Chapter 24 - The Guru's Passing Away

Returning from Gangtok, I stayed in Tomo Géshé Rimpoché's private apartments at Yi-Gah Chö-Ling. It was as if time had stood still in the little shrine-room which I inhabited and in which nothing had changed since my first meeting with the Guru. His seat, with his heavy cloak carefully arranged on it in an upright position, looked as if he had just stepped out of it, and on the chogtse in front of the seat stood his jade cup filled with tea, together with his ritual implements, such as vajra, bell, and rice-vessel. The central butter-lamp before the carved shrine with the golden image of Dölma burned with its steady, timeless flame, which Kachenla, undeterred by age and cheerful as ever, tended with loving care.

To him the Guru was ever present, and daily he would prepare his seat, shake and refold his robe, fill up his teacup (before he would sip his own tea), polish and replenish the water-howls and butter-lamps, light the incense-sticks, recite the formulas of worship and dedication, and sit in silent meditation before the shrines, thus performing all the duties of a religious life and of a devoted disciple. Serving the Guru was to him the highest form of divine service, it was equal to serving the Buddha.

Not a speck of dust was allowed to settle on the seats and chogtses or on the carvings of the shrines and altars. The floor looked like a mirror, and the thankas and the lovely brocades, in which they were mounted, had lost none of their softly vibrating colours. The handwoven rugs on the low seats, the wall-hangings above them, the dark brown cloth that was stretched across the ceiling, and the silken canopies above the Gurus seat and the main shrines, edged by rainbow-coloured volants, gave me the feeling of being in the tent or 'yurt' of a nomad-patriarch or ruler of old, somewhere in Central Asia, far away from our present world and time. I could feel in this room the traditions of a millennium, intensified and sublimated through the personality that filled this place with its living presence.

A similar feeling had assailed me during our last meeting at Sarnath, when the whole place had been turned into a Tibetan encampment, and at night the camping-ground under the mango-trees was illuminated with countless oil-lamps in honour of Tomo Géshé and his retinue. He himself was staying in a big tent in the centre of the mangogrove, and in the soft light of the oil-lamps and the glow of camp-fires, whose smoke was hanging like transparent veils between the trees and the tents, the grove seemed to me transformed into an oasis far away in the heart of Asia, with a caravan of pilgrims resting after a long desert journey. It was indeed one of the last stages in the Guru's life-journey, a leavetaking from the sacred places of the Buddha's earthly career. It was Tomo Géshé's last pilgrimage to India in 1935-6, accompanied by many of his disciples and received everywhere with great enthusiasm, though he himself shunned all personal honours and public attention.

When passing through Calcutta on his way back to Yi-Gah Chö-Ling and to Tibet, the papers in Calcutta carried the following report: `A famous Lama, who ranks fourth after the Dalai Lama, is staying in Calcutta at present. The Venerable Géshé Rimpoché is on his way to Tibet after completing his pilgrimage to the Buddhist sacred places in North India. Supernatural powers are ascribed to the seventy-one-year-old Lama. He spends the greater part of his time reading the sacred texts, discoursing with his disciples, or being absorbed in meditation. He shuns the public, hardly ever leaves his room, and is said never to sleep. He is accompanied by a retinue of forty Lamas. They visited Sarnath, Gaya, and Rajgir. In Sarnath, he and his retinue dwelled in tents'.

The idea that Tomo Géshé never slept was caused by the fact that, as I mentioned before, he never used to lie down, but remained in the posture of meditation all through the night, thus never losing control over his body even in sleep, which, according to the highest form of meditational practice, becomes a natural continuation of Sādhanā on a different level of consciousness. Though there is no doubt that Tomo Géshé's spiritual powers were far above those of the ordinary (i.e. untrained) man, he would have protested against the term 'supernatural' and still more against giving publicity to such things. In fact, when reporters tried to satisfy their curiosity about magic powers and mystic rituals in Tibetan Buddhism, he broke off the conversation, pointing out that these things would not help them in understanding the essential teachings of the Buddha.

Thus the reporters had to content themselves with the externals of the pilgrimage, which was organised and led by Sardar Bahadur Ladenla, who had served the thirteenth Dalai Lama in various capacities and had been given by him the rank of General. They mentioned that Tomo Géshé and Ladenla had gilded the Buddha-image in the new temple of Sarnath as an act of devotion, and that the Maharaja of Bhutan had sent with them a beautifully worked canopy of silver for the image.

I found this newspaper report in the diaries of Baron von Veltheim-Ostrau, who personally paid a visit to Tomo Géshé Rimpoché during his stay in Calcutta on the 2nd of February 1936. Due to the many visitors who tried to see the Lama, he was not able to talk to him. 'In the midst of peoples goings and comings, he [the Lama] was the only resting pole. He was seated on a rug, smiling and silent. The old man made an extremely dignified impression, ripe with knowledge and wisdom, like one who was already approaching the state of transfiguration'.

And this, indeed, was the case, because the ultimate phase in Tomo Géshé's life and his conscious transition into a new one, which took place the following year, was truly a 'state of transfiguration', a triumph over death.

Kachenla told me all that had happened during the Guru's last days; and later on, in 1947 during a visit at Dungkar, Tomo Géshé's main monastery in the Tomo Valley of South Tibet, we heard the details about his passing away from those who had been present. The Guru had made it known that he would soon leave his body, which had become a burden to him. 'But,' he said, 'there is no reason for you to feel sad. I do not forsake you, nor my work for the Dharma; but instead of dragging on in an old body, I shall conic back in a new one. I promise to return to you. You may look out for me within three or four years.'

Not long after this announcement he retired for a longer spell of meditation and gave instructions to be left undisturbed, though he remained in his usual quarters within the monastery. He soon entered a state of deep absorption and remained in it for many days. But when ten days had passed, and the Guru was still sitting motionless on his seat, his attendants began to be worried. One of them held a mirror near to his face, and when it was found that the surface of the mirror remained unclouded they realised that he had stopped breathing: he had left his body during his meditation and had consciously passed over the threshold between life and death or, more correctly, between one life and another.

He had left his body, before death could snatch it away from him, and directed his consciousness towards a new germ of life, that would carry on the impetus of his will and form itself into a new instrument of the attainment of his ultimate aim and the fulfilment of his Bodhisattva Vow, which might be summarised in these words: Whatever be the highest perfection of the human mind, may I realise it for the benefit of all living beings. Even though I may have to take upon myself all the sufferings of the world, I will not forsake my aim and my fellow-creatures in order to win salvation for myself only'.

This vow is based on a deep understanding of the root of suffering and its cure. The root of suffering is man's egohood, which separates him from his fellow-beings and from the sources of reality.

How can he overcome this suffering?

'Basically, there can only be two answers. One is to overcome separateness and to find unity by regression to the state of unity which existed before awareness ever arose, that is, before man was born. The other answer is to be fully born, to develop one's awareness, one's reason, one's capacity to love, to such a point that one transcends one's own egocentric involvement, and arrives at a new harmony, at a new oneness with the world.'^[1]

The former is the way of the average Hindu mystic, especially the strict Vedantin, who wishes to return to the oneness of the uncreated (brahman), to dissolve his individual soul in the All-Soul. The latter is the way of the Bodhisattva, the way towards Buddhahood. The first is the way of asceticism and world-negation (world illusion), the second is the way of life-acceptance (of individual values) and world-transcendence, or world-transformation because whether the world is experienced as Saṁsāra or Nirvāṇa depends on the spiritual development or state of realisation of the experiencing subject; it is not a quality of the world. It is for this reason that in the Mahayāna, and even more so in the Vajrayāna of Tibet, Saṁsāra is equated with nirvana.

The purpose of Buddhist meditation, therefore, is not merely to sink back into the

'uncreated' state, into a state of complete tranquillisation with a vacant mind; it is not a regression into the 'unconscious' or an exploration of the past, but a process of transformation, of transcendence, in which we become fully conscious of the present, of the infinite powers and possibilities of the mind, in order to become masters of our own destiny, by cultivating those qualities which lead to the realisation of our timeless nature: to enlightenment. Thus, instead of contemplating a past that we cannot change, upon which we cannot have any more the slightest influence, meditation serves to sow the seeds of final liberation and to build already now the bodies of future in the image of our highest ideals.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Erich Fromm, Zen Buddhism aid Psychoanalysis. Allen & Unwin (London, 1960) p. 87