In Exile From the Land of Snows

by John Avedon

  As no external cause for Lobsang Jigme’s illness could be found, the doctors of Mendzekhang and Chokpori were unable to cure it. Their diagnosis, though, was clear. As opposed to mental illness, this was a case of spirit possession. The physicians suggested that Lobsang Jigme make a pilgrimage to Sharbumpa stupa in Phenbo, north of Lhasa. The stupa contained the relics of a great lama named Geshé Sharbum, and was famous for alleviating possession. Given a fifteen-day furlough to undertake his cure, Lobsang Jigme was warned by his superiors that Nechung Monastery’s rules were strictly enforced; return on the appointed date was mandatory. Because of this, his stay at Sharbumpa was rigorous. To complete the number of prayers required for deriving curative benefit, he had to spend the entire day, breaking only for meals, walking around the stupa. With considerable effort, he completed the full course on time, but he experienced no relief; his affliction returned with him to the monastery. Two years later, at the age of twelve, Lobsang Jigme once more went on pilgrimage—this time to a stupa east of Ganden Monastery. Again he performed the prescribed number of circumambulations, and again there was no result.

  By the age of fourteen, Lobsang Jigme’s madness had increased to the point where he could no longer attend Nechung Monastery’s daily rites. Frequently confined to bed, he lay numb and unresponsive between fits. At such times friends brought him meals, but he took no notice of them. Sleepwalking ruled his nights; during the day he experienced seizures and hallucinations and he often ran a high fever. Despite his troubles, though, he managed to complete his memorization and passed his exams.

  One day Lobsang Jigme was taken on a short stroll around the monastic complex by his closest companion, a young monk named Kesang. Reaching a familiar tree in front of the monastery where they normally practiced playing short horns, the two young men decided to rest. They lay down on the grass and looking into the sky, began to doze off. Suddenly, Lobsang Jigme leapt up screaming. Burying his head in Kesang’s lap, he pleaded to be covered with his sen or outer robe. Kesang asked what had happened, but at first Lobsang Jigme couldn’t speak. Finally, he begged his friend to take him away from the tree, adding that he never wanted to see it again. Kesang shepherded his charge to the rear of Nechung Monastery, where their dormitories were. Once there, Lobsang Jigme told him what had occurred. He had been gazing into the top branches of the tree when two scorpions the size of yaks had appeared in the sky above. Their pincers were interlocked, and they seemed to be playing with one another. Then, without warning, they disengaged and one of them fell directly onto him. At that moment, he had screamed and buried his head in Kesang’s lap.

  Soon thereafter Lobsang Jigme began dreaming of scorpions coming into his mouth. Dogs appeared, scorpions in their mouths as well. His ravings now became so intense that once more the monastery granted a brief leave of absence. Initially, he went to his mother’s house in Lhasa. There, he lay in bed all day, staring blankly over adjacent rooftops. As he watched he saw elephant faces appear at the window, followed by those of monkeys. His mother and the others in the household didn’t know how to care for him. The fits had become so bad, in fact, that they wanted him to move on: his presence was disrupting the family business.

  With Lobsang Jigme having reached a desperate state, his mother sought advice from Kyabjé Motroké Rinpoché, a great lama of the Gomang College of Drepung Monastery. She asked him if a certain technique, known as tsagak, should be applied to her son to block his psychic channels, thereby stopping the unwanted possessions. Motroké Rinpoché performed a divination and announced that under no circumstances should the procedure be followed. If it was, he said, the young man would die. He then assured her that contrary to all appearance, the seizures were a positive sign. Lobsang Jigme had “the seed for accomplishment,” he said, and in time everyone would know what this meant. No longer able to stay at home, the young monk left in the company of Kesang’s uncle and rode thirty miles east to Ganden Monastery, where he arrived in September of 1944.

  Built across a 14,000-foot-high crescent-shaped ridge surrounded by a sea of peaks, Ganden was among the most beautiful monasteries in Tibet. Its scores of buildings and shrines, framed on all sides by spectacular vistas, dazzled pilgrims from across Central Asia who came to worship at the golden tomb of Je Tsongkhapa, founder of the Gelugpa sect, housed in a maroon temple in its midst. Here, Lobsang Jigme hoped to stay unnoticed in the quarters of Samling Rinpoché, an incarnate lama in his late thirties who during the annual Monlam celebrations had frequently rented a room in his mother’s house.

  Despite Ganden’s refreshing views, Lobsang Jigme’s condition worsened after only a week. He now sensed that something very much like the trances he had often witnessed was occurring to him. Unlike the hallucinatory fits of the past five years, an episode would begin with a numbing, vibratory sensation pervading his body. His breath would shorten and begin to catch, uncontrollably, but then, thankfully, the symptoms would recede. In a few days’ time, the new sensations no longer disappeared. He now started to experience genuine trance on a daily basis. Light days brought only one trance; more often, though, he would undergo as many as two trances in the morning and three in the afternoon. Moreover, the trances soon became violent: the moment they struck he would shout and thrash wildly about with tremendous force. On their conclusion after ten minutes or so, he experienced intense pain but would have no memory of what had taken place. As Lobsang Jigme and his companions soon found out, he was at this time being forcibly prepared through lesser spirits for possession by a higher force. The process, known as tsalam jangpa or “clearing the channels,” was being undertaken in progressive stages of intensity. At the start, relatively weak spirits took possession, the trances being proportionately light. In the second stage, however, the seven Tsemars or Blazing Brothers of Samye took him turn by turn, one after another. As the Tsemars were among the most powerful spirits, the trances became violent and Lobsang Jigme experienced tremendous sickness and pain in their aftermath.

  As if Lobsang Jigme’s troubles were not bad enough, further difficulties now befell him. The uproar coming from Samling Rinpoché’s rooms provoked Ganden’s authorities to inform those caring for him that the young monk from Nechung was no longer welcome. Despite the boy’s condition, they insisted he return to his own monastery. Three times he attempted to leave, but each time he reached the gate of Ganden a particularly severe fit overtook him; choking and writhing about for a few seconds, he would fall unconscious onto the ground, whereupon Samling Rinpoché and Kesang’s uncle, who were accompanying him, had to carry the youth back to the hostel. But it was not only Lobsang Jigme who experienced such suffering. With the worsening of his illness a message had been sent to the young man’s mother. Distraught, she again decided to contact high lamas for help. Setting out for Ganden, she hoped to obtain their advice and then take her son back home. She made it as far as the Kyichu River on Lhasa’s southern limits. There, just before setting foot in the coracle to cross to the far shore, she herself suffered an attack. Collapsing on the bank, her right arm, right leg and stomach gripped by intense pain, she had to be carried home on a stretcher. Every effort to alter the young monk’s situation now seemed forcibly blocked. The reason for all this appeared shortly thereafter.

  In the course of one of Lobsang Jigme’s heavier trances, the spirit in possession gave the following message, heard by Samling Rinpoché and all those close by: “On the fourth day of the sixth month, as the sun rises above Wongpo Ri Mountain, the Choekyong Dorje Drakden will take possession.” The news of Tibet’s chief protector entering an unknown monk’s body was almost unbelievable, yet the fourth was the following day and Wongpo Ri, the highest mountain in the area, was plainly visible through the window in Lobsang Jigme’s room. Samling Rinpoché and Lobsang Jigme’s teacher, who had come to Ganden, made a point of being by the young man’s side early the next morning. Entering the room, they found that he had been up before dawn reciting prayers. Already, he felt poorly. Then, as a faint light from
the window began to replace the tranquil glow of butter lamps within, both men noticed a ball of yellow and red string, normally used to tie incense bundles, lying on the floor. For days they had been burning incense and reciting prayers whenever Lobsang Jigme went into trance; it seemed to be the only thing that helped. On seeing the string on the floor, Lobsang Jigme’s teacher leaned over from his seat to pick it up, wanting to keep the room clean. As he took the string in hand, it suddenly turned into a live scorpion. Starting, he flung it to the floor and at that instant, Lobsang Jigme, who had been sitting quietly on his bed, leapt up in trance, his face and body attenuated. Simultaneously, the sun’s first rays struck the bare rock summit of Wongpo Ri. A short while later, Lobsang Jigme collapsed, the trance ending as abruptly as it had begun. After laying him on the bed, the two men looked for the scorpion. Though it was a small monk’s cell, they could find neither it nor the ball of string.

  Following this incident, Samling Rinpoché began to piece together the facts. He concluded that, indeed, Lobsang Jigme was being taken into the employ of Tibet’s main protector. Three factors supported the conclusion. To begin with, it had been specifically announced who the possessing entity would be. Though the message could have been misinformation from a malignant spirit, the intensity of the trance indicated the presence of an extremely powerful being. Second, the appearance of the scorpion was a familiar sign of Dorje Drakden. But the third factor was considered most significant. At that time, the current medium of the Nechung Oracle, a middle-aged monk named Lobsang Namgyal, had suffered a stroke and was thought to be close to death. It seemed clear that Dorje Drakden was preparing his successor.

  The truth came a few weeks later. After prayers and breakfast one morning toward the end of July, Samling Rinpoché, Lobsang Jigme and his teacher decided to take a devotional walk through Ganden’s many shrines. At the heart of the monastery stood the temple containing Tsongkhapa’s tomb—one of the holiest sites in Tibet. The tomb lay within a chapel, the walls of which were lined with silver reliquaries containing the remains of successive Ganden Tipas who, as “holders of Tsongkhapa’s Throne,” had governed the Gelugpa sect for five and a half centuries. At their center was pitched a Mongolian yurt given as an offering after Tsongkhapa’s death by Sunde, Emperor of China. Tsongkhapa’s tomb lay at the rear of the yurt, behind a three-foot-high golden statue of the saint. The small party arrived at the chapel and entered the yurt at ten o’clock, well after morning prayers before the tomb had been concluded. Lobsang Jigme had been at ease throughout the devotional walk, and neither of his companions were paying close attention to him. As they passed the red-lacquered walnut pillars supporting the yurt, though, and began to prostrate before the image, the young man was struck by an extremely potent seizure. His companions tried to restrain Lobsang Jigme but were immediately thrown to the floor. From there they looked on in amazement as the young man’s body, now fully possessed, performed the unique honorific dance of Dorje Drakden before the tomb of Tsongkhapa. When the trance ended five minutes later, the boy collapsed and the two men quickly dragged his prone figure to a side chapel in the corner of the room.

  For half an hour after regaining consciousness, Lobsang Jigme was too nauseated to move; his head, shoulders and chest all ached intensely. His last memory had been standing before the golden tomb and beginning to pray. Then he had begun to feel as if thousands of insects were crawling over him. In the midst of the tingling vibration a stronger, more painful sensation appeared, as if his “funny bone” were being pressed throughout his body. His breathing began to accelerate, his head started to pound, his heart heaved in his chest, he felt congested, as if he had run too fast up a steep hill, and abruptly the room started to recede from his vision. The sound of the monks praying beside him grew fainter and then all combined to overwhelm him, and he blacked out. Though he realized the sensations must have occurred in a few moments, they seemed to take an unbearably long time. While walking back to their quarters, Samling Rinpoché told Lobsang Jigme what had happened afterwards. They all agreed that the event had to be kept strictly secret; an unknown adolescent monk could hardly claim, on the basis of one or two experiences witnessed by a few friends, to have been chosen as the new “receiving body” for the state oracle of Tibet.

  Dorje Drakden’s possessions, nonetheless, continued. Confining himself to his room for fear of being possessed in public, Lobsang Jigme felt himself entering a new stage, becoming stronger and stronger, “like a horse,” as he described it, “filling with hot blood.” At the beginning and end of each trance, he experienced severe pain. Though the trances themselves lasted only for two to five minutes, he would invariably shout in agony at the top of his voice—something which the authorities of Ganden, despite the peculiarities of the case, could not permit. Forced finally to leave Ganden, the young monk could return neither to his own monastery nor to his mother’s house. His illness had made him an outcast. Through friends, he eventually found a family in Lamo, east of Ganden, who agreed to take him in. Able to depart without interference, he stayed in Lamo for a further month and a half, where he suffered, as before, not just from the newly developed trances but also from the ceaseless round of hallucinations, fits and sleepwalking that had consumed his life for six years.

  At this time, Lobsang Jigme’s mother received a message from Nechung Monastery. Though regretting his illness, the note nevertheless demanded his immediate return on penalty of being struck from the monastery’s rolls. The other monks were complaining of Lobsang Jigme’s long absence, the letter said; despite the severity of his condition there could be no exceptions to the rules. His mother replied that her son had been sick for so long, with no cure in sight, that even if his name were to be struck, it couldn’t be helped; he was not yet able to return. The monastic officials then softened their stance and tried to effect a compromise. Through his mother they informed Lobsang Jigme that for the time being his name would not be eliminated from the roster; still, he would have to return soon. Convinced that his days as a Nechung monk were over and with no place to turn for help, Lobsang Jigme decided to retire to a cave and live in isolation from the world. He was just turning sixteen.

  Aware of the young man’s plans, Samling Rinpoché came to his aid. He offered to lead him through a three-month meditation retreat at Legpai Lodru, the cave of a great hermit, above Sera Monastery, hoping that by reciting mantras and conducting purification rites some of the negative influences affecting the youth could be dispelled. Accompanied by Kesang’s uncle, they went to the cave and commenced the retreat. At the start, Lobsang Jigme was in such a depressed state over the impasse his illness had brought him to that he could barely follow Samling Rinpoché’s instructions. Though he managed to fulfill the daily quotas of recitation, there was still no discernible change in his condition. Then, one morning in the middle of the retreat, he woke feeling well for the first time in years. The next day, he felt well again—and the next. Remarkably, all signs of the illness had left at once. A messenger now arrived bearing the startling information that Lobsang Namgyal, the Nechung kuden, had died. The day of the medium’s death had been the very day on which Lobsang Jigme’s illness disappeared. Furthermore, the messenger informed Lobsang Jigme, he had been dispatched by the abbot of Nechung Monastery, Nechung Rinpoché, to summon him back. None other than Taktra Rinpoché, then Regent of Tibet, had ordered him to present himself at the Norbulingka. With a single message, it seemed, Lobsang Jigme’s fate had completely reversed itself.

  As all those associated with Lobsang Jigme would soon learn, the Regent had consulted Shinjachen, through the Gadong medium, shortly after the Nechung kuden’s death. Asking where a new medium for Dorje Drakden could be found, he had been told that the candidate was a monk from Nechung Monastery itself. The oracle went on to say that the prospective kuden was still very young—a child of fifteen, born in the Year of the Iron Horse; his name, Lobsang Jigme.

  The news was greeted with a mixture of amazement and relief by N
echung Monastery’s superiors. Ironically, among the eleven mediums who spanned the three hundred years of the monastery’s existence, no kuden had risen from the ranks of its own monks; all had been chosen from elsewhere. To confirm the message, the Regent undertook a series of extremely sensitive tests. They involved placing Lobsang Jigme’s name, along with those of six other candidates—all chosen for their reputations as mediums—inside precisely weighted balls of barley paste. The balls were then put in a precious vessel and brought before three of the holiest images in the land. Questions posed by the highest authorities were believed to be answered by the respective Bodhisattvas through the displacement of one of the balls. Though the vessel was rotated to produce a gentle momentum, there was an unmistakable pattern by which a single ball would be ejected. Out of the seven balls placed in the vessel by the Taktra Regent, the one with Lobsang Jigme’s name on it came out on all three occasions. Nechung Rinpoché was then requested to have the young man brought immediately to the Regent.

  Lobsang Jigme descended from his retreat a day after the messenger’s visit. Arriving in Lhasa, he was met by Nechung Rinpoché and a delegation from the monastery, in whose company he rode two miles west to the summer palace. Leaving their mounts by the great stone lions flanking its front gate, the party was received in the gardens beyond and led down a narrow lane running between tall, shady trees, their leaves turned red and gold in the late autumn, to the Shabten Lhakhang, the temple in which the Regent received visitors. Directed into an ornate receiving room Lobsang Jigme nervously took a long white scarf and walked forward. It was the last thing he remembered. As he came before the Regent’s high throne and offered the scarf, Dorje Drakden instantaneously took possession, greeting Taktra Rinpoché through the new kuden in a direct demonstration of his validity. The trance lasted for five minutes, during which time Dorje Drakden spoke to the Regent in private. At its conclusion, Lobsang Jigme collapsed and was returned to Nechung Monastery. There, he was housed in separate quarters while being subjected to a series of tests to determine if indisputably it was truly Dorje Drakden taking possession and not another strong, but lesser spirit.