My Eight Main Teachers — part 2

So from Bhikksu Jagdish Kasyap to Dhardo Rimpoche, whose name may possibly be familiar to at least some of you. He was called Dhardo Rimpoche because he was born in Dhartsendo, he’s a Rimpoche incarnate lama of Dhartsendo. Dhartsendo is a town on the border between eastern Tibet, I think it must be Kham — I’m not quite sure — and China. It’s right on the border. And Rimpoche actually was only half Tibetan. His father was Chinese, his mother was Tibetan. I knew his mother by the way, she lived with him in Kalimpong, and died at quite an advanced age. I’m afraid she gave Rimpoche quite a lot of trouble, she was a very hot-tempered old lady. But anyway that’s another story.

He was born in 1918 and as I said he was a tulku, or incarnate lama. Once I asked him if he remembered any of his previous lives, and what he said was very interesting. He said he remembered remembering, he could no longer remember. He just remembered remembering. He said up to the age of seven he did have some recollection of his previous life, and he further told me this was quite common, that quite a number of the incarnate lamas or tulkus did have recollection of previous lives up to the age of seven, but then they faded away. And he further told me that there was one particular incident that he could remember now, not just remember remembering, but remember. He said when he was about four or five, and had been recognized as the incarnation, to use that term, of his predecessor, an elderly woman came to the monastery and invited him to take a meal at her house. And he said no. So she was quite upset. Oh Rimpoche, why won’t you come to my house? and so on and so forth. So he said, and he remembered this, he said to her: Why should you be so upset, after all I’ve come to your house many times before, which he had in his previous life. And he remembered that and that’s why he spoke to her in that way. That she shouldn’t think that he wasn’t, that he was refusing her; he had in fact eaten at her house many times before, and she recognized the fact. Anyway when he was still quite young, he left Dhartsendo and started at one of the great monastic universities in Lhasa, and in one of the great Gelugpa or yellow cap establishments. I should perhaps mention that his line, of the Dhartsendo Rimpoche, was actually Nyingma, not Gelugpa; but I gather than the thirteenth Dalai Lama had insisted on his predecessor being educated as a Gelugpa lama. The thirteenth Dalai Lama seemed rather apt to do that sort of thing. He sent Nyingmapa reincarnations to Gelugpa colleges for study. So Rimpoche was sent to one of the great Gelugpa monastic colleges, he pursued his studies, he became a Rimpoche. And he also went to a Tantric college, one of the two Tantric colleges. But he told me he was unable to study there, to practise there for more than a year because his health was very frail. The life there was very, very rigorous. But there have been people in the West who have thought of Tantric Buddhism as self-indulgent, not to say transcendental, hedonism. But by Rimpoche’s account the life there was very strict indeed. They were only allowed to use one blanket at night even though it was very, very cold; and things like that. And his health was frail, and so he left. But he was in line for the headship of the Gelugpa Order, he was in line for the position of Ganden Tripa as it’s called.

In about 1946 — I don’t have any reference with me, I think it was about 1946 — the Dalai Lama sent him to India to be the abbot of the Tibetan gompa in Bodhgaya, and also be the Dalai Lama’s cultural and religious representative in India. And it was in Bodhgaya that he saw me: I say saw me because I didn’t see him. I only learned this many years later. In fact he didn’t tell me the story, he told it to one of our Order Members who visited Kalimpong just a few years ago. Apparently — this is what Rimpoche told him — he was standing on the flat roof of the Tibetan gompa in Bodhgaya and looking out, looking down, onto the nearby Mahabodhi Society, and he saw in the Mahabodhi Society a yellow-clad figure. And he noticed that this yellow-clad figure was European, and he thought to himself Oh, that’s wonderful, even Europeans are now following the Dharma; and he was quite struck by this fact. And when we did eventually meet in Kalimpong, he recognized me as the person whom he’d seen on that occasion, without my knowing. As I said this story transpired only some years later.

And it was in Kalimpong that I met him in 1953. I just met him, we didn’t become very closely acquainted, at least not in the ordinary sense. I think I can say at that time I became very closely acquainted with his mind and with his understanding of Buddhism. Because this is what happened: there was a young Tibetan in Kalimpong called Lobsang Phuntsok Lhalungpa, who has recently done a new translation of The Life of Milarepa, and he had been asked by the editor of a book on Buddhism, subsequently published as The Way of the Buddha — it was Kenneth Morgan who edited it — to write the chapter on Tibetan Buddhism. So Lobsang Lhalungpa didn’t feel that he was personally qualified, so he consulted Dhardo Rimpoche. Dhardo Rimpoche expounded various aspects of the Dharma, Lobsang Lhalungpa wrote them down, and then he brought them to me. So I went through them with him, and I rewrote all that material in what I hoped was decent English because Lobsang Lhalungpa’s English at that time was rather weak to say the least. But the Dharma that was communicated came from Dhardo Rimpoche and sometimes Lobsang Lhalungpa’s writing was not clear, that is to say his exposition was not clear. So I’d say This is not clear, please go back to Rimpoche and discuss it with him and write it out again in the light of Rimpoche’s further explanations. And that is what he did. So it was back & forth, back & forth in this way, for three whole months. This by the way was the time when I was writing my Survey of Buddhism. So a little bit of that information passed into the Survey at that time, though not very much as I didn’t have much to say about Tibetan Buddhism, as you may know, in the Survey. But anyway, in that way, in that manner, I came into contact with Dhardo Rimpoche’s mind and his very deep understanding of the Dharma, his very deep understanding of Buddhism. Subsequently I was associated with him in the founding of his school for Buddhist refugee children. A school where half the day was to go to modern study, and half to traditional Tibetan study especially through the Dharma itself. It wasn’t until 1956 that I really got to know Dhardo Rimpoche at all well. He was not the sort of person who projected himself, or went out of his way to meet people or make friends; he was quite reserved. But in 1956 we happened to be, as it were, thrown together. You may remember that that year was the 2500th anniversary of Buddhism. The government of India were sponsoring the celebrations on quite a grand scale. And as part of the celebration they invited 57 eminent Buddhists from border areas. Dhardo Rimpoche was one of those 57 eminent Buddhists from border areas, I was another. And the government of India very kindly gave us a special train, and the train took us round the holy places, also of course factories and dams and things of that sort which the government of India wanted us to see. But Dhardo Rimpoche and I were both together and somehow we always stuck together. We seemed to really like each other’s company. There were Theravadin bikkhus from Assam, there were lamas and nuns from Bhutan, or lamas from Sikkim, there were also others from Ladakh, and so on — all of us were eminent guests of the government of India for that trip. So Rimpoche and I always shared the same carriage, we sat beside each other on the coaches, we got to know each other really quite well in the course of our little tour. There are all sorts of stories that I could tell, I’ll only tell one story which illustrates Rimpoche’s mindfulness; in fact I may say almost his supernatural mindfulness.

What used to happen was this: this train, this government train, would take us from one holy place to another, and we had an official guide. And usually what happened was that we saw a holy place in the morning and a dam or factory in the afternoon. The guide used to say Well, this morning we’re going to this holy place, and this afternoon we’re going to the factory. So if we were going to the holy place, we’d always take incense and candles and so on and so forth to perform a little puja. So one day the guide said We’re not going to the holy place this morning, we’ll go this afternoon, this morning is something else. So we didn’t bother about candles or incense or anything of that lot, so off we trooped. And it so happened that actually, I don’t know as the result of what sort of muddle, but we found ourselves in a Buddhist temple in one of the holy places and we hadn’t got any candles, or any incense; and for traditionally-minded Buddhists that7rsquo;s a big thing to turn up at the holy place with nothing to offer. So all 57 people were really quite upset — except Dhardo Rimpoche. Tibetan monks have got these very voluminous red robes. So while everybody was expressing their regret and being a bit annoyed with the guide, Rimpoche sort of unfolded his robes and pulled out candles and incense, and distributed them to everybody, he had quite enough for 57 of us. Big smiles. So he wasn’t only mindful, he seemed to... you never seemed to catch him napping. I noticed subsequently, you could never catch him — and lots of people tried, and there were lots of situations where he might have been caught, but he never, never was — just like on that particular occasion. He always seemed prepared, he always seemed to anticipate what was going to happen, to be ready for that, ready to meet it. So I never forgot this incident because it illustrated this quite exceptional characteristic of his.

He had some more human traits. I noticed that he was very fond of photography, and I recently heard that there were some 200 negatives of photos which he took on this tour, including many of myself and myself with him, taken with his camera, perhaps with another person; some 200 negatives which he’s left behind and which are being made available to the FWBO to make prints from. So thereafter, having really got to know each other we collaborated regularly, we met quite often; and, well, we faced all sorts of problems together. I won’t go into all the details, I’ll just tell you one little incident. You may remember that in 1962 China invaded India. And we were in Kalimpong, and a lot of people were convinced that the Chinese were going to take Kalimpong, there were rumours that they’d go all the way down to Calcutta. But anyway there was a great turmoil in Darjeeling and in Kalimpong expecting an invasion, and two Buddhist friends of mine, a local businessman and his European wife, had a jeep ready and waiting day and night stocked with provisions; and I was to have a seat on that jeep and we were going to make a quick getaway if the Chinese did turn up. Well that’s just to let you know what it was like. The local people, the Nepalese, on the whole weren’t very displeased that the Chinese were coming, because they didn’t particularly like the Indians, and the Chinese had worked on them through their propaganda and agents; and the local people were quite ready almost to welcome the Chinese if they should come. So what we heard was that the officials in Darjeeling — Kalimpong being part of the Darjeeling district — weren’t very happy about this, and the local police in Kalimpong, especially the frontier officer who was a friend of mine, were told that there had to be a spontaneous anti-Chinese demonstration in Kalimpong. So this frontier inspector came along to myself and to Dhardo Rimpoche, as the two most prominent and active local Buddhists — and said that the DC, the deputy commissioner, was very displeased, there hasn’t been a spontaneous anti-Chinese demonstration in Kalimpong yet, and we’ve got to have one and you’ve got to speak out and you’ve got to denounce the Chinese and you’ve got to say very clearly that they committed aggression against India. That was an order. So Dhardo Rimpoche and I said, Yes, sure, whatever you like. So this public meeting was organized and I must explain that before that we weren’t permitted to say a word of criticism about China or the Chinese government. China had invaded Tibet in 1956. We weren’t allowed to criticise China publically. And I certainly wasn’t, because I was a foreigner. But anyway, now Dhardo Rimpoche and I had a little discussion between ourselves as to what we were going to say. He would say it in Tibetan, I would say it in English. So this big public meeting was called, and we sort of dealt with the situation in our own way. And I can’t remember exactly what I said — well we said more or less the same thing, we said how regrettable it was that China had invaded Tibet. We hadn’t been allowed to say that before. We were very happy that at last we were able to say so publicly. So the point was well taken I think by the local authorities; we made it clear that formally we had been gagged but we weren’t going to be gagged any longer. If they wanted us to condemn the Chinese invasion of India, fine; but we were going to condemn the Chinese invasion of Tibet at the same time. Well this was an example of the way Dhardo Rimpoche and I worked together.

Also, another point that I must make is that we were virtually ordered by the authorities not to leave Kalimpong, because we were the two best-known Buddhists there and they said If you two leave Kalimpong then there’s going to be a bit of a panic. The Indian officials of course were leaving. We had to stop and reassure the public, at least the Buddhist public. But perhaps I’m digressing somewhat.

From Dhardo Rimpoche I eventually received the White Tara initiation and also the Bodhisattva ordination. We translated a few Tibetan texts together. And the last time I saw him personally was in 1967. We kept in touch, and quite a number of Order Members and Mitras had visited him over the years; and our charity The Karuna Trust has given a substantial part of the funding for Rimpoche’s school. As I think most of you know, Rimpoche unfortunately died earlier this year, and Suvajra is engaged in writing a biography.

Perhaps I should also mention that though Dhardo Rimpoche was deeply versed in both the theory and practice of Tibetan Buddhism, he was very critical of certain aspects of Tibetan Buddhism — I won’t go into that in detail now. He was also I must say very unpopular with Tibetan officials about the big exodus of refugees of Tibetans to India. Tibetan officials had the idea that all the Tibetan refugees should remain under their own feudal control and that the government of India should operate with regard to the Tibetan refugees only through them. They wanted almost to create a state within a state, which the Tibetans themselves were not at all happy with, as many Tibetans were very dissatisfied with the type of government which had existed in Tibet before the Chinese invasion — not that they had any sympathy with the Chinese at all, but they were very critical with regard to their own government and administration. They had the greatest devotion to the Dalai Lama, but they very much resented the high-handed and autocratic behaviour of the officials and aristocrats and administrators. And Dhardo Rimpoche was one of those who quite openly criticised the officials; and they were so upset and so annoyed about this that they tried to denounce him as a Chinese spy — mainly because his father was Chinese. With his customary dexterity he evaded all those difficulties and actually became an Indian citizen.

I’ll just include a little story about Dhardo Rimpoche which illustrates perhaps his sense of humour. He had a great sense of humour, which many Tibetans don’t have — they have a sense of fun but not exactly a sense of humour. Dhardo Rimpoche told me this story himself. He was often consulted or approached by Western scholars. He helped some of them a very great deal. Anyway, these scholars used to visit him, seeking information. So one day one of them went along to see him, with another friend of ours as interpreter — Prince Peter of Greece, who spoke Tibetan very fluently — so sooner or later the person, the visiting scholar, started asking Rimpoche questions about the Tantra, especially about the Anuttarayoga Tantra, the highest Tantra, the secret Tantra, the Tantra of sex. So Rimpoche told me that he told a little Tibetan story which was the parallel of the gospel of not throwing pearls before swine. The visiting scholar was not very pleased, Prince Peter was not very pleased, so apparently the scholar said Ah well, I don’t suppose he knows anything about the Tantra anyway. But Rimpoche told this story and when he got to this bit — Ah well I don’t suppose he knows anything about the Tantra anyway — he burst out laughing and thought it was the greatest joke. In fact I think he told me this story more than once.