Tenzin Palmo took up the story: ’Dilgo Kheyntse Rinpoche dreamt he was going up a hill when he came across a temple from which came Khamtrul Rinpoche’s voice. He went in and found all these monks inside and Khamtrul Rinpoche sitting on a throne teaching. Dilgo Khentse Rinpoche went up to him and said, “What are you doing here, you’re supposed to be dead?” And Khamtrul Rinpoche replied, “I am beyond birth and death.” Dilgo Kheyntse Rinpoche then asked, “Out of compassion for beings where have you chosen to be reborn?” and Khamtrul Rinpoche gave him the name of his parents. The Karmapa also received the parents’ name in a dream. They also discovered that the rebirth had taken place “in the cradle of Buddhism", which meant India. This was a relief - at least it was not Tibet, which would have been impossible to search!’
India, however, is a vast country in which to find one small if special baby. More specific clues were needed. Finally the Karmapa, on his deathbed in Chicago, gave the vital missing piece of jigsaw- the name of the place where Khamtrul Rinpoche had been reborn – Bomdila, in Arunachal Pradesh, a Himalayan town close to Bhutan. Although it was the other side of India from Tashi Jong and the Kangra valley, relatively speaking, the discovery of the ninth Khamtrul Rinpoche was in the bag. The child was found, recognized, and reinstated in Tashi Jong to take up his spiritual duties where his predecessor (himself) had left off.
The ninth Khamtrul Rinpoche was a quiet boy, as introverted and small as the eighth Khamtrul Rinpoche had been large and outgoing. In Tenzin Palmo’s mind he was still her guru – the reincarnation of the man whom she had loved so deeply. He was three years old when she first saw him. She approached the meeting with some trepidation, anxious that the rapport she had shared with his predecessor would not be the same.
‘I was afraid. I wondered what he’d think of this “strange looking Westerner”. I thought he’d probably burst into tears,’ she admitted. It did not turn out as she had anticipated. ‘I went in, started prostrating and this small child began laughing. "Oh look, that’s my nun, that’s my nun,” he burst out. He was so excited. His monk attendant turned to him and said, “Yes, that’s your nun, she’s been your disciple for so long.” The young Khamtrul Rinpoche was laughing and smiling at me and giving me his toys. We spent the whole morning playing and running around together. The monk said such behaviour was very unusual, as he was generally very shy and withdrawn with strangers.’
If the young tulku had instantly recognized ‘his nun’, Tenzin Palmo had to look a little longer to find similarities with the former Khamtrul Rinpoche. ‘He is and he isn’t like the past Khamtrul Rinpoche. For a start this one is so much younger than I am, whereas the other one was like a father to me, so there is a different type of relationship. I’m also told that the previous Khamtrul Rinpoche had been a real terror when he was a child, while this one is very sweet, gentle and delicate. But he looks at me – right through my eyes – exactly the way the other Rinpoche did, for minutes at a time. And sometimes when I am with him, not thinking of anything in particular, this incredible devotion wells up from my heart. It’s so strong and spontaneous I burst into tears.’
But the memory of the beloved eighth Khamtrul Rinpoche was still fresh in her mind. She rushed back to her cave even more determined to continue with her quest. ‘I felt that the only thing that I could really do to repay my kind lama was practise, practise, practise,’ she said.
Chapter Ten
Yogini
The scenery outside her cave may have been awesome, but what of Tenzin Palmo’s inner world? This, after all, was what she had gone to the cave to discover. What was she seeing on that long journey inwards? Was she sitting there having visions, like watching TV? Was she being bathed in golden light? Hearing celestial voices? Experiencing waves of transcendent bliss? Or was she perhaps being tormented by the devils of her psyche, disturbed from the depths of her subconscious by those penetrating tools of meditation designed to dig deep beneath the surface?
According to the legends of solitary mediators, this was what cave-dwelling was really all about. Up in his icy, barren cave the great yogi Milarepa, founder of Tenzin Palmo’s own lineage, after years of terrible deprivation and unwavering endeavour, found himself in a realm of surreal splendour. The walls and floor of his cave melted with the imprint of his hands, feet, buttocks where he pressed them into the rock. Goddesses appeared bringing him delicious morsels to stave off his hunger. His emaciated body, turned green from eating only nettle soup, was filled with intense ecstasy. In his dreams he could turn his body into any shape he wished, traversing the universe in any direction unimpeded. In his waking state he learnt to fly, crossing the valleys of his homeland at great speed, much to the consternation of the farmers ploughing the fields in the valley below.
Was the fishmonger’s daughter from Bethnal Green experiencing any of this?
No one will ever know exactly what Tenzin Palmo went through in all those years of solitary retreat, the moments of dazzling insight she might have had, the times of darkness she may have endured. She had learnt well from the Togdens, those humble yogis whose qualities had touched her so deeply, that one never reveals, let alone boasts, of one’s spiritual prowess. Getting rid of the ego, not enhancing it, was the name of the game. Besides, her tantric vows forbade her to divulge any progress she may have made. It was a long-held tradition, ever since the Buddha himself had defrocked a monk for performing a miracle in public, declaring the transformation of the human heart was the only miracle that really counted.
‘Frankly I don’t like discussing it. It’s like your sexual experiences. Some people like talking about them, others don’t. Personally I find it terribly intimate,’ she said.
When pressed, she conceded the barest essentials: ‘Of course when you do prolonged retreats you are going to have experiences of great intensity – times when your body completely melts away, or when you feel the body is flying. You get states of incredible awareness and clarity when everything becomes very vivid.’
There were visions too – occasions when her guru Khamtrul Rinpoche appeared to her to advise her on her meditations.
Other holy beings manifested in her cave as well. But these signs, normally taken as indications of supreme spiritual accomplishment, she dismissed as events of little true significance.
’The whole point is not to get visions but to get realizations,’ she said sharply, referring to the stage when a truth stops being a mental or intellectual construct and becomes real. Only when the meditation dropped from the head to the heart, and was felt, could transformation begin to take place. ‘And realizations are quite bare,’ she continued. ‘They are not accompanied by lights and music. We’re trying to see things as they really are. A realization is non-conceptual. It’s not a product of the thinking process or the emotions – unlike visions which come from that level. A realization is the white transparent light at the centre of the prism, not the rainbow colours around it.’
As for the bliss, that most attractive of all meditational states, did Tenzin Palmo know this? To the average lay person, sitting at home in her house reading about the heroic meditators, it was the bliss that made it all worthwhile – all the terrible hardships and deprivations, the lack of comfort and human companionship. Bliss, in short, was the reward. Certainly the one or two photographs taken of Tenzin Palmo at this time show a face suffused with happiness.
’There are states of incredible bliss. Bliss is the fuel of retreat,’she confirmed in her matter-of-fact voice. ‘You can’t do any long-term practice seriously unless there is inner joy, because the joy and enthusiasm is what carries you along. It’s like anything, if you don’t really like it you will have this inner resistance and everything is going to be very slow. That is why the Buddha named Joy as a main factor on the path.