A Step Away from Paradise: A Tibetan Lama's Extraordinary Journey to a Land of Immortality (47 page)

Raju, incarnation of Tulshuk Lingpa:
“Positive People Don’t Put Others Down”

He led us into the one room where he lived with his wife and two children, who all happened to be out. The room was simple and clean. One could tell they were living with tremendous dignity on precious little. He graciously invited us to sit on the bed but we preferred to sit on the rug in the center of the room. One would have thought he would have asked us at the door what we wanted with him, or perhaps upon inviting us into his home. But first he asked if we wanted tea, which he then prepared on a gas ring in the corner of the room that served as a kitchen by pouring water from a plastic jug (they had no running water) into an aluminum pot into which he threw one handful of tea and two of sugar. Once it was brewed, he poured the tea into two unmatched glasses and a chipped cup.

It wasn’t until he gave us our tea and sat in front of us with his own that he smiled broadly and asked us with a quizzical look what we wanted.

I answered in a very deliberate manner, ‘We’ve been living here in the Kullu Valley for almost three months,’ I said. ‘Barbara is conducting research for her doctoral thesis at Oxford on Tibetan Medicine. Her topic is longevity.’ Raju nodded his head thoughtfully at this, obviously trying to imagine what that might have to do with him. Pausing to take a sip of tea, I continued. ‘I am a writer,’ I said. ‘And I’m writing a book. The book is about,’ and I let a little silence intervene so I could look closely at his face for the reaction before I uttered the name, ‘Tulshuk Lingpa.’

At the mention of the name, Raju burst out laughing and almost spilt his tea. He looked at me out of the corners of his mirthful eyes, shaking his finger playfully. ‘So that’s it!’ he said.

I explained to him how I heard about Tulshuk Lingpa in Sikkim, and how I’d spent time with Tulshuk Lingpa’s disciples there and in Darjeeling. I told him about my close association with Kunsang and Wangchuk, and how we’d travelled to Tashiding and to Yoksum. I told him how we’d met with Tulshuk Lingpa’s oldest disciples here in the Kullu Valley and over the Rohtang Pass in Lahaul, how we had visited the cave in Pangao and the monastery in Simoling. Finally, I told him how I’d been writing the story and had just written about the avalanche and the death of Tulshuk Lingpa. ‘The last piece of the story,’ I explained, ‘is yours.’

Raju had an obvious sense of playfulness; yet he was also extremely serious. One could sense it in the intense focus of his eyes as I told him of my project, the way he strained to understand my English, the way he was obviously deeply moved to have us suddenly sitting with him on his rug sipping tea awaiting his story, which he was obviously eager to tell.

Because it was difficult for him to fully express himself in English, he switched to Tibetan which, he explained, he had learned during many years of living in monasteries. So with Barbara interpreting, he told us the following story:

‘I remember when the whole thing started. I must have been no more than three years old. I had a recurring dream in which I saw an old bell and
dorje
, the ritual thunderbolt the lamas use in their Buddhist practices.

Tulshuk Lingpa’s
dorje
, or ritual thunderbolt, given to his daughter Pema Choekyi after his death.

‘It would be dark when they’d appear, and always the thought would come to me, “These are mine.” I would have this dream at night, and during the day I would forget it. Night after night I’d have this dream, always with the thought that these items reserved for the lamas belonged to me. It was at this time—not long after I had learned to say the words for mama and papa—that I started saying I was Tulshuk Lingpa. I don’t know how his name came to me. I cannot explain it, and to tell you the truth the memory is only dim in my mind. The dream is what I really remember, not the outer events that followed.

‘I do remember that a lama came to the house. He put me on his lap and gave me candy. I took the candy but then I gave it away. He asked me if I was a lama, and I said yes. I also remember looking at the photos under the glass table and choosing the photo of Tulshuk Lingpa.

‘I had long hair then, and they shaved it. I was sent to the monastery in Pangao. They started training me as a lama. Sometimes I used to sneak away and go down the trail to the cave where Tulshuk Lingpa had lived. Whenever I went there, I’d feel very happy.

‘When I was quite young, my father died. He was an alcoholic and died from too much drink.

‘There were many of us young novice monks at the monastery but I was always singled out, given special attention and I always had the feeling of being watched. My status as Tulshuk Lingpa’s reincarnation was controversial. I was expected to both show the powers he possessed and to go bad, as predicted. It was too much for me. Even then, while I was so young, I had an inner feeling. I felt I couldn’t develop at my natural pace if everything I did was being watched and compared to Tulshuk Lingpa, who was such a high lama. The more they tried to put me into a box, the stronger was my instinct to break free. I knew, in my childish way, that my nature couldn’t be put to school.

‘I stayed in the monastery in Pangao until I was about thirteen. I think I was too much trouble for them, so they sent me to the monastery of Mindroling, the high Nyingma lama outside of Dehradun. In Mindroling’s monastery I learned to read the
pechas
, and I attended many
wangs
or blessing empowerments performed by Mindroling himself. It was at this time, when I was thirteen-fourteen, that many dharma obstacles arose within me. It was all because people were talking about me and who I was. It affected something in my mind, and I went the other way.

‘I came home for a vacation to see my mother and little sister, and on my way back to the monastery something snapped inside me. I didn’t feel like studying to become a lama. I didn’t want to practice. I just wanted to go away. Where did I want to go? Anywhere! I was on the bus to Dehradun when the bus stopped in a little town on the way, and I just got off the bus and started walking. It was completely unpremeditated. I just couldn’t return to the monastery and all the talk and other people’s expectations and their ideas of how to channel me. After all that was pent up inside me, I went a bit crazy. I wandered without aim, staying a month here, a month there. This was out of the mountains on the Plains.

‘Was it dangerous? Sure! But I was a bit crazy and did a lot of crazy things. I slept on the side of the road. Of course I had no money, so I had to be very quick-witted. It was some months later, after I simply didn’t show up at the monastery, that the monastery secretary contacted my mother to see why I had stayed home. She thought I was at the monastery.

Together, they figured out I must be dead. I suppose for them I was. I was harsh, just taking off and telling no one.’

Raju laughed at the recollection of his wild years. His daughter came in, a delightful seven-year-old. He got her a glass of milk and she plopped down on his lap, looking at us with wide, open eyes as he told us how he ended up in the Punjab where a Punjabi family took him in and raised him as one of their own. The warm way Raju wrapped his arms around his daughter as he spoke showed that the cruelty of not telling his mother where he was, which must have caused her untold pain during his teens, was not an innate quality in him. It was an act borne of necessity, his total disappearance being the only way he could survive the attention drawn on him at too tender an age. ‘The Punjabi family was wonderful,’ he said with a smile. ‘They simply accepted me as they would a son. They didn’t know my background, that I was a monk. They had no idea about the story of the reincarnation. I think I told them I was an orphan.’

Raju was silent for some moments, a painful memory crossing his brow.

‘When I was about eighteen,’ he continued, ‘I decided it was time for me to go home. At the beginning, I didn’t think anything of the pain I must have been causing my mother. But I had studied enough of the dharma to know about the law of karma and that if I caused her such pain, I couldn’t escape similar pain myself. I knew it was simply wrong to cause pain. What pain is worse than that of a mother who loses her child? So I left the Punjabi family. They gave me the bus fare and I returned to the Kullu Valley. I walked into Pangao for the reunion with my mother. I was so happy my self-imposed exile was over.

Raju’s eyes filled with glistening moisture.

‘When I returned, they told me my mother had died of tuberculosis a year earlier.’

Raju’s arms tightened lovingly around his youngest child.

‘Of course, this was a tremendous blow to me. I was agonized, not just because I could never see my mother again or because I could not be there when she died but also from the knowledge that she had died grieving for me. I had a younger sister. She was about the age of this little girl here.’ He ran his hand over the top of his daughter’s hair. ‘She was staying with relatives but nobody had money to take care of her. We were both orphans now. I realized quickly that I was now responsible for her. All I knew was how to be a lama but I didn’t want to do that, so I slowly learned how to do all sorts of work. Because she was an orphan, I was able to get my little sister into a government boarding school where they gave her food, clothes and books. With my guidance, she was able to complete class twelve.

‘Now I know lots of things. I know carpentry, the apple business. I never owned my own apple orchard—it always belonged to others. But I know the business.

‘Then I thought I had to do something else. A friend of mine was driving a taxi and he said, “Come to Manali, and I’ll teach you how to drive.” Because we only did it little by little, it took me three years to learn to drive. Now I can drive a lorry, a bus, a car. It was much later that I got my own car.

‘I never thought I’d marry because on the inside I still considered myself a lama. But everybody, my auntie and all, were telling me “Get married, get married.” But I said, “How can I get married? I don’t have a house. I don’t have fields. I don’t have any money. How can I feed a wife?”

‘My auntie said, “You get married, and I’ll help you with the house and everything. You get a job, earn money and slowly-slowly you’ll learn to look after your wife and then a family.”

‘I was twenty-five when I got married. It was a love marriage.

‘For five years after marriage, my wife was really ill. Then our son was born.

‘During the winters while my wife was sick, I didn’t have work. I had nothing to do. I had to stay inside. So I worked my way back towards the knowledge of being a lama. I had many
pechas
, and I had learned how to read them. So I started reading. I offered butter lamps every day.

‘I started going to Rampur, near Shimla. I was doing business, small business only. Small business is OK. With big business, big tension. Small business, no headache—family happy, I’m happy.

‘My whole life has been colored by Tulshuk Lingpa. Back when I was a child in Pangao, there was an attendant of Tulshuk Lingpa’s who used to watch me closely. I was pretty crazy even then. He used to say to me, “You are Tulshuk Lingpa. I knew him well, and you have the same tulshuk nature.” Then I would say, “No. I am not Tulshuk Lingpa. I am just a kid.” I would run away from him. I just wanted to be left alone.

‘Of course I’ve always asked myself whether I
am
the reincarnation of Tulshuk Lingpa, and there are times I look deeply within and think, Yes, I am.’

‘I’ve spoken with many people about Tulshuk Lingpa,’ I said, ‘and from what I know about him it was impossible to put him into a box, to say, “You are a lama; you are this or that.” He would break whatever box others tried to put him in. He was well suited to the name Tulshuk. He was always changing and contradicting himself.’

‘I am just the same,’ Raju exclaimed. ‘I’m of two minds. I often set out in one direction and end up going in another. Just ask my wife! It drives her mad but that’s just how I am.

‘When I was living in Rampur, I met a Tibetan nun who was very sick. Her body was full of scars and wounds. I had heard the story of Tulshuk Lingpa curing the lepers in Simoling. While a child at the monastery I had learned how to read the
pechas
and recite the mantras. Even though I was driving a taxi at the time, I was also feeling the pull back to the dharma. My friends were drivers and some of them were rough people but I was living a pure life. I was waking up early every morning and taking a bath. Before eating anything I’d read the
pechas
and recite the mantras. I’d do the same every evening. None of my friends who drove taxis and rickshaws had any idea about this aspect of my life. I had to wonder about it myself. In a way, I was just a driver. But then I’ve always had this pull towards the inner life. And I’ve always wondered why.

‘I decided to test it. I told the nun I would try to help her. So one morning I did my morning practice and I went to her. I recited the mantras over her and much to my amazement and to her great joy, she was cured. The boils on her body simply disappeared. It frightened me, and left me with a sense of awe.

‘My wife was also sick at the time. I thought I could try curing her too. I was trembling, afraid to do so. But I did it, and she too was cured. This left me shaken. I never asked for all this attention, though I’ve felt sometimes that I really am Tulshuk Lingpa. Pema Choekyi, Tulshuk Lingpa’s daughter by the
khandro
, used to come to me when I was a kid. She used to call me Father. I’ve never tried curing people again. Once people get the idea you can cure them, they’ll be lining up outside your door. Wasn’t that Tulshuk Lingpa’s problem, too many people? Wasn’t that why he failed to enter Beyul?