There was also an eye infection which brought with it excruciating pain. ‘I had to have the cave in darkness because I couldn’t bear the light. I couldn’t move, not even flicker my eyelid. That meant I couldn’t get to my stove to cook, so I didn’t eat,’ she reported. ‘I couldn’t even meditate because the eye would go down. I couldn’t do anything. I just had to wait, to sit there and watch it. If I tried to lay down it got worse. Actually, it was quite fascinating. I’d sit there and observe the pain. It was like a symphony. You’d have the drums, the trumpets, the strings, all these very different types of pain playing on the eye,’ she said in a detached voice.
‘When I counted up how long it lasted it was forty-nine days, which was interesting because that is said to be the duration of the Bardo, the period of transition between death and rebirth. In fact it was really like a kind of Bardo, I was having to wait. Then it gradually got a little better. What I learnt from that was that the exhaustion that pain brings arises because we resist it. The thing is to learn to go with the pain, to ride it.’
Although she never fell off her roof while shovelling snow (as many imagined she would) there were near accidents whose consequences could have been fatal. ‘I was outside my cave stacking the wood when I heard this voice inside me saying “Get up and move away",’ she recounted. ‘I took no notice. I thought “I’m busy doing my wood and I’m not interested in what you are saying," and I carried on. Then the voice said in a really imperious tone, “Move Immediately!”. So I did. About two minutes later there was a huge thud and this big boulder landed just where I had been sitting. If I’d been caught under it or if a limb had been crushed I’d have been in a lot of trouble,’ she conceded.
Danger came even closer during the period when Tenzin Palmo almost starved. One year when she was in total seclusion Tshering Dorje did not make the arranged delivery of food to the cave. She waited and waited, the supplies in her store-room getting smaller and smaller. When it was apparent he was not coming she had no alternative but to eke out what she had left. It was a pitiful amount of food, which became increasingly reduced as the months went by. Somehow, it kept her alive, but only just.
‘I did get extremely thin,’ was all she would say of the experience. She never asked Tshering Dorje why had not come, nor berated him. ‘He must have had his reasons,’ she said with equanimity.
These incidents were eclipsed, however, by a far greater drama. It was March 1979 and Tenzin Palmo was sitting as usual in her meditation box in her cave. Outside a blizzard was raging, as it had been for seven days and seven nights. Tenzin Palmo was well used to storms but this one was particularly strong. The snow piled higher and higher, gradually rising above her window, above her door. On it went without abating, getting thicker and thicker, heavier and heavier. Suddenly the awful truth dawned on her. She was buried alive.
The memory is indelibly etched on her mind:
‘I was plunged into total blackness and cold. I couldn’t light my fire because the snow had broken the pipe of my wood stove, which jutted out of the cave, so there was no way of keeping warm or cooking. I didn’t dare light candles either because I thought they would use up oxygen. When I looked out of the window it was nothing but a sheet of ice. When I opened the door it was just blackness. It was completely dark,’ she recalled
As the days wore on with no rescue in sight and no relief in the weather, Tenzin Palmo, entombed in her cold, dark cave, faced the very real possibility that she was going to die. With her stove pipe broken, her window and door completely sealed with snow, she was convinced she was going to be asphyxiated.
From the very beginning she had been taught like every good Buddhist to look death squarely in the face. ‘Death is definite’but ’the time of death is indefinite,’ the Buddha had said. With this fundamental but often much ignored truth placed firmly in mind she had meditated over and over again on the inescapable fact of her own demise – bringing the reality home by visualizing in graphic detail her body decomposing in the earth or melting in the heat of the funeral pyre, her possessions being dispersed and her friends and loved-ones left behind. The results were said to be twofold: to lessen the shock when Death was upon you and to sort out your priorities for whatever time you may have left.
As a tantric practitoner, however, Tenzin Palmo knew she could go even further using the moment of death as her final and greatest meditation. Steering her mind through the various stages of death she could, if she were skilful enough, arrive fully aware at the Blissful Clear Light, the most subtle mind of all, and in that sublime state transform her consciousness into a Buddha. As such, for the yogi death was never to be feared but grabbed as the golden opportunity of a lifetime of endeavour.
That, at least was the theory. Tenzin Palmo was now faced with the reality.
‘I really thought I was going to die. I had a lot of time to think about it,’ she said. ‘It was interesting. I wasn’t worried.I figured “OK, if I’m going to die, I’m going to die.” I was not afraid. I thought it would be fascinating to see what would happen. Since a small child I felt the body was really temporary – that we’d all had so many roles in many different lifetimes. So on some deep level I’d never really identified with it,’ she said. ‘I got all my little Blessed Pills[*] ready for if and when it happened. I reviewed my life to try to think of anything wrong that I’d done and what I’d done right. I felt I had been so lucky.I’d met so many great lamas and received so many wonderful teachings. There were few regrets. One thing became crystal clear at that point – I was very happy that I was still a nun,’she declared. Her difficult decisions to renounce the comfort and passion of an intimate relationship that had been made more than once in her life were finally validated. The ’other side’ of Tenzin Palmo, the one drawn to the fun and frivolity of mainstream life, had, it seemed, finally disappeared.
Tenzin Palmo now found herself spontaneously turning to the one man who had remained constant in her life.
‘I felt such devotion to Khamtrul Rinpoche, the real tear-gushing kind. I really knew at that point what was essential and what was irrelevant. I understood first hand that when you are going to die, the only thing that matters is the Lama. From my heart I prayed to Rinpoche to take care of me in the Bardo and in my future life. I could see that ultimately he was the only refuge.’
Thoughts of what might happen to her once she’d crossed the great divide flashed across her mind. They were reassuringly positive, upholding the general Buddhist view that one dies as one has lived. ‘Personally, I think anybody who is making efforts in this life will continue to make efforts in the next life. I don’t see why we should change. I believe you find yourself among like-minded people – that consciousness just goes on’, she said. ‘I was certainly hoping that my personal meditation deity would come and greet me,’ she added, referring to the particular form of the Enlightened Mind that had been selected as best suiting her own inclinations and dispositions. For many a Westerner being greeted by most of the Tibetan deities, with their fangs and multitude of arms and heads, could be a terrifying prospect. Tenzin Palmo had no such qualms. ‘Of course whichever deity it is would appear in a form which was reassuring and appropriate,’ she said.
She pondered on the possibility of going to a Pure Land, the Buddhist Heaven, although with her belief in rebirth and the Bodhisattva ideal it had radically different connotations from the Christian abode: ’There are many advantages to going to a Pure Land. For one thing it is very enjoyable. It’s the highest joy apart from Nirvana,’ she said.
‘But one doesn’t cling even to that. High lamas stay there a while and then return here. You see, a Pure Land is not like a holiday camp, it’s like a pressure-cooker which brings on rapid advancement. You evolve very quickly there because there are no obstacles. There one’s realization of Emptiness (the ultimate wisdom that nothing is inherently existing) gets developed and refined. And that is essential if you are to come back and live among all the suffering, because it is only whe
n you understand non-duality that you are not overwhelmed by it all and have the genuine ability to help. The Buddhas and Bodhisattvas go everywhere to help, even to the hell realms. You can’t do that if you are paranoid like all the beings in the hell realm. That is the vow of the Bodhisattva, which in Tibetan means spiritual hero,’ she explained.
Tenzin Palmo did not get the chance to see what death would be like. As she sat there meditating, preparing to make the transition, she heard her voice once more. It said one word: ’Dig!’ She opened the door to her cave, which with Tsering Dorje’s foresight opened inwards, and using one of the lids from her saucepans tins began to dig her way out. She dug up and up, piling the snow back into her cave which made the place even colder and wetter. She dug for an hour or more, not knowing which way she was going, for she was in total darkness and was disorientated, crawling along on her stomach, tunnelling her way through the cold blackness to where she hoped the outside and oxygen lay. Suddenly she came out into the open air and was free. The relief was enormous.
’To see light and breathe fresh air again was wonderful,’ she said. ‘However, the blizzard was still raging so I had to crawl back inside the cave again! Once I was there I realized that the air inside was not stale but fresh. I knew then that caves could “breathe", that snow “breathes” and I was not going to die,’she said.
However, the tunnel that Tenzin Palmo had made quickly filled up with snow again. All in all she had to dig herself out three times. When the blizzard finally abated, she stood outside almost blinded by the light and looked around. An extraordinary sight met her eyes. Everything, including the trees, was totally buried in snow. It was a featureless white landscape. A helicopter flew overhead, bringing supplies to the devastated area, and someone inside waved. The villagers now knew that their prayers for the safe passing of ’Saab Chomo’in her cave had not been necessary, but nobody thought she could have possibly survived.
A letter written to an English friend who had visited the area reveals the full extent of the disaster that almost over took her.
The cause of all the trouble was an avalanche which swept down at just before midday in early March. It started at about 19,000 feet and came down carrying everything in its wake. Many houses in Gungrang (above Yornath) were also destroyed. The avalanche was estimated to have been almost 2 km in width. In all Lahoul about 200 people died especially in the Udaipur area. That stream we have to cross to get to Keylong is at present a glacier several metres thick so one just strolls across it with no water in sight. Tayul Gompa was made level with the snow and everyone there also had to tunnel their way out. It reached higher than their roofs.
Yornath (a nearby village) looks as if it had been hit by a tornado. Four houses there completely destroyed (including that big one near the road next to Sonam Ngoedup’s shop). About 35 people there were killed, whole families wiped out. All the garrie families were killed, so no more blacksmiths at Yornath. One house at Guskiar had the top blown off from air pressure as the avalanche roared past at 350km an hour! Practically all the trees from Yornath to Guskiar are completely uprooted all those lovely old willows, many about 200 years old. The place is a wilderness. As one girl from Guskiar remarked, one can hardly recognize it any longer. Tseten has spent about 6 back-breaking weeks just removing stones, trees and other debris from her fields which are mostly in the Yornath area.
Anyway, it was naturally rather a lot of work to clear away all that heavy white stuff and my face was like Dorje Phagmo (a fierce red protector deity with puffed-out cheeks and bulging eyes). My eyes were also crimson, no whites at all, and swollen so that I gazed through slits. The pain! I fixed a khatag (white offering scarf) around the brim of my floppy hat as a veil and that worked quite well.
Tenzin Palmo may have had a reprieve but death, as the Buddha pointed out, was all around her. Lee Perry, optimist and spiritual seeker herself, passed away in 1985 without her daughter knowing. It was a high price to pay for spiritual aspiration. Tenzin Palmo had received a letter, several months late, informing her that Lee was very sick with cancer and to please ‘come home’. But Tenzin Palmo had already started her three-year retreat and nothing could or would break it. It was the condition. ‘I wrote back explaining why I could not come. It was the hardest letter I had ever written. Even if I had had cancer myself I could not have left that cave,’ she explained.
The next time the post arrived, a year later, there was a note from a friend telling her that Lee had died, peacefully, aged seventy-eight. Tenzin Palmo said prayers for her mother’s well-being and consoled herself with the thought that Lee, like herself, had not been afraid of death. ’She viewed death as merely the shaking off of an old body in order to start again refreshed and energized. I knew she was looking forward to seeing her spirit guides, who she believed would meet her and look after her,’ she said.
Tenzin Palmo’s mind was not entirely at ease, however. She had made a brief second visit to London to visit her mother in 1984, a year before she died. It had been eleven years since she’d last been to her homeland and she was urged to see her mother before she disappeared into her cave for her three-year retreat. Although she was grateful for the time they’d spent together, she now looked back on the visit with some feelings of regret and reproached herself for things ’that could have been’, as one often does after a death of a loved one.
‘I think I was rather cold to my mother, and now I always feel very sad about that. She took it well, believing “that’s how nuns are”. But I had been in the cave for a long time and was not used to relating closely to people. We were friendly but on reflection I feel I was quite judgemental and I’m really sorry,’she confessed. ‘Now I think I would be able to be much warmer towards her than I was then.’
When the time had come to say goodbye, Lee had turned to her daughter and said: ‘I feel this is the last time I am going to see you in this life.’ Then she added: ‘I pray that I may be reborn as your mother in future lives so that I can help you continue your spiritual path.’ It was the greatest act of love and approbation of her daughter that she could have made.
For all Tenzin Palmo’s training, however, nothing could prepare her for the death of her lama, Khamtrul Rinpoche.
Even though she had been physically separated from him for several years, first by moving to the Gompa in Lahoul and then by retreating further to her cave, the bond between them had remained as close as ever. ‘Whenever I felt I needed him I would pray to him. I would have significant dreams in which he would appear,’ she said enigmatically. And her annual visits back to Tashi Jong remained an integral part of her life. Then she’d sit with him feeling the reassurance of his physical presence and receive personalized, tailor-made instructions on her spiritual path.
‘I’d go back with questions. During my meditations I would always have paper nearby so that I could jot down queries as they came up. I’d walk in and Khamtrul Rinpoche would lean back and say, “OK, where’s your list?” And I’d bring out this long list of questions,’ she recalled. ‘His answers were absolutely right. He answered from both his scholastic expertise and from his own experience. “According to the books it says this, but from my own experience it is like this,” he used to say. He was always spot on. And I could always discuss things with him. Sometimes I would go to him with an idea of a practice I wanted to do and he would suggest something else that hadn’t occurred to me. Immediately he had said it I knew he was right. That is the beauty of a real guru – he knows your mind and can steer your spiritual progress in the direction that is best for you,’ she said.
It was in 1981 while she was in Nepal, receiving some teachings and slowly making her way to Bhutan to meet up with Khamtrul Rinpoche, when she heard the news.
‘One day I was summoned to the monastery. I thought I was being called for some special teaching or something. On the way I met someone who said, “You look very happy, you couldn’t have heard.” And then they told me. I nearly fainted. It was awful. Absolutely deva
stating.’ Her world had fallen apart. In her words: ’The sun had set and there was only darkness. I felt as though I was in this vast desert and the guide had left – completely lost.’
The strong, sturdy, sociable Khamtrul Rinpoche, who had led such an extraordinary life, from powerful regional monarch to penniless refugee, had died of diabetes aged just forty-nine. He had been ill for only an hour before his death. If his passing had been completely unexpected to his followers, he must have been exceptionally well prepared himself, for in the manner of his dying he demonstrated the full extent of his spiritual mastery and proved to Western eyes exactly what could be achieved.
Those who were present reported that Khamtrul Rinpoche stayed in tukdam, the ‘clear light’ of death, for some weeks after physiological death had occurred – his body not collapsing but remaining youthful-looking and pleasant-smelling. More surprising still, when the time came for his cremation the mourners noticed that his large and formerly bulky body had mysteriously shrunk to the size of an eight-year-old child’s. The coffin that they had originally made for him was now redundant and another smaller one had to be hastily constructed. The shrinking of the body in this manner was not unknown among Tibetan high lamas. To those who looked on, it was proof that Khamtrul Rinpoche had indeed reached a high level of spiritual attainment, one only surpassed by the ultimate triumph of achieving the ‘rainbow body’ whereby at death the whole body is de-materialized, leaving nothing behind but the nails and hair. Such things could well be dismissed as spiritual science fiction were it not for the plethora of eye-witnesses and factual documentation to back them up.
Cave in the snow. A western woman’s quest for enlightenment Page 12
