At dawn, Chokgyur Lingpa told him, “This morning the great master Paltrul Rinpoche is coming to see me. Please make special preparations.”
A while later, when Yongey came out of the master’s room after pouring him tea, he saw an old man at the door. Dressed in Golok style instead of lama’s robes, he wore a simple sheepskin coat with the hairless side covered in red cloth. He had a large frame and a prominent nose.
“I must see Chokgyur Lingpa!” was all he said. Then he proceeded to walk in.
As the tertön’s visitors never entered his quarters unannounced, Yongey blocked the door, saying, “Wait! Wait! It’s not that easy. I must first announce you to the lama.”
“Get out of my way!” the old man said and began to push Yongey aside.
Yongey grabbed the old man’s sleeve and insisted, “You can’t just barge in like this.”
The old man pulled in the opposite direction and they began to tussle. Suddenly Yongey thought to himself, “Maybe this is not an ordinary old man from Golok. Perhaps I should go inside and ask.”
What he had been told earlier about the day’s visitor then dawned on him, but he had assumed that someone looking more like a great master would be coming.
When he turned around, he discovered Chokgyur Lingpa there on the floor prostrating to the old man—who then began bowing down in return. Yongey later said that “after they bowed to each other, they touched heads like two yaks.”
The Dzogchen monastery had invited Chokgyur Lingpa to be a guest of honor, the recipient of auspicious offerings. Since Paltrul was then the master in residence, he was asked to write the formal speech before the offerings.
You can find this talk in Chokgyur Lingpa’s life story. Extremely elegant, the speech showers the tertön with praise, referring to him as the emissary of Padmasambhava.
During this visit, the tertön began to call Paltrul “Dzogchen Paltrul”—a name that stuck—and also gave him the empowerment for his terma containing teachings on the Great Perfection entitled Heart Essence of Samantabhadra. This transmission took place at the retreat center located high above the snow line overlooking the monastery’s Shri Singha College.
Conversely, Chokgyur Lingpa placed Paltrul on a high throne and received the Way of the Bodhisattva from him. So the two masters were definitely connected.
My grandmother recalled that Tsewang Norbu wasn’t there, but Wangchok Dorje was a witness, as was Chokgyur Lingpa’s consort.
Paltrul practiced this particular teaching on the Great Perfection and later said, “I am usually the type of person who gets no visions, signs, nor any other indications of progress, but while practicing this terma something did happen, even for me. This teaching must be for real!”
My grandmother could imitate Paltrul’s strong Golok accent as she recited what he said when giving mind teachings to an old man from that region: “When you don’t follow the past and don’t invite the future, there is nothing else to sustain but the uncontrived, unbridled and free state of your present, ordinary mind.”
In that short statement, he had given the essential teaching of the Great Perfection.
But the old man from Golok then pleaded, “Give me a blessing to ensure that I won’t end up in the hell realms!”
But Paltrul merely replied, “Unless you take care of it yourself, no one else can send you to the pure lands, as though they were just flinging a stone.”
My grandmother reached perfect realization before she passed away at eighty, quite an advanced age for someone in our region. One of my last memories is of her telling me, “I am leaving shortly. I want to leave my body at Tsikey, where my father’s and brother’s remains are kept.”
Grandmother died at Tsikey a few years later.
I didn’t visit her much while she was there, but from time to time I did receive presents from her—small delicate boxes in various colors and other things youngsters like.
Grandmother left her body while sitting up very straight. I remember her cremation, which was performed outside at a distance from Tsikey monastery itself. There was a large funeral pyre shaped like a stupa, in the traditional way. The head lama was Dzigar Kongtrul, a prominent lama in the region. During the cremation, five separate groups performed elaborate sadhanas, each based on different mandalas. Afterward, we discovered large quantities of sindhura powder in the ashes.
My grandmother’s eldest son, Samten Gyatso, was my root guru and ultimate refuge. He was also, of course, my uncle. I feel a bit shy telling stories about him, because I don’t want to sound as if I’m indirectly praising myself by lauding a family member. A disciple who emphasizes signs of accomplishment, clairvoyant abilities and miraculous powers in stories about his own guru, may—instead of honoring him—end up discrediting him. Yet though he was a relative, there is no way I can avoid praising him. I don’t mean to be crude, but I’m related to him like excrement is related to fine cuisine.
I’m not just glorifying someone in my own family, like “the lower lip praising the upper,” but, in all honesty, there was virtually no other master in Kham with such a high view and realization, with such commanding presence and majestic brilliance. I won’t be able to tell you the inner or innermost versions of his life—as we customarily describe a person’s spiritual experiences and realization—since I don’t know them. But here is what I have heard or directly witnessed.
When Samten Gyatso transmitted the New Treasures to the great master Tentrul at Surmang monastery, I slept near the door in Samten Gyatso’s room, so I often witnessed their evening discussions. Tentrul was extremely learned and very noble. One day, he told me, “Many years ago I met Samten Gyatso with your father, Chimey Dorje, in Derge, and even then I thought that due to his insight and lineage he would become a truly great scholar. I have studied many more philosophical works than Samten Gyatso, but when we get to the topic of the Great Perfection, I almost don’t dare to continue speaking. When we discuss the New Treasures, somehow I am able to keep up, but he puts me to shame when we start talking about meditation.”
Within the Barom Kagyu lineage, Samten Gyatso was regarded as an emanation of Four-Armed Mahakala, one of the more prominent guardians of the Dharma.84 Moreover, the second Chokling of Tsikey once had a vision of Samten Gyatso in which he saw him as an emanation of Vimalamitra.
From the time I was young, I respected my guru deeply. In his conduct, Samten Gyatso kept the monastic precepts quite purely and strictly. He never tasted alcohol nor ate any meat. In his attitude, he was always in tune with the bodhisattva trainings.
Some of us who were with him every day could be quite blind to his qualities, just like people in Lhasa who never go to see the Jowo statue of the Buddha, thinking there is plenty of time to get around to going. But if you paid attention to his personality, it was obvious that he was fully endowed with compassion, perseverance and devotion.
Samten Gyatso never flattered others by playing up to them or telling them how wonderful they were. He spoke straightforwardly. If something was true, he would say so; if not, he would say it was not, without adding or subtracting anything. He never talked around a sensitive topic.
My guru was completely reliable, conscientious in all matters. If you got his word on something, you would never hear him say later that he had forgotten. That’s the kind of man he was, extremely dependable. He was almost never