’To see light and breathe fresh air again was wonderful,’ she said. ‘However, the blizzard was still raging so I had to crawl back inside the cave again! Once I was there I realized that the air inside was not stale but fresh. I knew then that caves could “breathe", that snow “breathes” and I was not going to die,’she said.
However, the tunnel that Tenzin Palmo had made quickly filled up with snow again. All in all she had to dig herself out three times. When the blizzard finally abated, she stood outside almost blinded by the light and looked around. An extraordinary sight met her eyes. Everything, including the trees, was totally buried in snow. It was a featureless white landscape. A helicopter flew overhead, bringing supplies to the devastated area, and someone inside waved. The villagers now knew that their prayers for the safe passing of ’Saab Chomo’in her cave had not been necessary, but nobody thought she could have possibly survived.
A letter written to an English friend who had visited the area reveals the full extent of the disaster that almost over took her.
The cause of all the trouble was an avalanche which swept down at just before midday in early March. It started at about 19,000 feet and came down carrying everything in its wake. Many houses in Gungrang (above Yornath) were also destroyed. The avalanche was estimated to have been almost 2 km in width. In all Lahoul about 200 people died especially in the Udaipur area. That stream we have to cross to get to Keylong is at present a glacier several metres thick so one just strolls across it with no water in sight. Tayul Gompa was made level with the snow and everyone there also had to tunnel their way out. It reached higher than their roofs.
Yornath (a nearby village) looks as if it had been hit by a tornado. Four houses there completely destroyed (including that big one near the road next to Sonam Ngoedup’s shop). About 35 people there were killed, whole families wiped out. All the garrie families were killed, so no more blacksmiths at Yornath. One house at Guskiar had the top blown off from air pressure as the avalanche roared past at 350km an hour! Practically all the trees from Yornath to Guskiar are completely uprooted all those lovely old willows, many about 200 years old. The place is a wilderness. As one girl from Guskiar remarked, one can hardly recognize it any longer. Tseten has spent about 6 back-breaking weeks just removing stones, trees and other debris from her fields which are mostly in the Yornath area.
Anyway, it was naturally rather a lot of work to clear away all that heavy white stuff and my face was like Dorje Phagmo (a fierce red protector deity with puffed-out cheeks and bulging eyes). My eyes were also crimson, no whites at all, and swollen so that I gazed through slits. The pain! I fixed a khatag (white offering scarf) around the brim of my floppy hat as a veil and that worked quite well.
Tenzin Palmo may have had a reprieve but death, as the Buddha pointed out, was all around her. Lee Perry, optimist and spiritual seeker herself, passed away in 1985 without her daughter knowing. It was a high price to pay for spiritual aspiration. Tenzin Palmo had received a letter, several months late, informing her that Lee was very sick with cancer and to please ‘come home’. But Tenzin Palmo had already started her three-year retreat and nothing could or would break it. It was the condition. ‘I wrote back explaining why I could not come. It was the hardest letter I had ever written. Even if I had had cancer myself I could not have left that cave,’ she explained.
The next time the post arrived, a year later, there was a note from a friend telling her that Lee had died, peacefully, aged seventy-eight. Tenzin Palmo said prayers for her mother’s well-being and consoled herself with the thought that Lee, like herself, had not been afraid of death. ’She viewed death as merely the shaking off of an old body in order to start again refreshed and energized. I knew she was looking forward to seeing her spirit guides, who she believed would meet her and look after her,’ she said.
Tenzin Palmo’s mind was not entirely at ease, however. She had made a brief second visit to London to visit her mother in 1984, a year before she died. It had been eleven years since she’d last been to her homeland and she was urged to see her mother before she disappeared into her cave for her three-year retreat. Although she was grateful for the time they’d spent together, she now looked back on the visit with some feelings of regret and reproached herself for things ’that could have been’, as one often does after a death of a loved one.
‘I think I was rather cold to my mother, and now I always feel very sad about that. She took it well, believing “that’s how nuns are”. But I had been in the cave for a long time and was not used to relating closely to people. We were friendly but on reflection I feel I was quite judgemental and I’m really sorry,’she confessed. ‘Now I think I would be able to be much warmer towards her than I was then.’
When the time had come to say goodbye, Lee had turned to her daughter and said: ‘I feel this is the last time I am going to see you in this life.’ Then she added: ‘I pray that I may be reborn as your mother in future lives so that I can help you continue your spiritual path.’ It was the greatest act of love and approbation of her daughter that she could have made.
For all Tenzin Palmo’s training, however, nothing could prepare her for the death of her lama, Khamtrul Rinpoche.
Even though she had been physically separated from him for several years, first by moving to the Gompa in Lahoul and then by retreating further to her cave, the bond between them had remained as close as ever. ‘Whenever I felt I needed him I would pray to him. I would have significant dreams in which he would appear,’ she said enigmatically. And her annual visits back to Tashi Jong remained an integral part of her life. Then she’d sit with him feeling the reassurance of his physical presence and receive personalized, tailor-made instructions on her spiritual path.
‘I’d go back with questions. During my meditations I would always have paper nearby so that I could jot down queries as they came up. I’d walk in and Khamtrul Rinpoche would lean back and say, “OK, where’s your list?” And I’d bring out this long list of questions,’ she recalled. ‘His answers were absolutely right. He answered from both his scholastic expertise and from his own experience. “According to the books it says this, but from my own experience it is like this,” he used to say. He was always spot on. And I could always discuss things with him. Sometimes I would go to him with an idea of a practice I wanted to do and he would suggest something else that hadn’t occurred to me. Immediately he had said it I knew he was right. That is the beauty of a real guru – he knows your mind and can steer your spiritual progress in the direction that is best for you,’ she said.
It was in 1981 while she was in Nepal, receiving some teachings and slowly making her way to Bhutan to meet up with Khamtrul Rinpoche, when she heard the news.
‘One day I was summoned to the monastery. I thought I was being called for some special teaching or something. On the way I met someone who said, “You look very happy, you couldn’t have heard.” And then they told me. I nearly fainted. It was awful. Absolutely devastating.’ Her world had fallen apart. In her words: ’The sun had set and there was only darkness. I felt as though I was in this vast desert and the guide had left – completely lost.’