to us—so forget it. Don’t have this doubt of ‘Is it there, is it not there? Oh, I want to find out.’ Forget it. Our supplies are being depleted. We all know the dangers of melting springtime snow. If the time is not right to go now, the time will surely come. The key lies in Tulshuk Lingpa’s hands. Don’t doubt that for a second. When the time is right, there will be no obstacles.”
‘Nobody would listen. They could only reiterate: “Even if we don’t enter Beyul,” they said, “at least we want to see it from a distance like Wangyal did.”
‘It was like a wheel: once set in motion, it was very difficult to stop.
‘Tulshuk Lingpa heard us arguing that afternoon when he returned with Wangyal, and it was as if a cloud descended not only on the mountain. Tulshuk Lingpa’s face also became very dark.
‘The next day we tried again. That was the last day, the day Tulshuk Lingpa died.
‘If I had had enough courage to tell Tulshuk Lingpa, probably he wouldn’t have died. Perhaps we would have tried it later—secretly, with less people whose faith was great enough. Then we would have been successful.’
Lama Tashi looked away. His gaze rose over the snow-capped mountains on the other side of the valley from the courtyard where we were sitting, with our shawls flapping in the cold wind. He was silent for a few long moments. Then he turned to me and spoke.
‘Actually Beyul was a secret. No one should have known, just those who were prepared by their own inner work and by the teachings of Tulshuk Lingpa.
‘Faith in Beyul is not enough. It also depends upon your motivation for going there. The fact that Beyul is a place of unimaginable riches where everything will be provided can itself cause impurity. Even the purest of heart can be corrupted by riches. Those who are not prepared can easily find themselves going there for material reasons and not for the dharma. They say three quarters of the world’s wealth is in Beyul. So what we see here in this world is merely a quarter.’
I had heard this before. Géshipa had told me that Beyul Demoshong is so large you’d definitely need a chariot just to get around. Dorje Wangmo had told me that Padmasambhava had said half of the wealth of this world is hidden underneath Kanchenjunga. Kunsang had told me that Demoshong, which was the inner secret land within Sikkim, was three times larger than the outer Sikkim or Demojong, the Valley of Rice.
Don’t the pronouncements of the modern physicists echo a similar idea? Physicists can only account for a fraction of the matter that their theories and measurements tell them exists in the universe. They dub the rest ‘dark matter’ because they cannot see it, taste it, weigh it or in any way account for it. Though they know it exists, it cannot be measured as we measure things of this world. Even though they can only infer its existence, they know it exists—every bit as much as Tulshuk Lingpa’s disciples know of Beyul’s existence. As with Beyul, no one’s ever seen it. No one has ‘been there’. The physicists go even further than the seekers of Beyul. They say the visible world of electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks and all the subatomic particles, electromagnetic forces and everything existing in the three dimensions including you and I, all the matter subject to gravitational force—what Kunsang would call the ‘outer’ Sikkim—makes up only 2 per cent of the universe.
Lama Tashi was adamant about why Beyul exists, and what Padmasambhava’s purpose was in hiding it.
‘Beyul isn’t a place to simply sit back and enjoy oneself because all one’s needs are taken care of,’ he told me. ‘It isn’t as if upon entering Beyul you suddenly become a millionaire and live a life of worldly pleasures. Padmasambhava hid Beyul in the eighth century as a place free of care so those who enter could have uninterrupted practice. Practice has one goal: to develop compassion for others. Here we don’t have time to practice. It is extremely difficult to develop compassion. The entire world conspires for the strengthening of the ego and its drive to put itself first. How rare it is for someone to be developed to the point of putting others first!
‘Now times are difficult. Everywhere we look we see war. Everything brings distraction and destruction. Padmasambhava foresaw these dark times. The search for Beyul is only important at the end of time, when the world is coming to an end. It is for that we have the lineage of the lingpas, those destined to find the ter concerning Beyul.
‘Now it is difficult even for those with a pure heart to help others. We are conquering the material world but we are destroying it as well. Soon we will have nowhere to run. They are building an eleven-kilometer tunnel through the mountains that will connect Lahaul directly to the lush Kullu Valley. Twelve months a year you’ll be able to drive to Simoling. The opening of the tunnel will be right there, on the other side of the valley. We’ll be able to come and go at will. Since people first came to this valley, we’ve been snowed in half the year. Now they will “improve” our situation. But what will it bring us? Maybe a lot of tourists.
‘You cannot make this world a Shangri-La. No improvement will ever get you there. To reach that state of happiness, you must let go of this world. 100 percent. Maybe it will soon be time again to attempt an opening. It is written in the ancient books that when the dharma is becoming lost, when there is nowhere else to run, the Great Door of the Secret Place will open. Times are getting rough.
‘But you can’t just go there. I know the way. I spent twenty days at the base of the slope to the pass which opens to Beyul. I could take you there. But what’s the use? I cannot do it alone. We have to wait for the lama to come. You have to believe in Padmasambhava. Beyul does exist.’
Looking into the old, calm eyes of Lama Tashi I had the wish to see what he had seen.
‘Once I had the opportunity,’ he continued. ‘I cut the path through the deep snow for my lama. We were just approaching the top of the pass when the cloud descended and everything turned white and then blackness descended. I got this gash over my eye and lost liters of blood. You can still see the scar. I broke my arm. Three ribs were broken. I vaguely remember the Lachung Lama wrapping the sleeve of his shirt around my head to stem the bleeding.
‘I lay for a night on that mountain wrapped in the others’ coats and scarves. The dead Tulshuk Lingpa was on one side, Yeshe on the other. She didn’t move all night; I thought she too was dead. Drifting in and out of consciousness I sometimes thought I was also dead, staring into that bright mountain sky illuminated by a myriad of stars, my body in pain and numb with cold. I didn’t yet comprehend what had happened. I remembered neither the avalanche nor being dug out from under the snow. I just wondered why we were lying there alone—the dead and half-living on a steep white cold slope when the young woman I thought was dead beside me had just that morning seen a vision of a green valley in the mirror.
‘In the morning, I saw the others coming up the slope to rescue me. I could hardly move but I waved my good arm. “Over here,” I called to them. “I’m not dead.”
‘It took us two days to reach Tseram. In Tibetan tradition, it isn’t good to cry at the death of a high lama but the people couldn’t help it. Since I was the umzay of Tulshuk Lingpa’s monastery, it should have been my job to perform the death ceremony. It was all I could do to stand up, offer a khata to my dead lama and prostrate one time before collapsing again. There were no doctors in Tseram, though there was a lama from Bhutan who knew how to set bones. He made a brace out of pieces of wood and bound them to my arm with cloth. When the death ceremony was over, most of the people just left. I stayed on with Tulshuk Lingpa’s family for a month, healing enough so I could travel.
‘It took us five days to walk from Tseram to Tashiding, and from there two more to Darjeeling. I went to see Chatral Rinpoche. He asked me what happened. When I told him, he told me to return to Simoling to take care of my land and take charge of the monastery.
‘I returned to Simoling. It took me two years of bed rest to recover from the avalanche and to take charge of the monastery. The monastery was in disrepair. The stupa was crumbling. I had to rebuild it. I have devoted the second half of my life to maintaining both Tulshuk Lingpa’s monastery and his memory.’
I asked him what it was about Tulshuk Lingpa’s character that led him to devote his life to Tulshuk Lingpa, even after his death.
‘Tulshuk Lingpa was spontaneous,’ Lama Tashi said, smiling with the recollection. ‘He didn’t follow rules. He would say one thing and then do something else. He didn’t believe one person was high caste, or one low. If he met a high caste person, he would treat him the same as he’d treat anyone else. He did as he wanted. He was a free man, the freest man I’ve ever met. He didn’t listen to what anyone else said. In Buddhism everyone is equal. Buddhists are very compassionate, helping others. That is the ideal.’
Lama Tashi squeezed his forearm as if to test his own strength. ‘Now I’m over eighty years old,’ he said. ‘I’m grateful for my good health. It is very important to keep this monastery well. We are accumulating merit. Even the fact that we are sitting here is the fruit we have generated.
‘Someone like Tulshuk Lingpa comes only once in very many years. Just to meet him and to be in his presence—even just to hear about him—you need special merit.
‘He wrote his guidebook to Beyul, which you have a copy of. Only a few people have seen it; it has been kept secret. Not everyone can write such a work. You need a mind as clear as the sky to understand it. Consider it a blessing that you have this book. Just be careful. Say you show someone a photograph of the footprint Tulshuk Lingpa left in the stone in Sikkim. Not just any lama can make such a footprint. Even the Dalai Lama hasn’t done such a thing. If you show it to someone who doesn’t believe in such things and if you don’t explain it well, his reaction will be to think it was a fake. This will cause him problems. It will create obstacles for him.
‘It is very difficult now to go to Beyul. You have to practice dharma, and keep practicing. But it should be in our minds. We must pray that we can go. If we pray for this now, even after we die, when we come back there will be the conditions. We will meet the right lama at the right time. We have to generate great love and compassion for human beings and then the fruit will come.’
‘Do you often think about Beyul?’ I asked.
‘I will think about it till the day I die,’ was his simple reply.
‘Just that you are writing this book,’ he continued, ‘and have come here at this particular point means that we have karma together from our previous lives. There are many people these days who don’t have pure motivation. It is best not to speak of it with them. We are like one family, those who believe in Tulshuk Lingpa.
‘Now we don’t have the opportunity to go to Beyul. But we have the belief. No matter how many years it may take, we have to keep the belief alive—and keep it secret. If we keep it really well in the cave of our hearts and keep our belief pure, then in our next lives we will all meet again and we can then go to Beyul.
‘I am very happy that you have come,’ he said. ‘May we meet again!’
Lama Tashi
Epilogue
While most accounts of a life story end with the protagonist’s death, Tulshuk Lingpa’s story has a breadth and depth to it that mere death cannot end. As with all stories of Tibetan lamas who have passed on, one must consider the reincarnation.
I met quite a few who said they wished they had died with Tulshuk Lingpa on that snowy slope, claiming he had made it to the Hidden Land. Some of these ones drew the logical conclusion that Tulshuk Lingpa’s case was unique and there would be no reincarnation. Breaking with traditional notions as laid down in Tibetan tradition, they claimed one cannot take one’s body to Beyul. Having left his body behind on that snowy slope in order to enter the Hidden Land, he had not died and therefore would not be reincarnating. This view was clearly in the minority. For the others, the topic of his incarnation was and is of keen interest.
In May 2003 Phuntsok Choeden, Tulshuk Lingpa’s widow from Tibet, had an operation for colon cancer in a hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal. It was a condition she was to die from three years later. Two days after her operation she was lying in her hospital bed surrounded by her son, three daughters and some of her grandchildren. Suddenly the door flew open and in strode a tall, slim Westerner with short hair dressed in a polo shirt.
Approaching the convalescing Phuntsok Choeden, he said, to the shock of everyone present, ‘In my last life, you were my wife.’ Turning to her children Kunsang, Kamala, Penzom and Kunsun, he said, ‘You were my son, and you were my daughters.’ To Wangchuk, he held out his hand. ‘We’ve not met,’ he said. ‘I was your grandfather Tulshuk Lingpa!’
Turning to Kunsang, he said, ‘How does it feel to meet your father for the first time in this life?’
‘Very happy,’ Kunsang replied, eyeing the stranger cautiously. ‘Very happy.’
‘If you are really Tulshuk Lingpa,’ Kunsang said, no doubt laughing, ‘tell me what happened in Simoling. Surely you must know,’ and he proceeded to ask the Westerner a series of questions about the life of Tulshuk Lingpa, for which the Westerner had not a single correct answer.
‘You don’t seem to know anything about Tulshuk Lingpa,’ Kunsang said.
‘I will educate myself,’ the Westerner said, opening a bag and giving Kamala some brocade and placing a wad of rupees on the little table next to Phuntsok Choeden’s bed.
He turned to Kunsang. ‘The last time I said I would take you to the Hidden Land. This time I will take you to Mongolia!’
‘Mongolia?’ Kunsang gasped. ‘Why Mongolia?’
‘I will take you to Mongolia because you are a lama, and in Mongolia lamas are rare. If you come with me to Mongolia you can ride a cart pulled by reindeer! In Mongolia people live in felt tents, they have excellent butter, and the women there—ah, the women in Mongolia are beautiful beyond compare. You will have a wonderful time in Mongolia. It is most auspicious to go in June or July. I will be going then, and I want you to come with me.’
So saying, the strange Westerner strode out of the room with as much suddenness as he had entered. They neither saw nor heard from him again.
There is, however, a serious contender for the post of the reincarnation of Tulshuk Lingpa.
In 1970, practically a decade after Tulshuk Lingpa died, the daughter of Jinda Wangchuk—the big sponsor of Tulshuk Lingpa from Pangao who prepared the cave on the cliff face there for Tulshuk Lingpa and his family—had a son. As soon as the boy was able to speak, he started saying, ‘I am Tulshuk Lingpa. I have a monastery.’ Jinda Wangchuk went to Lama Tashi in Simoling to tell him the news. Lama Tashi had of course been on the lookout for Tulshuk Lingpa’s reincarnation. He went to Pangao, offered the boy a khata and was quite impressed. But the determination of whether a boy is a true reincarnation, especially of such a high lama, can only be made by a lama of very high standing. He advised Jinda Wangchuk to bring the boy to a learned and wise lama named Gelong Tenzing, a former secretary of Dudjom Rinpoche living in Manali, which is not far from Pangao.