A Step Away from Paradise: A Tibetan Lama's Extraordinary Journey to a Land of Immortality (41 page)

‘From the town of Darjeeling,’ she told us, ‘only two families went with Tulshuk Lingpa. It was my family and the family of my uncle, who was a big sponsor of Tulshuk Lingpa’s.’

‘How did you become Tulshuk Lingpa’s follower?’ I asked.

‘My uncle had met him. He became a follower and told us about him. Then my husband and I heard Tulshuk Lingpa was at Chatral Rinpoche’s monastery in Jorbungalow. We heard that he was taking everybody to the Promised Land, and you wouldn’t have to work there. We were very excited. So we went—my husband, our two-year-old daughter and I. When we saw him I was struck by how young he appeared—how young and how handsome! He was in the temple and there were so many people it would have been impossible to actually speak with him. We could only file past him and receive his blessing. I was in his presence only for about ten seconds, and never even heard him speak. That’s the only time I ever saw him but it was enough. Such was his power. It was some time later that we heard he had gone up the mountain to open the gate. We were so excited we sold off everything. We
had
to follow him. We felt we had no choice. People had been waiting for generations. We felt so fortunate just to be alive at the right time. We didn’t have much but we sold off what we had. Our bronze alone got us sixty rupees—a lot in those days, at least for us. My sister lived in Yoksum, so we went there to wait to hear that the gate had opened. Tulshuk Lingpa didn’t want everybody to come to Nepal. I was in Yoksum when word came that Tulshuk Lingpa was dead.’

‘How did it feel,’ I asked her, ‘to be on the verge of entering another land?’

‘I was very happy,’ she said. ‘My husband and I had severed all attachments; we didn’t have anything when we went to Yoksum. All I had was one set of thick clothing, which I wore all the time, ready to go up into the snow at a moment’s notice. To give up everything was to have one foot already in the Hidden Land. There is no way to describe it.’

‘What did you expect to happen when the way opened,’ I asked. ‘Did you think it would be a cave, a gate?’

‘Behind the mountain there would be a gate. Once you were through the gate it would be locked and you could never come back. We would become immortal inside, and would not age. That place would be filled with flowers. If you planted a grain of rice in the morning, it would be ready by evening. You wouldn’t have to work. Everything would be very easy. You wouldn’t have to sow seeds again; they would just keep growing.’

‘Did Tulshuk Lingpa himself tell you what it would be like there?’

‘No. As I told you I never even heard him speak. I only received his blessing, and that was enough for me to abandon my life. The thing about the sowing of the seeds—that came from his followers. I don’t know anything he himself actually said about the Hidden Land.’

‘Do you know why the king was against Tulshuk Lingpa?’

‘We were only small people. How could we know about the king’s feelings?’

‘Has anyone ever made it to Beyul?’

‘I haven’t heard of anyone. But I still firmly believe in it.’

‘Do you still think of Beyul, in your daily life?’

‘Every day. Especially when times are difficult. Then I dream of what it would have been like. Even today, I would abandon everything again in an instant if the right lama came.’

‘The fact that Tulshuk Lingpa’s attempt failed and ended in his death doesn’t make you doubt the existence of Beyul?’

‘How could it? It was because of him I had the most beautiful time of my life. There is no way to describe what it is like to give up everything. I was never so high in my life. When I came back after Tulshuk Lingpa died I had no sense of regret at all. I’d do it all again.’

After Tulshuk Lingpa died and everybody was dispersing, the people from Lahaul tried to convince the family to return with them to Lahaul. But they did not go. As Kunsang put it, ‘Why should we have gone back? Father wouldn’t have been there; we’d only have sad memories.’

‘Besides,’ Kunsang said, whistling his breath through his teeth like a cold wind howling through cracks in walls, ‘in winter—damn lot of snow.’ He burst out laughing.

‘The Lahaul people even sent a lama to convince us,’ he continued in a more serious vein. ‘Since I was Tulshuk Lingpa’s only son, he told me the monastery would be mine. But I did not want it. Mipham also felt the same. He never returned to Lahaul either because of the memories. After my father died, he went to Bhutan and he’s been there ever since living in a cave. He’s in deep retreat. After I refused to go back to Lahaul to take over my father’s monastery, the lama from Lahaul went to Bhutan and found Mipham in his cave. He asked him to come with him to Lahaul to take over the monastery but Mipham also refused. When he asked Mipham why, he said, “If I come, you’ll be having me do house pujas!” He also finds that life very boring. As far as I know, Mipham is still alive and living in his cave in Bhutan. He is always in deep meditation.

‘My father’s other close disciple, Namdrol, caught TB and died young. He was from Lahaul and left behind a wife and a daughter. He was such a learned lama that people really mourned his passing.

‘Zurmang Gelong, the lama from Kham who was working on the road crew when he discovered that my father was the one prophesied in the scripture, was also a very good and learned lama. After my father’s death the Karmapa brought him to Rumtek and then sent him to America, where he died in Los Angeles.

‘Tenzing Norgay never knew my father’s true reason for going to Sikkim. It was much later that he found out, after my father’s death, and he thought, “Why didn’t he tell me? I know all the routes around Kanchenjunga.” But then he’d laugh. “Tulshuk Lingpa himself knew the way; why should he have asked me? He knew very well.” Tenzing Norgay’s wife, by the way, died near Pemako. She was poisoned by
kapat
.

‘After the cremation, my family went to Chatral Rinpoche’s monastery and he was very kind to us. We had nothing. He gave us land outside Darjeeling, in Tinchulay, and somehow we managed to survive. It was not easy. We were so sad at our loss. Some years later my older sister, Kamala, married Chatral Rinpoche. He is now well over ninety years old.

‘It was some years later, in the mid-1970s, that Chatral Rinpoche proposed constructing a stupa for my father at his monastery in Salubari. It would be like a monument to him: a repository for his relics that would hold and emanate their power. We had wanted to construct one ourselves but didn’t have the money. Chatral Rinpoche did, and he asked us for whatever relics we had from my father so they could be sealed inside.

‘I’ve told you about my father’s
purba
, that magic dagger he pulled out of a vision in Tibet, the one that split the glacier above Tseram and used to spark in thunderstorms. He was famous for it. Well, I had that
purba
after my father’s death. When Chatral Rinpoche said he’d construct the stupa for my father, we gave him the remaining ashes from his cremation as well as texts and other ritual objects that had belonged to him. I also gave him my father’s
purba
. I had no choice. It was the most difficult thing for me to give up. Now that I am a practicing lama, it would have enhanced my work. That
purba
had tremendous powers. No matter how drunk my father was, he always had it with him. He’d take it out and you would see fire sparks coming out of the tip. Sometimes he’d let people touch it, and they always said it felt like water. You could dry your hands and again touch the
purba
, and your fingers would be wet. Yet it would be glowing, like incense.

‘Tarthang Tulku was a great friend of my father’s. Sometimes I see him in Bodh Gaya, the pilgrimage place where the Buddha attained enlightenment. He remembered well my father’s
purba
. A few years ago he asked me what happened to it, and I told him it ended up inside the stupa.

‘Tarthang Tulku became angry with me. “How could you have allowed it to be put into a stupa?” he said. “It was a powerful object. You need three
lingpas
in the family, in the lineage. First there was your grandfather, then your father. You would be next. If you had the
purba
you’d gain tremendous
lungta
, good fortune. You’d have the ability to receive revelations and prophecies. Why did you ever give it up?”

‘I explained to him how we were poor and didn’t have the money to construct my father’s stupa and how great an honor it was that Chatral Rinpoche was constructing and financing it—and how we actually had no choice. I described to him how I watched it being wrapped up in a special cloth and lowered in through the top of the stupa before it was sealed. It is in the position that represents mind and consciousness. I told him how disturbed I was that it was sealed in that stupa.

‘Tarthang Tulku told me, “You are the son of a great
lingpa
. You know all the rituals. You should be carrying that
purba
with you every day. You could be a
lingpa
yourself. You should get the
purba
!”

‘But breaking into a stupa is a very bad thing to do, and he knew it too so I don’t think he really meant it.

‘But still, he was angry at me. “What are you doing here?” he asked me. “You should go back to Tibet!”’

Kunsang became quite emotional talking of the period after his father’s death. ‘Before my father died,’ he told me, ‘people in Lahaul who didn’t follow him always said, “Tulshuk Lingpa, he is a mad lama, drinking all the time.” Then, after he died, the same people said, “Tulshuk Lingpa—he was a high lama, and a lama like this doesn’t come often. We didn’t know before. We thought he was mad.” They were crying.’

I asked Kunsang whether he ever returned to Kullu or to Lahaul.

‘Since we left for Beyul,’ he said, ‘I’ve never been back over the Rohtang Pass. I’ve just never been able to. But I did return to Kullu twice. It was some years after my father’s death. As the only son, I was the head of the household, you see, and I had to earn money. So I decided to go into the apple business. The Kullu Valley is famous for its apples. So I returned.

‘First I went to Pangao, to see the cave where we had lived the better part of eleven years. Walking down the steep, overgrown path I felt a mixture of excitement and dread. I had left my mother and sisters in Darjeeling a thousand miles away and ventured back on my own. I had been but a boy when I left, just sixteen. As I angled down the path from the village to the cave, I had to wipe the tears from my eyes. When we left for Beyul, we left from Pangao. We were going to a place we’d never leave. It didn’t cross our minds that we’d ever return. That’s why it took so many years for me to dare face it.

‘We used to maintain the path to the cave. I used to run down it from the village. Now it was all overgrown, the brambles catching my clothes as if the guardian deities of the place were warning me to go no further and let the past lie. I had to hang on to clumps of grass not to slip and plunge into the river far below. It wasn’t until I was directly in front of the cave opening that I realized I was home. Memories of that happy time, the time of my childhood when my father was alive and everything was hope and promise, flooded my mind and spilled out through my eyes. My cheeks were flowing with tears. So many years; so many changes.