“Among his revealed treasures, Chokgyur Lingpa had a particular practice—from his past life as the chief disciple of Sangye Yeshe of Nub—that was a certain way of calling upon the Dharma protectors. So Chokgyur Lingpa summoned me to his tent and said, ‘Take up your pen; we need to teach those bandits a lesson once and for all! Write down what I say.’ Chokgyur Lingpa then dictated the full practice that he had learned in his previous life from Sangye Yeshe. It contained lines on how the great Nubchen master commanded the guardians of the Dharma, including instructions on how to blow their bone trumpets in a particular way. When I had finished writing the practice down. Chokgyur Lingpa asked us to perform this ritual together with a torma offering.
“That night, the bandits made their move, but they found the camp encircled by a pack of ravenous wolves! The roles of predator and prey were suddenly reversed, and they found themselves fleeing the gaping jaws. The story spread far and wide that two or three bandits weren’t fast enough and were torn apart.
“But some bandits were still around and decided to try again the following night. That night we performed this ritual again and we had barely completed it, in fact the bone trumpets had only sounded a couple times, before the bandits began closing in on the camp. One of the bandits yelled, ‘You see, there’s nothing to be afraid of!’
“Then, all of a sudden the bandits saw Chokgyur Lingpa’s trident catch fire, and his tent burst into flames. To their amazement, the flames grew and spread until the entire camp was engulfed in a raging sea of fire.
“Not a single bandit dared walk into the inferno. Instead, they sat down and waited. They later claimed that the fire continued blazing the entire night. Most of the bandits lay down to sleep and, to their surprise, when they woke up in the morning they saw that the camp was totally intact with people milling about, packing up.
“The bandit leader told his second-in-command, ‘These Khampa lamas are more than we can handle! Put out the word to let them go back where they came from—the sooner the better!’ Word proceeded the caravan and so they never encountered another bandit the rest of the way to Lhasa.
“While we were in Lhasa,” Karmey Khenpo added, “news of what the bandits had experienced began to arrive—how some were eaten by wolves and others consumed by flames. With that, the bandits’ faith grew, and, one by one, they came to receive Chokgyur Lingpa’s blessing.”
Terma predictions had described how Chokgyur Lingpa’s remains should be enshrined in a golden stupa upon his death and Old Khyentse personally came to supervise the enshrinement. The stupa had been gilded in gold that the great tertön had revealed from his termas. It was a very large stupa; I remember it to be unusually high, approximately three stories in fact. Chokgyur Lingpa’s body was placed inside as the main relic.
Let me tell you about two outstanding masters whose role in the New Treasures is inextricably interwoven with that of my great-grandfather, Chokgyur Lingpa. Their connection goes back a thousand years to the time when Buddhism reached Tibet. When the magnificent Samye, Tibet’s first major monastery, was under construction, great masters were invited from India: Padmasambhava, Vimalamitra, Buddhaguhya, and others. Their chief Tibetan disciples included the translators Vairotsana and Yudra Nyingpo. All these masters, disciples, and translators helped the teachings of the Buddha to flourish like the rising sun.
During the time of Khyentse, Kongtrul, and Chokgyur Lingpa, those twenty-five foremost disciples of the Lotus-Born who had gathered around him at Samye almost a thousand years earlier all returned in simultaneous incarnations. As one of my teachers, Dzongsar Khyentse, put it, “The twenty-five disciples of the Lotus-Born came back together like a throng of sheep and goats running out of a barn. These disciples reappeared as masters with incredible experience and realization, learning, and accomplishment. Their personal disciples and their disciples’ disciples were equally amazing.”
In fact, throughout Kham and the rest of Tibet, tulkus of all twenty-five were identified and recognized. Paradoxically, this flowering was a portent that the time for Tibet’s role as a field of influence to benefit beings was just about to run out.
There had been a prediction from Padmasambhava pertaining to two of these masters: “You possess the karmic link of father and son.” The father was the great Khyentse and the son was Chokgyur Lingpa. The prediction also said, “Their minds will mingle into oneness”—meaning they would be identical in their level of experience and realization—“like the torrential rivers of summer.” That image referred to their meeting, exchanging pith instructions and awakening their karmic potential.
The great Kongtrul was enthroned by Khyentse and Chokling as the authentic incarnation, or conscious rebirth, of the Tibetan translator Vairotsana. When you compare these three masters—Chokgyur, Khyentse, and Kongtrul—Chokgyur Lingpa regarded both the great Khyentse and Kongtrul as his teachers. But Khyentse received the entire New Treasures transmission from Chokgyur Lingpa, so in this regard Chokgyur Lingpa is one of his teachers. The great Kongtrul definitely accepted Khyentse as his master—there is no question about that—as he did Chokgyur Lingpa. So, in fact, all three were one another’s teachers and disciples. They were connected to each other as “mingled minds.” In this way, the three masters assisted each other. Their mutual benefit for the Buddha’s teachings and all beings was like that of the sun of Dharma once again rising in the sky.
Early in his life, Chokgyur Lingpa made the journey to the kingdom of Derge. There he met with Kongtrul, who showed great fondness for the young tertön and for his terma writings. One of Kongtrul’s letters mentions this: “When you see the terma teachings of this man who doesn’t even know his grammar, it is most amazing! It’s really strange that such wonderful writing can come through a man who cannot even spell!”
In those days, one needed a letter of introduction in order to gain an audience with a lama of high standing, so Chokgyur Lingpa requested such a letter, saying, “I want to go see Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo; please give me a petition letter.” The great Khyentse was then known by the name Venerable Shabdrung; a shabdrung corresponds in level to the vajra master in charge of tantric ceremonies, a religious rank two steps below the highest hierarch of the Sakya school.
So Kongtrul replied, “Of course I’ll write a letter introducing you to Venerable Shabdrung!” With the letter in hand, Chokgyur Lingpa then proceeded to Khyentse’s residence.
Prior to this, Khyentse had written down a mind treasure containing the complete teachings of the famous terma Tukdrub Barchey Kunsel. Now, Chokgyur Lingpa arrived, also bringing a version of the Tukdrub, which had been revealed to him at the sacred place of Khala Rong-go. He had kept it secret for eight years.
Chokgyur Lingpa explained to Khyentse the story of his revelation, including the time and place of its discovery and the nature of the terma teaching. While comparing the two versions of the terma, they found them to be totally identical, without even one word of difference. After a careful examination of the two, Khyentse burned his own, saying, “Since the words and the meaning are identical, what is the use of having two! Yours, being an earth terma,” a physical object the tertön discovers, “is more profound and will be more effectual than my mind terma,” one that unfolds in the tertön’s mind.
Thus, the blessings of two lineages, earth terma and