A Step Away from Paradise: A Tibetan Lama's Extraordinary Journey to a Land of Immortality (32 page)

One day, perhaps two months after they returned from Mount Kanchenjunga, word reached Tulshuk Lingpa that some representatives of the palace were going around asking questions about him and that he would be interviewed. The investigative team of four was headed by two men: the first was known as Gonde Drungyig, an official within the Ecclesiastical Department, and the second was a learned lama known as the Chagzoe, the treasurer. He was the private secretary of Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, a high lama who was living at the palace monastery. The Chagzoe was also the stepfather of Sogyal Rinpoche, the now-famous lama who wrote the book
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
among other works.

Travelling from village to village, asking what the people knew of Tulshuk Lingpa’s background and his proposed trip to Beyul Demoshong, they were charged with determining whether Tulshuk Lingpa was a fraud. They were also trying to get a grasp on numbers, to ascertain how many families were planning to go with him to Beyul. Apparently, the palace wanted to know how many of their subjects they would be losing. Yab Maila warned Tulshuk Lingpa that he’d have to tell them something about Beyul, enough to keep them satisfied, if not everything.

When Gonde Drungyig and the Chagzoe entered Tulshuk Lingpa’s room, they offered him
khatas
and gifts. Though they had grave doubts as to his authenticity, allegiance and perhaps even his sanity, they followed courtly protocol and showed him the respect due to a high lama; he showed them the respect due to official representatives of a king.

Tea was brought, and when the pleasantries were complete they got right to the point. ‘We’ve been hearing rumors and they have gone as far as the palace, that you are going to the Hidden Land and planning on taking people from Ravangla, Tashiding, Gezing—from all over Sikkim—with you. It looks lik e the kingdom might be emptying right out.’

Tulshuk Lingpa was characteristically vague and contradictory when answering their questions. He neither confirmed nor denied anything they said. If this frustrated the investigators, they did not show it. In higher circles of Sikkimese—and mostly any—society, courtly decorum often prevails at the expense of truth. Where open disagreement is a breach of the social fabric there are sure to be intrigues. That is the price paid for maintaining social norms. Tulshuk Lingpa understood this well, maybe even better than his interrogators. He both admitted and concealed everything. He gave them everything and nothing with the deftness of a seasoned diplomat. He even unwrapped the
ter
he had taken out above Dzongri and read them portions of it. Tulshuk Lingpa presented his
khandro
to them and had her sit at his right.

By the end of the interview while the investigators felt more secure, they were in fact more confused. They had had a better understanding of Tulshuk Lingpa, his motives and his intentions before they ever laid eyes on him. Tulshuk Lingpa had that ability. Fact and fiction, truth and its opposite were not to be held in the hands and weighed as much as juggled.

As the interview was wrapping up, Gonde Drungyig pulled a surprise. He said the king had instructed him to inform Tulshuk Lingpa that he would have to travel to Gangtok and prove his powers to the king by performing a miracle.

This was the only thing in the entire interview for which Tulshuk Lingpa gave a definitive answer.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I’d be glad to go to Gangtok and perform a miracle for the king.’

At this Gonde Drungyig smiled but it caused a minor ruckus among the disciples who had been sitting in on the interview. One of them filled Gonde Drungyig’s teacup, purposefully spilling some in the process as a diversion, while another managed to whisper in Tulshuk Lingpa’s ear, ‘It is a trap. If you go to Gangtok, they will throw you in jail!’

When Gonde Drungyig’s attention was back upon Tulshuk Lingpa, Tulshuk Lingpa said, ‘Please inform the king that though I’ll be glad to fulfill his wish and be tested, the capital is no place to perform a miracle. I will do it here. I will have to perform divinations to determine the propitious date but it will have to be performed here. I will send a delegation to inform the king of the time and date. I invite him, all his ministers and anyone else who wants to witness the miraculous!’

It was with the greatest courtesy that Gonde Drungyig and the Chagzoe took their leave of Tulshuk Lingpa. While they had been with Tulshuk Lingpa their two assistants had been questioning the lamas of Tashiding and people in the neighborhood, trying to get a feel for how many were planning to go with Tulshuk Lingpa to the Hidden Land. They saved the senior monks for Gonde Drungyig and the Chagzoe to interview. So instead of leaving then for Gangtok, they started questioning the senior lamas of Tashiding.

The first question they asked them was blunt and to the point, ‘Are you all planning on going with Tulshuk Lingpa to Beyul?’

The monks were cautious and lied. ‘You do not understand,’ they said, ‘Tulshuk Lingpa talks about going to Beyul but he doesn’t really
mean
it. When we ask him when we will go, he says, “Not now, not now.” When we press him, he says, “After some months.” After some months, he says, “When the weather clears.” When the weather clears, again he says, “After some months.” Now we know he is not here because of Beyul. He is a great lama. He is giving dharma teachings and initiations. He has many students of
thangka
painting. People come to him and he heals them. Why would the king have any problem with that?’

The Chagzoe said, ‘But we just spoke with Tulshuk Lingpa and he told us everything. We met the
khandro
, his second wife. He brought her here to Sikkim for the purpose of opening the gate to Beyul. Tulshuk Lingpa told us everything. He even showed us the
ter
and read from it.’

The monks continued their lie. They couldn’t imagine that Tulshuk Lingpa would have been so frank with the king’s representatives. They thought they were being tricked into revealing secrets.

They told the representatives again, ‘This Beyul story, it should be of no concern to the king. We are only practicing dharma.’

After reporting all this to the king, the king sent the Chagzoe to Kalimpong in order to interview Dudjom Rinpoche. The Chagzoe told the high lama, who was Tulshuk Lingpa’s root guru, ‘I’ve just come from Tashiding where I interviewed Tulshuk Lingpa, and he told me everything. Some say he’s not serious about actually going to Beyul but he brought his
khandro
, a sure indication that he has every intention of opening the gate. He told me everything but he wouldn’t tell me when he would depart. He is your disciple, so you must know when. So please tell me.’

Dudjom Rinpoche said, diplomatically but to the point, ‘Tulshuk Lingpa is a terton, and Beyul does exist. He is the right man to open Beyul. I have no idea about the timing. Only he can know this.’

When the Chagzoe reported this back to the palace a storm began to brew, which turned into a cyclone with Tulshuk Lingpa at its center. The eye of a cyclone, though the winds circle around it, is always calm and so was Tulshuk Lingpa who skillfully took himself out of the tumult by announcing he was going on a six-month retreat at the Sinon Gompa. A three-hour walk almost directly uphill from the village of Tashiding, set on a slight leveling of a steep mountain slope, Sinon Gompa was—despite its historical importance as described by Saul—a small monastery with only a few wooden houses surrounding it. Set amid forests and sheer rock faces overlooking the village of Tashiding and the monastery on the top of the hill beyond, it was a perfect place for the retreat he suddenly announced. He brought with him his family, including the
khandro
, and his closest lama disciples. For Tulshuk Lingpa it was a time of great concentration upon the opening of Beyul. With all but his closest disciples back in Tashiding fending for themselves and running out of money he was able to concentrate on his mission, which was to find and open a crack in the world.

But first he had to perform a miracle for the king. So a few weeks after the investigators visited him, Tulshuk Lingpa announced the date of his miracle. He said he would perform the miracle on such-and-such date at eight in the morning on the rock slopes below the Sinon Gompa, and he invited everyone—from the king and his ministers to every villager across the kingdom and beyond—to witness it.

To announce the date to the king and to ask him to be present Tulshuk Lingpa put together a delegation consisting of the head lama of Tashiding Gompa, the head lama of Sinon, as well as Yab Maila, and another disciple by the name of Kunsang Mandal who was the tax collector from Shoshing. To officially stand in his stead, Tulshuk Lingpa sent his son Kunsang. Kunsang recalled that they walked from Tashiding to the closest road, which was a few hours away at the Rangeet River and from there they got a ride to Gangtok.

‘When we arrived at the palace,’ Kunsang told me, ‘we gained easy entrance since the delegation included two of the king’s tax collectors, one of whom had a brother who was the head of security.

‘It wasn’t the king holding court that day but the crown prince, who was sitting on a throne under a huge tent on the palace grounds wearing a robe of beautiful Sikkimese brocade. When we were brought before him the lamas made their offerings to the crown prince, and the crown prince blessed them. Then they presented me to him. I stepped forward, ready to bow to the crown prince, but he stopped me. “That isn’t necessary,” he said. It was a sign of respect for my father but secretly, in my heart, I was thinking of the Hidden Land and how my father would be king there—how he and I were equals since I, too, was a crown prince.

‘We sat on wooden benches across from the throne and the lamas told the crown prince our business, which was to announce the date of the miracle a few days hence.

‘The crown prince said he would come there himself.

‘As we got up to leave the crown prince ordered lunch for us, since we had come from so far.

‘While we were eating, I remember Yab Maila saying, “The crown prince said he will come but he won’t. He’ll send a few representatives. They say one thing; they do another.”

‘As we were leaving the palace compound we had to wait for the palace guards dressed in their plumed splendor to pass before us playing drums and trumpets. I felt as if I’d stepped into the pages of a fairy tale. I had never seen anything like it.

‘We went to the Green Hotel in the center of town where we would spend the night. The two tax collectors in the party, Yab Maila and Kunsang Mandal, had business with the finance minister. While there, they told him about Tulshuk Lingpa. The minister told them that if Tulshuk Lingpa did good work for the dharma, the government would be likely to give him a salary.

‘When they told the rest of us the story back at the Green Hotel, we all got a good laugh out of it. “What would Tulshuk Lingpa need with a salary?” the head lama of Tashiding said, laughing. “We’re going to Beyul!”

‘We were still laughing over the absurdity of Tulshuk Lingpa on a salary when there was a knock at the door. It was Gonde Drungyig, the head of the team that had come to Tashiding to investigate and had insisted my father perform a miracle. “I heard you came to the palace today to announce the day of the miracle,” he said. “I will be there.”’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Miracle

‘It is not down in any map; true places never are.’ —Herman Melville

The day of the miracle arrived. Even before the sun rose, people started converging on Sinon with the excitement of knowing that this would be a day they would always remember. Maybe the miracle would be the opening of the crack itself; maybe today the gate would open to a land beyond cares, an event that even their great-grandparents were awaiting. Lamas were known to fly. Maybe he would create a castle larger than the king’s from the billowing clouds and disappear into it. Rumor had it that not only the crown prince but also the king was coming. Even in a land shrouded in mystery to the rest of the world, a land of lamas and demons and gods where the mountains hid unknown valleys, it wasn’t often that a wonder-working lama performed a miracle. Today the famous terton would perform his supernatural feat especially for the king.

Rigzin Dokhampa was there on the morning of the miracle. Sitting in his office at the Institute of Tibetology outside Gangtok, he recalled for me what happened. He and his brother Sangye Tenzing were from Tashiding and they were in their teens at the time. They were disciples of Tulshuk Lingpa, studying
thangka
painting with him. Rigzin told me that shortly before the announced time of eight in the morning neither the king nor the crown prince had arrived. Even their representative was absent.