My husband, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, was born in Tibet in 1940, the Year of the Dragon. His parents were Tibetan nomads living on the high arid plateau of eastern Tibet, and he had several siblings. When he was about eighteen months old, some. monks from Surmang Dutsi Tel Monastery came to the encampment where he lived, looking for the reincarnation of their abbot, the Tenth Trungpa, who had died the year before. The Tibetan Buddhist belief is that when great, realized teachers die, they reincarnate and return, so that they can continue their work teaching and helping others. In their old age, some teachers write a letter about where they will be reborn, but in this case, no letter was found, and the monks were relying on a vision that His Holiness the Gyalwang Karmapa, the head of their lineage, had had. He told them where to look, the name of the child's father and mother, and gave them other details.
The first time they came to my husband's encampment, they interviewed people and made a list of the families with a child about a year old. However, they didn't talk to Rinpoche's parents because they were among the poorest families there, and the monks expected the next Trungpa to come from a more well-to-do situation. When they presented the list to the Karmapa, he told them they must have overlooked someone and they should go back and try again. This time, when they got close to the village, they saw a little boy waving at them, and this was Rinpoche. They talked to his parents, and at first they were confused. The mother's name was right, but the father's name was not. Then, finally, the mother told them that her husband was not the father of this child, and she gave them the name of her first husband, which was the name they were looking for. The family also had a red dog and the door of their tent faced south, which were other details the Karmapa had seen in his vision.
The monks then tested the little boy to see if this was indeed the right child. They had a painted mandala that depicted six different realms of existence, and they asked the little boy which one he was from. He pointed to the human realm, rather than any of the others -- the hell realm, the realm of hungry ghosts, the animal realm, the realm of the jealous gods, or the realm of the gods. That was the right answer, so they kept going. They took out two different bells, two ritual scepters (called dorjes), two walking sticks, and two malas (Tibetan rosaries), and they asked him which ones he would like. In each case, he chose the object that his predecessor, the Tenth Trungpa, had used.
The monks were delighted. Here was their abbot, this little nomad living in a yak-skin tent. He and his parents were invited back to Surmango There are a number of monasteries that are all part of Surmang, spread over an area of perhaps fifty square miles in eastern Tibet. The monastery where my husband would spend most of his childhood was called Surmang Dutsi Tel. Dutsi Tel was an important monastery, but was not the largest. Surmang Namgyal Tse was the biggest monastery in the group, with close to a thousand monks living there. Rinpoche and his parents were taken to Namgyal Tse for the enthronement ceremony. His Holiness the Karrnapa was visiting in that area, and thus he was able to perform the enthronement himself. More than thirteen thousand monks and nuns, plus many laypeople, attended the ceremony. It began with the refuge ceremony, which included cutting a lock of the young child's hair and giving him a Buddhist name.
Rinpoche then moved to Surmang Dutsi Tel, where he would live and study in the quarters of his predecessor. His father went back to the family encampment, but his mother stayed nearby until Rinpoche was five years old and began his formal studies. She was allowed to visit him every day, and he looked forward to these visits with great anticipation.
The Tenth Trungpa had been an austere, saintly man. His lifestyle was quite ascetic. For example, although he had received a beautiful white horse as a gift, when he went to another monastery to teach or went into the villages to see people, he refused to ride and always walked, until he was very old. His quarters at Surmang Dutsi Tel were likewise very spare. The bursar there -- and bursars were very powerful people in the monastic hierarchy -- wanted to redo the apartment completely in a more colorful and comfortable style now that the Eleventh Trungpa, the new abbot, had been found. Up to that point, they kept the rooms exactly the way they had been when the last incarnation had lived there. However, traditionally, when the new person is enthroned, he can make whatever changes he would like. In this case, Rinpoche was much too young to make those kinds of decisions, so his bursar had a free rein.
Rinpoche was delighted by the renovations, not so much because he wanted a fancier place to live, but because he was so interested in the work that all the craftspeople were doing. They painted the wood beams in his apartment in bright colors and designs, and Rinpoche and a little friend stole some of the paints so that they could make their own drawings. He had an interest in art that continued throughout his life.
Until he was five, Rinpoche's life at Dutsi Tel was fairly relaxed and pleasant. He was sometimes allowed to play with other young monks, and not much was required of him. He was a curious little boy, and somewhat mischievous. He got in trouble once for setting off firecrackers on the roof of the monastic kitchens. When there was fresh snow, he and the other little boys would sometimes have snowball fights in the courtyard.
At five, life changed quite a lot for him. There was a ceremony to mark the beginning of his education, and he started to learn how to read and write with a tutor, who stayed with him in his rooms at the monastery and watched his every move. Every detail of what he did was now observed and corrected: his posture, how he ate, how he sat, how he chanted, how he walked. The only time Rinpoche was alone was if his tutor took a break or when Rinpoche was in the privy. Sometimes he stayed there a long time, just to have some time to himself.
Life was both claustrophobic and lonely for him. His mother came less and less frequently to see him, and eventually she went home to their village and didn't return for months at a time. Those few times that Rinpoche was in his quarters by himself, he often would cry with loneliness.
At the same time, his tutor was a kind man, who occasionally disciplined Rinpoche but was generally very sweet and cheerful. If he needed to punish Rinpoche, he would excuse himself and go wash his hands, then he would light a stick of incense on the shrine in Rinpoche's bedroom, he would bow to Rinpoche -- in fact, I think he might have done a prostration to him -- and then he would proceed to spank him. As soon as his tutor lit the incense, Rinpoche knew what was going to follow.
He taught Rinpoche how to read and write by telling him stories about all the Tibetan letters, how this one looked like a man walking, and this one looked like a person sticking out his tongue, this one like a worm, things like that. Rinpoche found it easy to pick up, and everyone was impressed with how quickly he learned to read and write. His tutor also told him stories about the Buddha and about great Buddhist teachers in India and Tibet, which Rinpoche loved. In the evenings he would practice chanting. He was also allowed occasionally to draw, if the subject wa'S a religious figure. On special afternoons, they would have a picnic or go for walks. However, he was no longer allowed to play with other children. In fact, he and his tutor moved up to a retreat center above the main monastery, so that he wouldn't have so many distractions from his studies.
Life went on like this for several years, and Rinpoche thought that things were going pretty well. He loved his tutor as though he were his father. He learned things much faster than anyone expected, and he thought he was doing a good job. But then, when he was about seven, the monastic committee in charge of his education decided that his tutor was being much too soft on him and that he needed greater discipline. So they brought in another man, who was quite harsh. He never administered corporal punishment, but his attitude was so severe that Rinpoche found him much more difficult to deal with. He too corrected Rinpoche's behavior constantly, but his approach was to belittle him with no encouragement, which made Rinpoche feel generally that he wasn't doing such a good job after all. At first, Rinpoche was quite intimidated by his new tutor, but then he decided that the way to deal with him was to be an absolutely exceptional student in every respect, so that there would be less to criticize. So he started to discipline himself and to study diligently, and within a couple of years he found that he could read better than his tutor and that he understood more than his tutor did about many of the topics they were studying. This intimidated the man, although he would pretend that he still knew more than his pupil.
Around the time that his new tutor arrived, Rinpoche began to have dreams about Western technology. He had never seen an airplane or a taxi, but he had dreams about both, and he saw lots of Western clothing, as well as boots and shoes in some of his dreams. His tutor told him that these dreams were nonsense.
Rinpoche felt that, through applying himself, he was becoming quite successful at his studies and he was doing what his elders wanted, but he didn't understand why they were making such a big deal about him. He thought that they were trying to make him into something that he wasn't and that he was supposed to pretend to be somebody. He found this strange and somewhat disheartening, but he tried to go along, to please everyone.
When he was eight years old, there was great excitement at Dutsi Tel because Jamgon Kongtrul, a very great teacher, was coming to conduct important ceremonies and give teachings at the monastery. He would become Rinpoche's root guru, his main teacher. This meant that he was going to be Rinpoche's primary spiritual mentor, who would work intensely and one-on-one with him and impart the most profound teachings to him. Rinpoche expected someone serious and stern, someone very learned and wise whom he would be expected to imitate. But when he met Jamgon Kongtrul, he found that he was not at all like that. He was completely open, kind, and warm, and not at all solemn. Nevertheless, everyone seemed to be slightly afraid of him because he also seemed to exude a lot of power. Rinpoche found that every movement that Jamgon Kongtrul made was very beautiful, not in an artistic way, but everything he did seemed to come from a deep well of genuineness.
Rinpoche thought, "Ah! This is what they want. This is what they've been trying to teach me." He saw that there was real wisdom embodied here and a genuine state of being that he could emulate, and he began to get an entirely different idea of what spirituality might be.
While Jamgon Kongtrul was visiting, Rinpoche had several private interviews with him. Jamgon Kongtrul gave him instruction in the sitting practice of meditation. It was very simple; in fact, it felt almost as though nothing happened. They simply. sat in the space together. Jamgon Kongtrul seemed very pleased with their meetings, and he said that he was very happy to be able to give back to Rinpoche the wisdom that he, Jamgon Kongtrul, had received from Rinpoche's predecessor, the Tenth Trungpa -- who had been his teacher. He told Rinpoche that he shouldn't discuss their meetings with anyone else. Rinpoche understood that his teacher was giving him something precious, something that couldn't be described in words. After Jamgon Kongtrul left, Rinpoche applied himself more and more to his studies, and he began to get a true sense of what the teachings were really" about, which went beyond the rules and the outward discipline that he was expected to follow.
Around this time, Rinpoche spent several months studying with Rolpe Dorje, who was the regent abbot of Surmang, which meant that he was the acting abbot of the monastery until Rinpoche reached the age and had the maturity where he could assume these duties. Rolpe Dorje was quite a realized teacher in his own right. He was staying in a cave at his retreat center in the area, away from the main monastery at Dutsi Tel.
Rinpoche found his time with Rolpe Dorje very powerful. Rinpoche started what are called the preliminary practices, or the ngondro, in preparation for more advanced tantric practice. The preliminaries include performing a hundred thousand full prostrations while visualizing the Buddhist lineage and taking refuge in the Buddha, the teachings, and the sangha, or the Buddhist community. Rinpoche also did other practices that involve purifying oneself and surrendering one's ego so that it is possible to connect with the wisdom of the Buddhist lineage. Although he found all of this very helpful, he wanted more than anything to go to Jamgon Kongtrul's monastery to study with his guru. Jamgon Kongtrul had told him that he had much more to learn and that he should come and spend time with him when he was ready, and Rinpoche felt that indeed the time was approaching for him to go to his teacher.
Rinpoche was now nine years old. It was 1949, and the influence of the communist Chinese began to be felt in this region of Tibet. Nothing had actually happened to disrupt their way of life, but the Tibetans were very distrustful of the situation. Around this time, Rinpoche's mother left her husband and was able to move to Surmang permanently. Rinpoche was very happy to have her return. She was given a position working in the dairy farm just outside the walls of the monastery. She worked with the yaks in the dairy and helped take care of the horses. Whenever he could, Rinpoche would go down and spend time with her. Once, when they were in the horse stables, he found some of the salty pickles that were given to the horses as treats. He started eating them, and he found them delicious. He was chewing on one of them, and he asked his mother what their family name was. She said, "You are Rinpoche. Your name is Rinpoche." And he said, "Yes, I know that, but what is our family name?" And she said, "Why do you want to know that?" He replied, "Well, you're my mother and I came out of your body, and I want to know who I am." He was very persistent. Finally, she said, "Well, you shouldn't think about that. But if you will stop eating those pickles, I'll tell you our name." And he stopped, so she said, "Our name is Mukpo. But forget about that. You are Rinpoche."
Rinpoche was very proud to be a Mukpo. In Tibet, Mukpo is one of the six main clans. His Holiness Karmapa was from the Mukpo clan, as was Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, another of my husband's teachers. Gesar of Ling, who is a famous folk hero in Tibet, was also a Mukpo. So Rinpoche took great pride in the Mukpo name. He used the name C. T. Mukpo on his British passport and passed on that family name to me and to our children.
When he was twelve, Rinpoche talked to the monastic committee about going to Sechen Monastery to study with Jamgon Kongtrul. They convinced him to first do a tour around the Surmang area, as there had been several invitations for him to visit neighboring towns and monasteries. These tours were one way that the monastery raised money for its operations, so the committee was very interested in having Rinpoche do this. The tour took about three months, and while he was traveling around, for the first time, he saw Chinese soldiers encamped around some of the monasteries to the south of Surmang. It was a troubling sign.
Finally, having completed his obligations, he left for Sechen with several attendants, including his tutor, who insisted on coming along. It took ten days to reach the monastery. He arrived on his thirteenth birthday. Jamgon Kongtrul was delighted to see Rinpoche and immediately had him start a rigorous course of study. His main tutor at Sechen was a khenpo, the equivalent of a Ph.D. in the West. Khenpo Gangshar was a very learned man. Over the course of time, he became a somewhat wild and crazy yogi who would impart much more than book learning to Rinpoche.
One day I called upon the tutor of the second Grand Lama, Tsan Chenba, a venerable priest, seventy-four years of age, who was very kind to me. As he was reputed to be the highest authority on Tibetan grammar and rhetoric among the three thousand priests in the temple, I asked him several grammatical questions, and in doing so I took care to select such questions as were familiar to me, for I wanted to know in what way my host would try to explain them. I was, however, disappointed, as he confessed that he could give no answer and said that he could only refer me to a learned physician living at Engon on the road to Lhasa, who, he was inclined to believe, could give me a satisfactory answer. I was, therefore, glad to take leave of him. En passant it may be stated that five branches of science—phonetics, medicine, logic, engineering and religious science and philosophy—were centuries ago introduced into Tibet from India, but now-a-days very few—I will almost say no—Tibetans are proficient in them, or even in one of them. Under present circumstances, those who take to the study of grammar belong to very limited classes, the majority of them consisting of the men in the Government service who learn just the elementary rules of grammar, in order to be able to prepare official documents. It is not wonderful therefore that there should be scholars who, in spite of their zeal in the investigation and exposition of Buddha’s doctrines, are absolute strangers to history and other branches of science....
I struggled on for about four miles further, and then came out upon a wide space. Looking to the right, I saw two large buildings standing on the summit of a mountain. These buildings constitute the Engon temple where, as the old priest of the Tashi Lhunpo temple had kindly informed me, lives the celebrated grammarian....
I stayed at the temple for the night, and the next day I had an interview with its principal priest. The latter, however, talked only something of Buddhism, being ignorant of grammar and rhetoric, but[255] was kind enough to refer me to the physician, Amdo Ka-sang, of whom the old priest of the Tashi Lhunpo had such a high opinion.
I then called upon this physician and grammarian, to whom I gave some presents in token of my respect. After the usual greetings had been exchanged, the host questioned me how long I had been studying the Tibetan language. “Three years,” I replied. My host declared that the study of grammar and rhetoric greatly depended upon the method used and that, if the method were a poor one, the period of three years would prove too short to accomplish anything. He then asked me a few questions on grammar, which, as they were very simple, I answered quickly. I asked him to put to me some more difficult questions on rhetoric, but, to my great disappointment, he confessed that he had no knowledge of rhetoric. I next asked him which of the Tibetan grammarians he thought the best, to which question he answered that he preferred Ngul-chu Lama’s grammar (Ngul-chu being the name of a temple) which, in reality, is very imperfect. I almost doubted his sincerity, so that I again asked him why he did not follow the views taken by Situ Lama, who is well-known as the highest authority on Tibetan grammar. To my great surprise, my host had never read Situ’s works, though he had heard something of the grammarian. I then turned my questions to the number of vowels in the Tibetan alphabet, about which there are two different opinions among grammarians. This question, simple as it may appear, has been the subject of much discussion, so that the study of the Tibetan language must be started with this theme. My question on this subject seemed to embarrass my host who, after some pondering, said that there were sixteen vowels in the Tibetan alphabet, and began to enumerate them. Curiously enough, all the vowels mentioned by him were those of the Samskrt[256] alphabet, so I asked him what he thought of the opinion that the number of the Tibetan vowels was five.
The doctor seemed abashed. He apologised for his mistake in having mentioned the Samskrt vowels, and admitted that the Tibetan vowels numbered only five. (This five-vowel opinion is erroneous, though several western scholars maintain it in their works. It must be noted that the Tibetan characters were invented by Thumi Sambhota, who tells us in his work that there were only four vowels in his language.) In short, the interview proved a disappointment. The doctor possessed very limited knowledge, being a great grammarian and rhetorician only in the eyes of ignorant native priests. I returned to my room, where I was asked by a priest on what subject I had talked with the ‘learned’ doctor. When I answered him that I had discussed some grammatical questions with the doctor, the priest said with an air of importance that the doctor was the highest authority on grammar and rhetoric throughout the province of Tsan, that one or two interviews with him would be insufficient to secure any benefit, and that I should stay with him for at least two or three years if I really wished to study grammar. In addition, the priest confessed that, long as he had had the fortune to listen to the doctor’s lectures, he was still a total stranger to grammar. I was so much tickled by these remarks that I burst out laughing, which seemed somewhat to embarrass the priest.
-- Three Years in Tibet, by Shramana Ekai Kawaguchi
Rinpoche was able to stay a full year at Sechen. During that time, Jamgon Kongtrul conducted an extensive transmission of important Buddhist texts, called the Rinchen Terdzo, which takes about six months to complete. All the students receiving these teachings had to be up and in the shrine room by five A.M. every day, when the morning session began. Several hundred monks attended this presentation of the teachings. At the end of the whole program, Rinpoche was selected from all the participants to receive a special empowerment that made him the holder of these teachings and gave him the permission to transmit them to others. He was somewhat overwhelmed by this honor, which is only extended to one person at an event like this. He was just a young monk, and there were many older, much more learned teachers attending this cycle of teachings.
When the Rinchen Terdzo teachings were finished, Rinpoche continued his studies under Khenpo Gangshar. He lived in the monastic college, or shedra, which housed about a hundred students at Sechen Monastery. He would finish his breakfast before five A.M. and then study for three hours. At eight A.M., Khenpo Gangshar would begin the day's lecture. The studies were demanding, but Rinpoche found that he enjoyed them. The material was quite advanced and presented in depth, and Rinpoche loved the challenge and the vitality with which the Khenpo taught. He also was able to continue his private instruction with Jamgon Kongtrul, which was not just about learning the doctrine but was about actualizing the teachings in one's personal experience.
One of the aspects of the training that Jamgon Kongtrul emphasized was teaching Rinpoche how to compose dohas, which are spontaneous songs or poems that express your experience or immediate realization of the teachings. They are quite different from traditional Tibetan poetry, which is prescribed and formal. Rinpoche also learned those strict poetic forms, but having to compose dohas in the presence of his teacher was both more intimidating and more profound for him. Jamgon Kongtrul could see through him right away if he was not completely genuine and on the spot.
What is the origin of “man on the spot”?
on the spot - at the place in question; there; "they were on the spot when it happened"; "it had to be decided by the man on the spot" (Emphasis added)
Some evidence suggests that the origin of the phrase refers to decisions made by officials of the past British empire and actions taken by them.
-- English Language and Usage, english.stackexchange.com
By examining how their collective character was formed and expressed, and to what effect, and by understanding the contemporary ethos in which it functioned, we may comprehend the perspective of the 'man on the spot' and bring out the extent to which they influenced both British Tibetan policy and the image of Tibet.
-- Tibet and the British Raj, 1904-47: The Influence of the Indian Political Department Officers, by Alexander McKay
Just after his fourteenth birthday, Rinpoche's monastery sent word that they wanted him to return to Surmang Namgyal Tse, the large monastery where he had been enthroned, to conduct the funeral rites for an important lama who had just died. He would have preferred to stay at Sechen, but his tutor insisted that they must go. When Rinpoche went to tell Jamgon Kongtrul that they were leaving, his guru told him that he should return as soon as he possibly could. Jamgon Kongtrul had a dream in which he saw a half moon that others said was full. "This means that you are not fully ripened," his guru said.
On the way back to Surmang, Rinpoche and his party saw a Chinese airfield and soldiers riding around on newly built roads in their jeeps. After Rinpoche performed the requisite ceremonies at Namgyal Tse, he received an invitation to visit Drolma Lhakhang, a monastery about six days from Surmang. Several days after arriving there, he was requested to give the Rinchen Terdzo empowerment. This was a great honor, although Rinpoche felt intimidated to be asked to do this when he had so recently received it. As well, he was only fourteen years old. It was at Drolma Lhakhang that he first met Akong Rinpoche, in this lifetime at least. Akong was the young abbot there, and he and Rinpoche became close friends in a short period of time.
Rinpoche was fifteen when he finally returned to Surmang Dutsi Tel. He had been gone for more than two years. Now, there were many signs of the influence of the Chinese. They were building roads in the area, and they appeared at the monastery and sat in on many events. Clearly, they were advancing their objectives in this part of Tibet. It was in this atmosphere that Rinpoche continued his duties and his training at Surmang.
He was now old enough to begin learning the tradition of monastic . dance, for which his monastery was, and still is, quite famous. It is a contemplative form of dance that incorporates the meaning of some of the highest Buddhist teachings from the Chakrasamvara Tantra, a very advanced Vajrayana text, in the gestures and movements that are performed by the dancers. It is extremely physically demanding. Rinpoche threw himself wholeheartedly into the training, and by the time of the Tibetan New Year's celebration at the end of that year, he was able to join in the dances, although he felt that his training was certainly not complete.
The Chinese were now visiting the surrounding monasteries to show propaganda films to the monks. Many senior teachers were becoming quite worried about what the Chinese would do next. Both His Holiness the Karmapa and His Holiness the Dalai Lama made visits to eastern Tibet around this time, ostensibly to give teachings and blessings to the people, but also to warn them of what might be to come. They were not able to speak out directly, of course, because they were being watched, and in fact they now had to travel with a Chinese escort who observed and listened to everything they said.
It was extremely moving to Rinpoche to meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He was able to have a brief private interview with the Dalai Lama, and Rinpoche talked at greater length with the Karmapa, who urged Rinpoche to complete his education and to build a monastic college at Surmang, which Rinpoche took to heart. There was no actual discussion about what the Chinese might be up to, but when the Dalai Lama and the Karmapa described their recent trips to Beijing, reading between the lines, it was clear that all of Tibet was in a precarious situation. Some Tibetan teachers were already making plans to escape to India, but Rinpoche hoped at this stage to remain. He still wanted to return to his teacher one more time, and thankfully, he was able to do so. He traveled back to Sechen and spent a few months with Jamgon Kongtrul, where he received the final teachings from him. Jamgon Kongtrul told him that he would now have to make decisions for himself, and that he should always be guided by the wisdom of the teachings and the lineage in whatever he did. His guru said that he had seen that Rinpoche might indeed be going to the West.
Rinpoche returned to Surmang where he began work on building a shedra, the college for advanced Buddhist studies that His Holiness Karmapa had recommended he create, similar to the shedra at Sechen that so inspired him.
Things were now in an uproar, with the Chinese beginning to take over some of the monasteries, burning books from the monastic libraries, destroying religious treasures, forcing the monks to do manual labor on the roads, and so forth. Some laypeople were organizing a Tibetan militia in eastern Tibet to fight the Chinese. There had been no problems yet at Surmang, but almost everyone felt that it was only a matter of time.
During this difficult period, Jamgon Kongtrul sent Khenpo Gangshar to Surmang to help Rinpoche with the work of establishing the college. While at Surmang, Khenpo Gangshar became convinced that it was time to take drastic measures. My husband told me many stories about the time that he spent with Khenpo Gangshar and the amazing teachings that he received from him. Rinpoche told me that while at Surmang, Khenpo Gangshar had taken ill and seemingly died. After remaining in a meditative state for several days, he got up, as though life had come back to his body. Before that, he had been a gentle, quiet man, a perfect monk and extremely learned. But from that time on he exhibited wild and wrathful energy. Rinpoche said that indeed Khenpo Gangshar was the embodiment of what is called the" crazy wisdom" lineage in Tibet. Such teachers are known for displaying their wisdom through unconventional and often unpredictable behavior, which is the expression of compassion without bounds. Crazy wisdom is not indulging in wild behavior just to have a good time or to be shocking and provocative for no reason. As Rinpoche once said, first you get the wisdom; then you get the crazy. The idea is that there is no boundary to the energy of egolessness and that whatever is called for in a situation, even if the means are extremely unconventional, will be used to help beings who are suffering in samsara, the endless cycle of confused existence. Rinpoche himself became known as one of the foremost crazy wisdom teachers in the West.
At this time at Surmang, Khenpo Gangshar insisted that it was time to break down the barriers between the monastic and the lay communities and that everyone should work together to understand the Buddha's message of compassion, so that hopefully they would be able to change the attitude and the intentions of the Chinese. He held meetings with everyone in the neighboring area, bringing people together from all of the monastic and lay communities. This was an outrageous thing to do in Tibet, where everything was so stratified and there was such a big divide between monastic and lay life. Khenpo gave teachings to everyone. He allowed women to come into the monastery for these teachings, which was unheard of. He also went and visited many monks in solitary retreat and told them that, during this time, they should come out of retreat, return to their monasteries and villages, and work with others. He told them that in their hearts they could remain in retreat but that their help was needed in the world.
In spite of the chaos of the time, construction went forward with the shedra, and the Khenpo worked closely with Rinpoche so that he was able to complete his studies and take the examination to become a khenpo himself. This was very meaningful for my husband; even though the times were so dire, he wanted to go forward with this project and with his own education.
Then, they heard that Jamgon Kongtrul had left Sechen and gone into hiding. It was becoming increasingly clear that the Chinese would not be dissuaded. There were reports of many more monasteries being invaded, sacked, or completely destroyed. Surmang was spared for some months and Rinpoche waited and waited, not wanting to disappoint anyone or leave anyone behind, but eventually it became clear that for his own safety, he too would have to go into hiding. He left Surmang, not really knowing but feeling that it was for the last time. His parting with his mother was especially poignant. He never saw her again.
He spent some time in retreat and also gave teachings at another monastery some days away from Surmang, performing the Rinchen Terdzo for the second and last time in Tibet. At the very end of the empowerment -- which they shortened because of the political crisis, so that it could be completed in three months -- he learned that Jamgon Kongtrul had been captured by the Chinese. Then, while in retreat, Rinpoche learned that Surmang Dutsi Tel had been sacked. The tomb of the Tenth Trungpa had been opened by the Chinese and the remains spread around the courtyard. Rinpoche's bursar, who was at Surmang at the time, gathered and cremated the remains and brought them to Rinpoche in a reliquary box. The bursar also carried the news that Surmang had largely been destroyed and that there was a price on Rinpoche's head. In the end, Rinpoche had no choice but to leave for India. Before his departure, he heard that his mother and other members of his family had gone to a small, very remote monastery, and they sent word that they were safe. His mother wrote and told him not to worry about her. He should go.
So he set off for India, a trip that would last ten months and take him over many of the highest passes in the Himalayas. When word got out that he was leaving, many joined his party. He had hoped to travel with a small group, but in the end close to two hundred Tibetans joined him. Akong was one of the party, as were several other young rinpoches. They walked out of Tibet, leaving in April 1959.
When the snow was very deep going over the passes, the largest, most burly monks in the party would go ahead and throw their bodies in the snow to make a pathway for the others. When one group tired, a second group of men would take over this task. At times they had to cross fast-flowing rivers on rickety hand-built bridges, one by one.
They took a circuitous route, to avoid the main roads used by the Chinese and the areas of greatest Chinese occupation. Often they traveled at night, especially if they had to cross a highway. Their journey was amazingly successful, especially considering the number in the party, and they avoided any encounters with the Chinese until the very end. Several times, they made camp for a few days of rest and meditation at Rinpoche's urging. He wanted people to keep up their strength as much as possible and not to lose contact with their meditative insight. When the path ahead was uncertain, Rinpoche would often use forms of Tibetan divination, in which he was trained, to decide which way they should go.
After many months of travel, the party, which had grown now to almost three hundred, reached the wide, swiftly running Brahmaputra River in the southern part of Tibet. There were only a few crossing points. Some of the monks fashioned boats made of yak skins to get them across, and they chose a crossing that was just outside of a small village. They hid in bushes around the village during the day, and on the night of December 15, 1959, under a full moon, they set out to cross.
Villagers, however, had alerted the Chinese that there was a group of Tibetans hiding near the town who might attempt to cross the river, and when Rinpoche and the first party had just made it across and the boatmen were about to go back for the next group, the Chinese attacked. Of the three hundred in the party, only a few dozen escaped and continued on. The remainder were captured, and many were shot. The group of those who successfully escaped traveled for another month through southern Tibet. They had almost run out of food and at the end had to boil leather to eat. They saved a small amount of barley flour for Rinpoche so that he would not have to eat these provisions. Toward the end, they passed through valleys where bananas were growing on trees along the side of the path, but not knowing what a banana was, they didn't eat them. On January 17, 1960, they crossed the border into India.
Rinpoche spent nearly four years in India, where he encountered a world vastly different from Tibet. He had grown up in an essentially medieval culture, and a very unusual one at that. It was one of the very few places on earth, at least in the twentieth century, where spirituality was uppermost in the minds and hearts of almost the entire population. Tibet was certainly not an idyllic society. Rinpoche often said that there was it great deal of corruption in Tibet, and that this was a contributing factor in its occupation by the communist Chinese. At the same time, he loved the land and the people, and he was completely immersed in a Buddhist world there.
In Tibet, he had been a very special and privileged person. In India, the Tibetans were refugees and were not generally treated very well, although kindness was extended to them by the Indian government and many individuals living in India. However, Rinpoche was no longer a person of high status, as he had been. He told me that, not long after arriving in India, he was invited to an English garden party. The hostess was passing around a tray of cucumber sandwiches, which she offered first to Rinpoche. He took the whole tray, thinking that she had made a nice lunch for him. Later, he was quite embarrassed by this.
Many of the Tibetan refugees ended up in camps. He stayed in the camps for a short time, but then he was able to relocate to Kalimpong, which was close to the seat that His Holiness the Karmapa established in Sikkim after escaping from Tibet. While he was in Kalimpong, Rinpoche studied thangka painting, and he produced beautiful paintings of Padmasambhava and his consort Yeshe Tsogyal, as well as other subjects. Later, he was able to bring these paintings with him to the West, and one of them hangs in my house today. He became friends with Tendzin Rongae, a wonderful thangka painter who had also recently arrived from Tibet and helped Rinpoche with his painting. Rinpoche became close to the entire Rongae family. While in Kalimpong, he learned that Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche had also recently entered India and was living a few miles away, about an hour away by foot. Rinpoche used to walk over to see Khyentse Rinpoche and to receive teachings from him. Dilgo Khyentse was over six feet tall, very unusual for a Tibetan, and he had enormous warmth and presence. During this time, Rinpoche became friends with Khyentse Rinpoche's nephew Ato Rinpoche.
India is a significant place for Tibetans because it was the home of the Buddha and of many of the great teachers whose works are studied in Tibet. One could say that India is for Tibetans what the Middle East is for Jews, Muslims, and Christians. There are many Buddhist pilgrimage sites in India. Rinpoche was able to visit Bodhgaya, where the Buddha attained enlightenment, and other important sites.
In India, Rinpoche was also exposed to many non-Buddhist cultures for the first time. He came to love Indian food and to appreciate many things about the Indian culture. He encountered people from all over the world there. In particular, he met several English Buddhists who were extremely kind and helpful to him. Freda Bedi was one of these. She was an Englishwoman who had married an Indian, Baba Bedi. She worked for the Central Social Welfare Board of the Indian government helping Tibetan refugees, and she was so affected by her involvement with the Tibetans that she became a Buddhist herself. After her husband's death, she was one of the first Westerners to become a Tibetan Buddhist nun.
Rinpoche met her at the refugee camp in Bir, and she formed an immediate bond with him. From the earliest contacts he had with Westerners, he shone out like a light or a beacon to them. Lama Govinda, a Westerner and an early writer about Tibetan Buddhism, reported this quality. Lama Govinda met Rinpoche in northern India, just after Rinpoche's escape from Tibet. Many Tibetan refugees stayed at Lama Govinda's house in the Himalayas on their way south, and he said that Trungpa Rinpoche was the brightest of them all.
Freda Bedi helped Rinpoche resettle in Kalimpong, and later she asked him to help her establish a school to train young Tibetan monks, the Young Lamas Home School, in New Delhi, which moved to Dalhousie after about a year. He was delighted to do this, and with the blessings of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Rinpoche became the spiritual advisor to the young monks at the school.
This was the first time that Rinpoche had ever lived in a secular society, and although at first he found it quite strange, he soon took to it. He went to meetings of a British women's club so that he could hear the poetry of T. S. Eliot read, and he used to go to the cinema in New Delhi. On his way out of Tibet, close to the border with India, he was exposed to alcoholic beverages for the first time. In one of the villages where they stopped, you couldn't drink the water, and everyone drank a kind of Tibetan beer. He had been hesitant to imbibe any alcohol since it was a violation of his monastic vows, but once he gave in, he enjoyed the experience, and in India he started to drink occasionally, though not openly. Tendzin Rongae and Rinpoche liked to get together and drink from time to time.
During that night, in compliance with the request of the priests in my dormitory, I delivered a sermon on the ten Buddhist virtues, which seemed to please them greatly. They confessed to me that, priests as they were, they found no interest in the theoretical and dry expositions of Buddha’s teachings to which they had been used to listen, but that my delivery was so easy and pleasing that it aroused in them a real zest for Buddhism. This fact is a sad commentary on the ignorance of the average Tibetan priests.
I learned subsequently, however, that the priests in this temple were very rigid in their conduct, except in the habit of drinking. With regard to this latter an amusing story is told. One day the Dalai Lama of Lhasa met with the Grand Lama of the Tashi Lhunpo monastery. In the course of conversation, the former said he was very sorry that his priests were addicted to the use of tobacco. Panchen Rinpoche sympathised, but stated that he was no less sorry that his own priests were exceedingly partial to alcoholic drinks. They then discussed which of the two luxuries was the more sinful, and also whether or not some effective measures could be taken to prevent these[253] vicious habits. But even their great influence could do nothing, and the vicious practices were open secrets. A curious rule was however enacted in order to prevent the habit of drinking. Every priest returning from the street was bound to present himself before the priestly guard at the gate of the temple, who examined his breath, any disclosure of his drunkenness being followed by an immediate punishment. Some impudent priests often attempted to conceal their inebriation by eating a good deal of garlic, the strong smell of which impregnated their breath and thus might prevent detection.
-- Three Years in Tibet, by Shramana Ekai Kawaguchi
On the way out of Tibet, Rinpoche had fallen in love with a young Tibetan nun, Konchok Paldron, who was part of the escape party. He became clandestinely involved with her while he was in India. She was living in the refugee camp in Bir. She visited him at the Young Lamas Home School, and they took a mattress up on the roof of the building, where they spent the night together. She became pregnant and gave birth to Rinpoche's eldest son, Osel Rangdrol Mukpo, a short time before Rinpoche left for England. When she was pregnant, she made a pilgrimage to Bodhgaya, and their son was born there. She could no longer be a nun, so after Osel was born, she worked as a road laborer to support herself for some time. Later, she married and had another child.
Around this time, Rinpoche received a Spaulding Scholarship to attend Oxford University. This had come through the intercession of Freda Bedi and John Driver, an Englishman who tutored Rinpoche in the English language in India and helped him with his studies later at Oxford. The Tibet Society in the United Kingdom had also helped him to get the scholarship. To go to England, Rinpoche needed the permission of the Dalai Lama's government. They would never have allowed him to leave if they had known about his sexual indiscretion, nor do I think it would have gone over very well with the Tibet Society or his English friends in New Delhi. He and Konchok Paldron kept their relationship a secret, and it was a long time before anyone knew that Rinpoche was the father of her child. This caused him a great deal of pain, although I also think that he hadn't yet entirely faced up to the implications of the direction he was going in his relationships with women. At that time, in spite of the inconsistencies in his behavior, he still seemed to think that he could make life work for himself as a monk. Rinpoche continued to stay in touch with Konchok Paldron and his son Osel, and a few years later, he returned to see them and to make arrangements for his son to come to England.
Rinpoche sailed from Bombay for England early in 1963, on the P&O Line, accompanied by his close friend Akong, who was to be a helper and companion to him at Oxford. Rinpoche had been working very hard on his English, but when he left India, he was still struggling with the language, speaking what would be called a form of pidgin English. When Rinpoche and Akong docked in England, they were welcomed by members of the Tibet Society, and before his studies started at Oxford in the fall, Rinpoche spent time in London, where he met many of the most prominent members of the English Buddhist community. He was invited to give several talks at the Buddhist Society, and he attended a kind of summer camp they sponsored each year, where he gave a number of lectures.
While still in Tibet, Rinpoche was fascinated by any Western objects that he saw. He received a watch as a gift when he was a teenager, and he had taken it completely apart to see, literally, what made it tick. He couldn't get it to work when he put it back together. Later, when he was given a clock that chimed, he took that apart as well, to discover what mistakes he had made the first time. He was successful putting the clock -- and then the watch -- back together so that they both kept time. He said of his arrival in England: "Coming to the Western world, I encountered the makers of the clocks, big and small, and the makers of other machines that do wondrous things -- such as airplanes and motor cars. It turned out that there was not so much wisdom in the West, but there was lots of knowledge."1 That, I think, was one of his dominant impressions of England: the technology and the knowledge about how things work in the world were very impressive, but there was not so much interest in a deeper spiritual understanding. There was, however, quite a lot of fascination with Eastern spirituality.
In England, among some people, Rinpoche found himself the object of that fascination. It was almost as though he were an exotic species of bird. He said that he found it very strange to be looked at as though he were a biological oddity rather than a human being. I think this was his first inkling that there might have to be major changes in his life if he wanted to break through the cultural distance and the polite veneer.
There was also quite a distinction between the older generation of English Buddhists Rinpoche met, who were prim and proper and highly philosophical, and the younger generation, who were part of the broad exploration and revolution in thinking that was spreading like a virus through Western youth in the mid-1960s. The young English students were certainly less extreme in their counterculture than those in America, but young people in Great Britain were also questioning many aspects of their society. Rinpoche found this quite alluring from early on. He was brought to England by the older, somewhat stodgy generation, but they weren't going to be able to corral him for long.
When he went up to Oxford, he had quite a challenge trying to bring his English up to speed so that he could understand the lectures and the books he was given to read. Rinpoche wanted to learn as much as he could about English history, philosophy, religion, and politics, but it was pretty tough going for him at the beginning. John Driver, whom he had met in India and who had been instrumental in bringing him to England, returned to England and helped Rinpoche a great deal with his lessons, and Rinpoche never forgot this kindness. In the evenings, Rinpoche attended classes in the town of Oxford to improve his English. Years later, he still remembered how his teacher had made the class say words over and over, to improve their elocution, such as "policeman, policeman, policeman." Rinpoche proved himself a brilliant student of the English language. By the time he left England for America, his English vocabulary exceeded that of many of his students.
At Oxford Rinpoche was befriended by the Jesuits, who thought that his tremendous enthusiasm for learning about the Christian religion made him a good candidate for conversion. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth, but Rinpoche enjoyed their company and felt that here at least he had found Westerners who had some understanding of a wisdom tradition, even though it was not his own.
When he first arrived in England, he was still haunted by memories of the atrocities he had witnessed in Tibet and by the sadness of losing his country. At this point, he had no idea what had happened to many of his teachers, compatriots, and members of his family. He didn't know if he would ever find out what happened to them or be able to return to Tibet. He felt it was unlikely. A way of life, a whole culture, was gone, as far as he knew, except for the remnants that survived in India. Rinpoche wanted to make sure that the wisdom of that culture was not lost, so his commitment to the Buddhist teachings and to bringing them to the West was beyond, I think, what we can imagine.
At first, he tried to hold onto what he sometimes called "Tibetanness." As much as he was fascinated by Western culture, he also could see how materialistic it was and how lacking in some of the values that he held most dear. For quite a while, he tried to befriend Westerners while holding onto his cultural identity. He felt this was being loyal, true to his heritage. But then he began to realize that it was only by going much further into the ways of the West that he would be able to communicate what he knew. He became determined to let go of the trappings of the past and to embrace the Western approach to life in order to preserve the wisdom of his heritage, paradoxical as that might seem.
This transition was not entirely gloomy or forced, but for a period of time it was very painful for him because he had left so much behind in Tibet, and now he was giving up even more. At the same time, he was drawn to the West, and he remembered things that Jamgon Kongtrul had said to him the last time they were together in Tibet. His guru had told him that he thought Rinpoche would go to the West, and that he would find people there who would remind him of the sanity and soft heart embodied in his teachers. He also told him that in India, the Buddha was born a prince and became a monk, but that in the West, a monk might have to become a prince. Rinpoche took this to mean that a secular approach to Buddhism might be the best way to proceed in the West.
I think that one of the most painful things for him was that he and Akong saw this so differently. The more Rinpoche was attracted to a Western way of life, the more Akong wanted to preserve the Tibetan style and culture. More fundamentally, Rinpoche started to make deep connections with Westerners, especially some of the younger students who made their way to him. He went beyond viewing them as a foreign species or as barbarians. Many Westerners were also looking at him that way, but he found the ones that weren't. They were the ones that reminded him of his teachers. They were the ones he wanted to spend time with. Akong couldn't get past those cultural barriers, nor did he seem to want to, At least, that is how Rinpoche came to see it. Even before they came up to Samye Ling, there was a huge divide between them. Rinpoche kept a diary in Tibetan during this period, and he wrote about these things.
Rinpoche found that most of the English Buddhists kept a certain distance from him because he was a monk. This made him an even stranger being in their eyes, different from them by yet another degree. They would probably have treated a Christian monk this way as well. However, while this kind of deference was comfortable for a lot of the other Tibetans, including Akong, Rinpoche was not interested in maintaining that distance. For many, it was quite nice to be treated as a special person again, even if you were regarded as a representative of an exotic species.
Rinpoche came from a tradition where wisdom is awakened through an intimate and direct transmission between the teacher and the student. He began to see that in order to communicate the depth of the teachings, he had to build such truly intimate relationships with Western students. Otherwise, he might be able to give little blessings, perform ceremonies that Westerners would find exotic, and give teachings that they would find fascinating, but he wouldn't be able to make a real dent in their mentality or their understanding. What they would retain would be superficial, and quite possibly much of the depth of his tradition would be lost to future generations. Being treated with a diffident respect might be more comfortable and lucrative, but it wasn't worth anything to him if he couldn't transmit what he knew and if he didn't connect with students with whom he could work.
Rinpoche also saw that he wouldn't be able to work with anyone or help people in any way if he didn't understand Western culture and the Western mind from the inside out. Of course, essentially there is no difference between the mind of a Western practitioner and the mind of an Eastern practitioner. But there are a lot of cultural trappings covering over the basic mind, the basic intelligence, which one has to penetrate if one is going to truly communicate with others. Rinpoche knew that he was taking a huge risk; he didn't always know how to do it and he wasn't always skillful, but he was prepared to jump in and make the effort.
When he and Akong started Samye Ling, Rinpoche wanted to call it a meditation center, not a Tibetan Buddhist center -- precisely so that people wouldn't view it as something exotic. The two of them were already on quite bad terms when the center opened, and it only got worse. One might wonder why they stayed together throughout those difficult years. I don't know exactly what the reason was for Akong. I think perhaps he hoped that Rinpoche would come to his senses. They certainly had had a deep friendship. For his part, Rinpoche always displayed an amazing ability to assimilate things and to move forward while still remaining loyal to the past. Even as a young child, he learned so quickly that it astounded people around him. That was true in his encounter with the West as well. He witnessed things, he integrated them, and he moved on to the next challenge, the next frontier. At the same time, he never gave up on anyone or anything in his life. He was grateful to Akong for having worked to support him in England and for having been his dear friend when he had had no others. They had shared things that no one else would ever understand, such as life in Tibet before the Chinese invasion and the difficulties of the escape and coming to a new world. So it was painful to grow apart.
When I met Rinpoche, even though many things in his relationships with Akong and many of his English students seemed far beyond salvaging, he was still thinking about how he could bring people along. Although there was tremendous disagreement and tension between Akong and himself, Rinpoche thought they should be able to work it out.
From his point of view, he wasn't abandoning the Tibetan culture or the Buddhist tradition of Tibet. He wanted to bring it all along. But he also wanted to reach out to find a new way to integrate the past with the present. He saw that this would create a genuine meeting point for the teachings to take root in the West.
In 1968, when he returned to India and did his retreat at Taktsang, it was everything that had come before, up to that point, that allowed him to find the Sadhana of Mahamudra, the terma teachings that would set the tone for the future. He was already well into the transformation that would make him the powerful figure he became in the transmission of Buddhism to the West. In a sense, it was the last gesture, the end of a process, when he gave up his robes, although it was also the beginning.
It was just at that point that I met him, as all of this that had been unfolding in a more internal way began to play itself out on a bigger stage. I think that no one, including Rinpoche, could have predicted what was to come.