A Step Away from Paradise: A Tibetan Lama's Extraordinary Journey to a Land of Immortality (28 page)

‘Come on,’ Tulshuk said. ‘Let’s go.’

They doused the fire and packed their things. Now that they were getting close to the gate, they were all afraid.

They followed Tulshuk Lingpa up a steep valley that had snow at its highest reaches. They climbed through the snow until they reached the top of the Kang La, a pass that forms the border with Nepal at over 16,000 feet.

Tulshuk Lingpa pointed down the Nepal side to a tiny patch of relatively flat ground covered in green in an otherwise precipitous landscape. At its center a single nomad tent was pitched next to a cascading mountain stream that issued directly from a glacier.

‘There,’ he said. ‘That’s where Khandro Yeshe Tsogyal told me we must go. It is from there we will depart for Beyul. She even told me the name of the place: Tseram.’

Atang Lama, who was from Tashiding and Sinon, became weak in his knees. He knew those mountains well. He knew the name of the encampment on the Nepal side.

The excitement they all felt was tinged with the fear that arises when bravado nears its test. With wildly beating hearts, those who knew how to negotiate steep slopes were already scoping out the route to Tseram when Tulshuk Lingpa—as if to prove his tulshuk nature on the eve of such a discovery—suddenly announced, ‘Now we will return to Tashiding. The time isn’t right for the opening. The work we have come to these high mountains for is complete at this time. We have other work to do. Let us now return.’

Shocked as they were, they were all secretly relieved in a way that can probably only be experienced by someone in their position, by someone about to leave everything, forever.

When they passed through Dzongri, they met the nomad. Kunsang took the sling from Namdrol and returned it to him. ‘I told the nomad that his sling was very useful,’ Kunsang told me. ‘I said, “If it weren’t for your sling we would all still be lost on the mountain.” The nomad laughed. “I knew this was going to happen,” the nomad said, “I knew you were being led by a
myonpa
, a crazy person. That’s why I gave it to you.” We all got a good laugh.’

They waited until night fell in the forests above Yoksum before descending to Yab Maila’s house. Though he had been sticking close to home awaiting word of the opening, ready to climb to the snowline and beyond, Yab Maila was not surprised to see them return. Such are the ways of the
tertons
: even when they leave, never to return, they return two days later. What to do?

They slipped out of Yoksum early the next morning. When they passed through the village of Tashiding late that afternoon on their way to the Tashiding monastery, they created quite a stir. Nothing could dissuade believers in Tulshuk Lingpa from their faith in him. But there were others who thought all along that Tulshuk Lingpa was a mad lama; and for them, to see him and The Twelve returning after so short a time from their journey to forever only made them firmer in their convictions. It set their tongues wagging as they watched the intrepid mountaineers and their lama pass; it also set the rumor mill turning. Word of their return reached the monastery before they did, and it didn’t take much longer for the news to reach Gangtok and the palace.

The situation demanded a public appearance of the master, and that night Tulshuk Lingpa sat in the Tashiding Monastery surrounded by his many disciples and curious detractors. No doubt, there were also some spies working for the king among them. The atmosphere was electric.

For Kunsang, this trip to the snow mountains was a tremendous experience.

‘Being alone on that mountain,’ he confided in me, ‘frightened me to the core. Yet even if I were lost, never to be found, somehow I knew it wouldn’t be the end. Maybe it was because I was just a kid. But remember, we were on the verge of another world. My father had sent us out to report on whatever we found. When I found those strange rocks lying around me, I was sure it was an important discovery. I knew it meant I was close. That’s why I filled my pockets with them. Yet here we were back in Tashiding. My father was sitting before his disciples ready, I was assuming, to report on what had happened and he had never once asked any of us what we had found or what happened to us when he sent us away. Those rocks were still weighing in my pockets. So I pulled them out of my pocket and showed them to him.

‘When my father saw what I was pulling out of my pockets to show him so earnestly, he burst out laughing. “It wasn’t for these stones that we went up there!” he boomed.

‘Then it struck me that when my father sent us in four directions it was the same as when he gave his speech in Yoksum and made all the people go away or fall asleep. He had done the same to us, and I was struck by the humor of my father’s tulshuk ways. By sending us to the four directions, it might be—it must be—that when he sent us far away, he knew a
dakini
would come. He must have known Khandro Yeshe Tsogyal was coming. He sent us in all directions just to get rid of us, so he could be alone with the
dakini
. No one else was supposed to see her. We were sent far, very far away—for nothing! It was just the same as in Yoksum.

‘My father held up the scripture he had received on the mountain, the
ter
that had been revealed to him by Khandro Yeshe Tsogyal, and he read aloud from it. It contained prayers and rituals specifically to appease the
dharmapala
and
mahapala
, the male and female guardians of the gates of Beyul.’

Dharmapala
and
mahapala
are the Sanskrit names for spirits that in Tibetan are known as the
shipdak
and
sadag
. The
shipdak
are the local mountain deities. They show the way. The
sadag
are the spirit owners or lords of the land. Sa means soil and dag means owner. There are different
shipdak
and
sadag
for each of the four gates to Beyul Demoshong. Unless you appease these spirits, the way will not open.

As Kunsang explained it, these spirits would first appear as wrathful and they would jealously guard the gate. But that gate would be the ‘outer gate’. After you passed through the outer gate, you’d come to the ‘inner gate’ and the same spirits would appear again, not as wrathful guards but to welcome you and to provide you with food, clothes and everything you need for your everlasting comfort. It was a necessary step towards opening Beyul for Tulshuk Lingpa to receive this
ter
from Khandro Yeshe Tsogyal.

‘That is why we went up the mountain,’ Tulshuk Lingpa announced, ‘and to see Tseram—for now I know Tseram is very close to the Western Gate.’

While this explanation satisfied Tulshuk Lingpa’s followers, to his detractors it was just an excuse, and a certain tension surfaced that had hitherto been latent. There had always been those who believed in Tulshuk Lingpa and his journey to Beyul—and those who didn’t. This had on occasion split families and entire villages into those who were going and those who weren’t. Now that he had set off for the high mountains on a mission that everyone assumed would culminate in the opening of Beyul, only to return a few days later, those who opposed him grew more vocal. The rumors that had circulated at the palace began to run the rounds of the villages: that Tulshuk Lingpa was a Chinese spy, a fraud, a charlatan, a drunkard and a madman.

Tulshuk Lingpa, while not unaware of the rumors and controversy that began to swirl around him, didn’t pay much heed to such matters. He wasn’t concerned with appeasing those in the human realm who would do him harm. His struggles were squarely with the hidden realm of spirits. He was busy appeasing the guardian deities of Kanchenjunga and the spirit gatekeepers of Beyul, purifying himself and his followers through meditation and performing pujas.

Since the opening was taking longer than they had expected, some of Tulshuk Lingpa’s devoted disciples, while they weren’t losing faith in him, were beginning to run out of money. This was especially the case with those who had come from Himachal Pradesh. When they had sold their possessions and given away the rest, they had only brought enough to get to Sikkim and to make the expedition into the high mountains. They had never figured on having to maintain themselves there month after month. Even those from Sikkim, Darjeeling and Bhutan had given away their worldly goods and hadn’t planted their crops. Funds were running low even for Tulshuk Lingpa’s main sponsors, who had been quite wealthy. They tried to pressure him to open the gate quickly. But he was not to be pushed. The proper rituals had to be performed. Certain months were propitious for the opening of Beyul, namely the fourth through the ninth Tibetan months, and timing was everything. Some of his disciples started going above Yoksum into the deep forests and collecting
sang
, the pine bough incense, and bringing it to Darjeeling to sell. The talk at the palace that Yab Jantaray overheard became harsher. There were some at the palace who wanted to arrest Tulshuk Lingpa, even throw him in jail. He informed his older brother, Yab Maila, who told Tulshuk Lingpa.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A Historical Digression

Royal opposition to Tulshuk Lingpa was to become a major factor in what happened next. It also proved to be one of the most difficult aspects of the entire story to research and to come to understand.

One would have thought lamas sitting on hidden knowledge and directions to a hidden land concealing half the world’s wealth would be reticent, unwilling to speak to a foreigner poking around and asking questions. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. Everyone involved with Tulshuk Lingpa and his quest for Beyul Demoshong were open and more than willing to tell me what they knew. Some of the more learned lamas made it clear that there were certain ‘tantric’ aspects of the story that couldn’t be divulged to the uninitiated. But it was just as clear that while the land to which they all aspired was hidden, they had nothing to hide.

It quickly became apparent that this was not the case with those connected with the Sikkimese royal family. When I asked them about the royal opposition to Tulshuk Lingpa, I hit a wall of silence behind which it was clear secrets lurked.

Over time, my understanding of the royal opposition changed. At the beginning of my inquiry, before I even realized there was such a wall of silence, I had two main theories. Both of them were probably naïve: one based on the king having no faith in Tulshuk Lingpa and perhaps even thinking him mad, and the other based on the king believing Tulshuk Lingpa truly had the key to the Hidden Land to which
his
kingdom was but a gateway.

The first theory held that if the king did not think Tulshuk Lingpa was the lama to open the Hidden Land, doubted the Hidden Land existed or even thought him mad, his opposition would be based on a paternal concern for the simple folks under his charge. Though the landscape of Sikkim is dominated by the snow-clad Mount Kanchenjunga, few Sikkimese have experience with altitude and glaciers. Those following Tulshuk Lingpa were bound to be ill equipped for high altitudes, suffer frostbite and risk death. Already, they hadn’t planted their fields; they had given up their homes and possessions. By all accounts the king was concerned for his subjects’ welfare and, like a father, would have wanted to protect them. What king wouldn’t want to protect his subjects from a mad lama who was going to lead them, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, into a cave on the side of a mountain never to return?

This reference to ancient legend might not be that far off the mark. As Robert Browning wrote of the moment when the piper led the children astray in his poem
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
:

When, lo, as they reached the mountain-side,

A wondrous portal opened wide,

As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed;

And the Piper advanced and the children followed,

And when all were in to the very last,

The door in the mountain-side shut fast.