The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume One (28 page)

At Chamdo we stayed with a Tibetan official who was the senior member of the Communist district committee.

It was a new experience for me to sleep in a modern Chinese house with electric light, but it was only switched on for about four hours each evening. The family treated our party most hospitably. The official was a Buddhist and there was a shrine room in his house. His children had just returned from China for their summer holidays. We had the impression that they had been told not to talk about their school life; they were obviously happy to be back and had immediately changed into their Tibetan clothes and wanted Tibetan food. We thought they might ignore us since we were monks, but they were particularly friendly, coming to chat with us and even asking us to bless them. The youngest boy seemed more ardently Tibetan than the others.

The following day I walked round the town and looked at the new “people’s store.” Shopping was rather a complicated affair. First one asked if one could buy the required commodity and, if this was all right, one was given a ticket which had to be taken to another department to be stamped; finally this had to be taken to yet another department to pay the cashier who would hand over the goods. Armed soldiers were marching about the town and the Tibetans in the neighboring villages were very uneasy.

After spending two nights at Chamdo we continued our journey in a jeep arranged for by our friend the Tibetan official. Three schoolboys on holiday from China came with us. They were more talkative than our host’s children and told us that they had not been happy. They had found the extremes of heat and cold very disagreeable, and life at school was not at all to their liking. As we passed some of the modern machinery which the Chinese had introduced into Tibet, these boys merely said how tired they were of such things, though our party was intensely interested to see them. We stopped our jeep at Gur Kyim, a town in the area of Tsawa Gang about eight miles from Drölma Lhakhang. Here the schoolboys got out and enthusiastically changed from their Chinese suits into Tibetan clothes. Jigme Rinpoche and I with my two attendants walked to the house of the head of the district who lived nearby. He had been ill for some time and did not appear, but his wife greeted us. She had expected a large party of monks on horseback and seeing only four of us on foot she immediately thought that there had been some disaster with the Communists and was relieved when we told her that the others were following more slowly on horseback with the baggage on mules. Since her husband’s illness she had taken over his work as head of the district and this gave her so much to attend to that she said she would be unable to come to receive further instruction from me, much as she would have liked to do so. So we said goodbye and were lent horses to take us to the monastery.

It was the middle of summer and the country was looking at its best with every kind of flower in bloom, but on the day of our arrival it turned cold with rain and sleet storms. The monastery had prepared a grand ceremonial welcome which was carried out in spite of the weather. Akong Tulku led the procession holding incense sticks, followed by musicians and monks carrying banners, and a monk holding an umbrella walked behind my horse. On arrival I asked Akong Tulku to find two messengers who could be sent to Tsurphu Monastery near Lhasa, with letters to Gyalwa Karmapa, Jamgön Kongtrül of Sechen, and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, who were all there together. My letters gave news of the conditions prevailing in East Tibet and of my arrival at Drölma Lhakhang. I asked Gyalwa Karmapa to counsel me how I should act, whether we should continue to maintain Surmang, or escape to Central Tibet. I wanted to know what I must say should anyone ask me to advise them, either at Drölma Lhakhang or in any other part of East Tibet. I added, “Anything you tell me I shall treat in complete confidence; I need your guidance more than ever.”

I expected it would be about three months before I could get any answers, though I told the messengers to make all possible haste.

For the next ten days I gave talks and public and private instruction to both monks and laity and asked Akong Tulku and some of the lamas to continue the teaching after I had left. There were so many wanting to receive personal instruction that my monks had to keep order among them and arranged for them to queue up. At times the monks in charge lost patience, for which they had to be admonished. As for myself, I got no respite and even had to carry on with teaching while taking my meals.

My bursar Tsethar now arrived at Drölma Lhakhang. He told me that the monks at Surmang were becoming anxious lest I might leave them and escape to Central Tibet. Although the Communists continued to threaten drastic changes, they had not actually carried them out and the monks had begun to take less notice of their menace. Since everyone hoped that Surmang would be able to carry on as before, they wished me to return as soon as possible, and this was also his own view. He also believed that he was responsible for what I should do. I told him that I had written to Gyalwa Karmapa asking for his advice; I personally felt that there was a very live menace from the Communists. We were continually receiving further news of the destruction of other monasteries in East Tibet and we should take this as a warning. In my talks at Drölma Lhakhang I had stressed the importance of preparing for great changes in Tibet, saying that we might be very near the time when our world, as we had known it, would come to an end. This disturbed the bursar, who continually tried to convince me that all would go on as before.

While we were at Drölma Lhakhang, we received an invitation from the abbot of Yak Monastery, Yak Tulku, to visit that place and asking me to give the wangkur of the
Treasury of the Mine of Precious Teaching
(
Rinchen Terdzö
), the same that I had given at Drölma Lhakhang when I was fourteen years old. On my accepting, many abbots and lamas belonging to the different schools in the neighborhood assembled at Yak; including the Yak monks, some three hundred were prepared to attend the initiation rite. The preparations were soon made and we began the wangkur with Genchung Lama giving the preliminary authorization (the kalung).

As I was expected back at Surmang my time was limited, so to hasten matters we began the wangkur at five in the morning and went on till late at night. To begin with it was hard work, but after a month I settled down to the routine, and when my attendants became overtired I arranged for them to work in shifts. Following this program we completed the wangkur in three months.

During these months many devotees came to see me bringing gifts. My bursar became responsible for these and bartered many of them for horses, yaks, dris, and sheep so that when we returned to Surmang they could be used for the upkeep of the monastery. This distressed me; I felt that some of the gifts should be distributed among the needy and the rest should be converted into money. My bursar was obstinate; he thought my real intention might be to escape without informing Surmang, in which case money and portable possessions would be of greater use to me. Our relations did not improve.

About a month after we had begun the wangkur we heard a rumor that a large party of refugees had arrived at Gur Kyim, and the following day I received a confidential message from Khamtrül Rinpoche saying he wished to see me but did not want anyone else to know about it. It was however necessary for me to tell Yak Tulku, and through him this information, though supposed to be confidential, spread like wildfire, so that when I interrupted the wangkur to make a journey everyone knew where I was going.

When I met Khamtrül Rinpoche he had discarded his monk’s robes, and together with his attendants was in ordinary Tibetan dress; and for the first time, I was aware of the effect on the personality of a man of no longer being clothed according to his vocation: It was only too clear that he was in disguise. He told me that he had had to leave his monastery under the pretense that he was going on a short pilgrimage; he had only informed his secretary and a few senior members of the monastic council of what he was about to do, so that the thirty monks who accompanied him knew nothing. They had already gone some distance when he told them that they had left their monastery for good. A renowned yogin called Chöle, who was the head of the retreat center of his monastery, was also in the party as well as two young tulkus in whom there were great hopes for the future; their parents had been left behind.

Khamtrül Rinpoche again asked me to join him in using prasena to check whether he was taking the right course. The same answer came, namely that he must proceed without hesitation, but difficulties might arise when he crossed the frontier into India. However, if he followed the fixed timetable and did not depart from it, all would be well. Again and again he asked me to go with him, but this was impossible because of the work I had already undertaken. I told him about my own difficulties, to which he replied that I must not allow myself to be held back because of other people. We said goodbye, hoping to meet again in India. The indication that the prasena gave was proved to be right when, as he was about to leave Tibet, the Chinese tried to stop him; but in the end he was allowed to proceed with all his baggage. His was the only party from East Tibet which succeeded in taking baggage with them. He is now in India as a refugee.

When I returned to Yak I found that everyone thought my meeting with Khamtrül Rinpoche clearly showed that I too was planning to leave Tibet. They said, if this was so, they would like to come with me. I had to tell them that Khamtrül Rinpoche had left entirely by his own choice and though he had asked me to go with him I did not even know myself what I should do. I added, “You seem to think that I have made a definite plan to leave; this is not so, and I have no intention of trying to save myself while leaving others behind. My bursar is in a complete state of confusion and is very unhappy; I know he also thinks that at my young age I might be influenced by a restless desire for change.” We then went on with the wangkur.

Some weeks later Jigme Tulku, who was staying nearby, came to see me. During our journey together from Khampa Gar he had impressed me as being a very spiritual, as well as an extremely intelligent man with a practical turn of mind; he had been a devoted disciple of my predecessor. He thought that I should escape, but a large party could not fail to be noticed by the Communists and he also realized that if the people in the district once knew that I was leaving, they would in their devotion all want to come with me. He said I must understand that a tulku like myself who has received such deep spiritual instruction has a duty to pass it on to others, so that I might have to consider escaping, not to save my own life, but to save the spiritual teaching of which I had become the repository. I asked him to talk to my bursar and explain this to him, but he felt that it was still not the right time to do so.

While I was still waiting for replies from Gyalwa Karmapa, Khyentse, and Jamgön Kongtrül and we were all going on with the wangkur, one of my close friends, a lama from Karma Monastery, arrived at Yak. He invited me in a rather unusual manner to visit a place near Karma which lay off the beaten track and where his own very influential family could look after me. He expressed the opinion that the Communists did not intend to take over Tibet permanently, but that at present it was more dangerous to be in an area like Yak, which was directly under the control of Chamdo. Surmang and its surrounding district would be much safer. He added that Surmang was expecting my return and hinted that I must not think only of myself.

A few days later another of my friends from Karma made the same suggestions in almost identical words. I realized at once that they had been put up to this by the bursar, convinced as he was that I should come back to my monastery.

As Yak was on one of the main routes to Lhasa, refugees were passing through all the time. They told terrible stories about the Communist advance, with the destruction of the monasteries and villages on the way. Many members of their families had been killed, the people had been questioned under torture and then accused of crimes which they had never committed. Lamas, monks, and high officials had suffered particularly in this way. The Communists were attacking farther and farther westward and had already got beyond Chamdo. My monks were beginning to be concerned for the fate of Surmang. On the other hand, the Resistance forces were very active and increasingly large numbers of people were joining them every day. There was a rumor that the refugees who had already reached Lhasa and its vicinity were forming their own Resistance movement, but as yet we had no authentic news.

In spite of these anxieties, the numbers who attended the wangkur did not grow less. The desire to participate seemed to have increased especially among the older people; the younger ones were, however, less able to concentrate on the teaching day after day and it was not surprising that some of those attending the rites were overcome with sleep; it was therefore arranged that they should sit near their elders who would nudge them in case they began to doze. The monk in charge of discipline, the gekö, was on duty all the time, but his supervision was little needed, as there was good behavior throughout.

The wangkur took place in the assembly hall. The teacher’s throne was in the center with the altar facing toward it but with a clear space between, where the servers could pace along. The altar, which was about twelve feet square, was disposed in three tiers on which the various symbolic objects could be arranged to form a mandala according to the four directions of space. A vase of pure water marks the eastern quarter with a blue scarf tied round it; this is the vase of Akshobhya Buddha, the Imperturbable One, and the water symbolizes purification from the strife of wrath; the peace it brings fills the pupil with gnosis (jnana). A crown with a yellow scarf marks the south; this is the crown of Ratnasambhava Buddha, the Jewel-Born; it symbolizes equanimity and the victory over selfishness. The vajra on the west, tied with a red scarf, symbolizes Amitabha Buddha, Boundless Light, and means discrimination, bringing compassion and freedom from desire. The bell on the north tied with a green scarf is that of Amoghasiddhi Buddha, it symbolizes the achievement of spiritual action and overcomes all envy. In the center a bell and vajra are placed, tied together with a white scarf in the shape of a cross; these appertain to Vairochana Buddha, the Luminous One, and symbolize the womb of dharma, that overcomes confusion and ignorance.