My grandmother continued, “Everyone was slowly chanting the supplication to the Lotus-Born known as Spontaneous Fulfillment of Wishes:
When revealing termas for destined people to benefit beings,
With the courageous confidence of pure samaya,
Free of hesitation and doubt, I supplicate you;
Grant your blessings to spontaneously fulfill all wishes!
“Someone had already arranged a table nearby covered with a brocade cloth to place the precious articles on. The terma articles were often too hot to touch when taken out and my father was the only one who could hold them. Some were so hot in fact that they scorched the brocade”42 My grandmother described these to me as “objects from which the heat of blessings had still not vanished.” Sometimes this is used as a metaphor, but, in actuality, sometimes people did get burned. Once I actually saw some of these scorched pieces of red and yellow brocade in a box containing some of Chokgyur Lingpa’s sacred belongings.
After the great tertön took out the terma, he blessed everyone. At this time he also gave an explanation of the terma’s historical background, how and why Padmasambhava concealed it, with what particular aspiration it was buried, why it was revealed now, the benefits of receiving its blessings and so forth.
She said, “I saw the crowd weep out of faith and devotion, the air humming with crying. Even if you were a stubborn intellectual, all skepticism would melt away. Everyone was struck with wonder.
“After the revelation, he placed a substitute for the terma inside the rock cavity. For example, if there were two statues of Padmasambhava, then Chokgyur Lingpa replaced one of them. If the terma was a scroll of dakini letters, written in their symbolic script, he would place some other precious article in its place. Then he finished by walling up the cavity, sometimes with stones, sometimes even melting the rock as if coating it with plaster. If Chokgyur Lingpa simply set some rocks in the crack, people who later went back to check discovered that the surface had naturally ‘healed,’ all by itself.”
My grandmother was not the only person I knew who actually saw Chokgyur Lingpa reveal termas. Once, while I was living at our Tsangsar family home, Pema Trinley, who had been the great tertön’s servant, came to stay. He spent the last year of his life with us and was about ninety years old when he passed away. Being young and curious, I questioned him about his days with the tertön and he told me all that he remembered. Here is one of his stories:
“Once, while Chokgyur Lingpa was in a small village at the foot of beautiful Mount Karma, he was given the opportunity to reveal a ‘cattle terma.’ Believe it or not, he announced that he would bring forth real animals! Hearing this, many people gathered around him, proceeding with much commotion to a steep cliff that rose up the side of Mount Karma.
“In those days there were no matches, and Chokgyur Lingpa’s cook, Lhagsam, had forgotten to bring along a fire kit of flint and steel. Without a fire kit, he couldn’t make tea, so he sent his helper down to the village to fetch one. But all the villagers were out collecting wild, sweet droma potatoes on the hillsides, so the cook’s helper had to return empty-handed.
“While the helper was heading back up the mountain, Chokgyur Lingpa had been at work in his tent in front of the cliff. Already people could hear cattle lowing and bellowing from deep within the mountain. It sounded as if the animals were just about to break through the surface of the rock. Everyone heard it—some were even frightened, thinking they were about to get trampled.
“Right then, the cook’s helper yelled out, ‘Hey, Lhagsam! I’ve got no fire kit! There was no one at the village!’ The great tertön heard this from within his tent and asked, ‘What did he say? They vanished? They are gone?’ You see, in the Khampa dialect, the word for fire kit, which is mesa, and the cook’s name, Lhagsam, can also sound like the word for ‘vanished,’ ‘gone.’ While Chokgyur Lingpa asked what was said, the sounds of the animals gradually vanished.
“Chokgyur Lingpa then exclaimed, ‘The auspicious circumstance has passed! The cook’s helper bungled it! We shouldn’t stay here! Let’s pack up and leave!’ Everybody then left in a flurry. They didn’t even have a cup of tea, since they couldn’t start a fire.”
My grandmother once told me why we in the lineage of Chokgyur Lingpa don’t need to fear local spirits like Gyalpo Pehar or Samten Kangsar.43
On one of Chokgyur Lingpa’s trips to Lhasa by the northern route, the party was caught in a terrible snowstorm on the vast plains. Even after the main storm subsided, a tremendous amount of snow continued to fall for a week or so, preventing them from continuing their journey. The travelers started to fear for their lives. They grew so desperate that they began to burn any flammable objects they could find—even the wooden frames of their saddles.
At an emergency meeting someone said, “We still have a long journey ahead of us. We haven’t even crossed the pass. What’s going to happen to us? With this snow I fear the worst. Let’s ask the tertön for help; it’s our only choice.”
When the crisis was brought before the tertön, he responded, “The elemental forces of the valleys and the mountain spirits have ganged up to test us. They are taunting me, insinuating that I am not the lineage holder of Padmasambhava. But don’t worry, just wait and see what happens. Divide the practitioners up into two groups: the ngakpas should stay with me in my tent and the monks should remain in Karmey Khenpo’s charge. Prepare yourselves by training in the tummo yoga, for tonight we will perform the practice of the soaked cotton garments. It is the only way to deal with this.”
The two groups began to practice the yoga that very afternoon and they produced so much heat that people outside could see clouds of vapor rising from both tents. At midnight the heavy snow clouds began to disperse and by morning the sky was clear, without even a wisp of cloud. Not only that, but all the snow around Chokgyur Lingpa’s tent had melted; you could see the stones on the bare ground. The sun rose in a blue sky to reveal splendid weather and the snow continued to melt across the entire plain. The streams became swollen to their banks with all the melted snow.
Chokgyur Lingpa suggested they stay for a few days and during that time the snow continued to melt. At one point he exclaimed, “I’m still not done with those guys! Samten Kangsar, Nyenchen Tanglha and some of the other spirits still seem to have their minds set on putting us through an ordeal. Samten Kangsar needs to be taught a lesson today. Please prepare a big white torma and bring it to me.”
That afternoon, after the petitions to the guardians, Chokgyur Lingpa heated up the torma until the butter decorations on top melted down to its shoulder. Meanwhile, looking at Mount Samten Kangsar—from which the spirit has his name—in the distance, everyone saw that the snow on its peak had begun to melt and was gushing in streams down the mountainside. The next morning, large patches of black rock were visible.44
After Chokgyur Lingpa had subdued Samten Kangsar, the weather was brilliantly clear for three days straight; there was not a single cloud in the sky. The melting snow caused quite