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The information and stories for this biography
were collected in Boudhanath and Khumbu district, Nepal, in conversations with
older Tibetans and Sherpas that knew the Khari Lama Lozang Tsultrim. As an
attempt to reflect the collective folk memory of a great non-sectarian master of
meditation, this text may be lacking from a scholastic perspective or as a
traditional Tibetan sacred biography (rnam thar). However, what follows is the
living legacy that remains of an authentic 20th century Buddhist practitioner
who perfected renunciation, bodhicitta, and the view of emptiness.
Early Years. Tucked in the mountainous folds that stretch north from
Mount Everest is a small Tibetan farming village named Drongkha, in the Phadrug
area. In the year 1889, one of about twenty families in Drongkha, the Gyejangpas,
had their second son, Lozang Tsultrim. After about six years the boy was offered
to the Shelkar dzong (county) administrative seat, Shelkar Chöde Gompa
(Monastery), the White Crystal Dharma Center. This was in accordance with the
local tax that stipulated that the second of three sons must be sent to Shelkar
Chöde to become a novice monk.
The buildings of Shelkar Chöde spread down the steep western slope of the sacred
Tsibri ridge into a network of whitewashed mud-brick dwellings. Founded in 1264,
it originally housed three schools of Tibetan Buddhism at once, with Sakya,
Bodongpa, and Nyingma monks studying and practicing the Buddha Dharma in one
place.[1] In the year 1645, the Fifth Dalai Lama completely converted Shelkar to
a Gelugpa gompa. [View
Image no. 1:
The Khari Lama Lozang Tsultrim]
The schedule at Shelkar Chöde was rigorous for
younger monks, who were required to assemble each morning for predawn prayers,
spend the day memorizing prayer books, and recite what they had memorized to a
monk teacher at dusk. The elders kept the rules strict; some of them even tried
to control the younger monks with sticks. Lozang was a naughty monk, without
much interest in studying and memorizing prayers, although he had some natural
talent with the long melodies of Tibetan opera. There was not much time for
young monks to play, although they were sent to their villages for a month in
the spring and in the autumn, to help plant and harvest barley and mustard.
At Shelkar, after completing basic studies, monks either studied philosophy,
learned rituals at Ngagpa (Tantric) College, or served as administrative
managers. The gompa, as part of the extensive monastic bureaucracy of the Dalai
Lama’s Lhasa government, required some monks to serve as representatives to
collect taxes and manage landholdings. The managers were responsible for
overseeing the conscription of local labor to grow and collect barley, most of
which was either consumed at the monastery or sold for profit. The monks that
managed estates typically came from wealthy families, because they were
responsible for producing a certain amount of grain and money for Shelkar Chöde,
regardless of the output of the fields.
After passing his initial exams, Lozang Tsultrim moved in with a monk friend,
Lozang Jampa, who was appointed to manage a small land holding. With Lozang
Tsultrim as his assistant, they moved away from Shelkar Chöde. After five years
of managing the estate, Jampa and Lozang were appointed to manage a large land
holding in the small Shekar village, where they were paid around nine hundred
kilograms of grain a year for their service. This was a promising career
development, since managing a large land parcel led to more wealth, prestige,
and promotion. After five successful years of managing a large estate, one could
be promoted to monastery treasurer, or to even higher positions like junior
Khenpo (abbot).
Jampa and Lozang also traded locally acquired rock salt, tsampa (roasted barley
flour), wool, dried cheese, fat, and dried yak, sheep and goat meat with Sherpa
yak caravan drivers from Khumbu, who brought them chilies, rice, rice paper,
wood, dye, sugar, and other products from the lowlands. [View
Image no. 2: The ruins of Shelkar Chöde
Gompa.]
As Lozang Tsultrim got older, he became tired of
working for Shelkar Gompa, and yearned for the peace and quiet of the remote
hills. He gradually spent more and more time alone at his home making offerings,
chanting prayers, practicing calm abiding meditation and developing compassion.
Jampa attended his friend while taking care of the estates, but it was difficult
for him to manage a whole village at the same time. Lozang Tsultrim instead
tried to look after the hard working farmers, whose lives were very difficult.
He disliked buying and selling animals, began neglecting the tax collection, and
even gave away some of the monastery’s property. They were unable to make a
profit for Shelkar Chöde, and created considerable debt. After eight years as a
manager, Lozang decided that it was not the best path for a monk to be involved
in business. Their families paid off the debts with grain and livestock. This
created a great difficulty for them, and the monastic officials were also quite
angry.
Renunciation and Practice. Lozang did not
want to return to the busy life of Shelkar Gompa, which was like a village unto
itself, with its own complicated relationships, politics, and gossip. He felt
that it was difficult to practice meditation unhindered there. He reflected that
the human body, the basis for practicing the path to liberation, is too precious
to waste by becoming entangled in business, wealth and prestige, so he descended
from Shelkar Chöde Gompa to a village monastery, the Lingka Gompa, and took
refuge in the Lingka Kangyur Rinpoche. Lozang considered him his tsawe lama
(root teacher), and renounced everything to devote himself fully to training
with him. The Lingka Rinpoche, born in 1856, was a realized master from Phadrug
Tashi Dzom in Shelkar Dzong, and was considered to be an emanation of the White
Mañjuśrī.
At that time, Lozang took his Gelong (full monastic) vows and offered his
teacher a large empty copper water pot. Taking this as a sign, the Lingka
Rinpoche predicted, “You will become just like Jetsun Milarepa.”[2] Lozang
Tsultrim remained at the Lingka gompa receiving the essential teachings of sūtra
and tantra of the Gelug tradition. He began memorizing Tsongkhapa’s masterwork,
the Lamrim Chenmo (Great Exposition on the Stages to the Path).[3] He also
received empowerment, oral transmission, and commentaries for the Dākinī
practice of Vajrayoginī [4] and the yidam (tutelary deity) practices of
Yamāntaka, Guhyasamāja, and Cakrasamvara.
The Lingka Rinpoche suggested that Lozang Tsultrim go to the Chuzang Gompa for
more teachings and undistracted retreat. Before it was completely destroyed by
the communist Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution, the Chuzang Gompa was
nestled in the tall dark gray crags of the north side of the holy Tsibri
mountain range, west of Shelkar Chöde Gompa. Lozang Tsultrim walked there and
met the Chuzang Rinpoche, who was born in 1892 and recognized as the fourth
incarnation of Sangye Konchog, a previous khenpo of the Shelkar Chöde Gompa.
In that auspicious place, Lozang Tsultrim continued to study and intensely
practice the Lamrim. The Chuzang Rinpoche gave him further teachings and after
some time sent him into retreat in a room above the gompa for the standard three
years and three fortnights. The other monks who were asked to serve him
seriously neglected him, sometimes bringing him only the leftover butter at the
bottom of a teacup, which Lozang Tsultrim licked out to survive. He trained in
the perfection of forbearance for the sake of the Dharma in this way. [View
Image no. 3:
The holy Tsibri mountain range.]
Once, when the Chuzang Rinpoche was returning from a trip to Lhasa, the monks
lined up in a great procession to greet him. However, Lozang Tsultrim was too
weak to come out for the welcoming, so the Chuzang Rinpoche later went up to
visit him in the cave. He was met with a poor sight, as Lozang Tsultrim was not
only famished but covered with lice as well. He felt a great deal of compassion
for the perseverant monk and invited him to stay in his own private temple to
complete his retreat.
During his retreat at the Chuzang Gompa, Lozang
Tsultrim made one thousand water bowl offerings seven times a day and completed
the preliminary practices. The ordinary preliminaries are reflections on the
preciousness of attaining a human rebirth, the impermanence of life, the cause
and effect of actions, and the defects of the six realms of samsara (cyclic
existence). Having contemplated these at length, he accomplished the
extraordinary preliminaries of making full length prostrations while reciting a
refuge prayer to the Three Jewels, generating bodhicitta (the altruistic mind of
enlightenment), reciting the hundred-syllable mantra of Vajrasattva, offering
representations of the universe, and supplicating the lama at least one hundred
ten thousand times each. [5] Due to the frigid Tibetan weather, his hands split
and bled from the prostrations. In his retreat, he also recited over a million Migtsema prayers:
Avalokiteśvara, great treasure of
indiscriminate compassion,
Mañjuśrī, lord of stainless knowledge,
Vajrapāni, subduer of all enemies without exception,
Tsongkhapa, crown ornament of scholars in the land of snows,
Lozang Dragpa [Tsongkhapa], at your feet I pray.
[6]
Following the advice of the Chuzang Rinpoche,
upon completion of his retreat Lozang Tsultrim departed in solitude for the
mountains. He walked to the remote Chuwar Ganden Drophenling Gompa in Rongshar,
where Jetsun Milarepa passed away, and met the Zagalung Lama. The Zagalung Lama
was born in 1856 in Kham Tragyap and did intensive meditation practices in the
Zagalung (Nettle Valley) cave at Rongshar. He was such a dedicated practitioner
that he wore a hole completely through the sheepskin that he used as a
meditation cushion.
The Zagalung lama transmitted the mother chöd teachings of Machig Labdron to
Lozang Tsultrim in that blessed place. Lozang then wandered to various sites
associated with spirits, practicing chöd, [7] in order to conquer fear and
accumulate merit and wisdom. The lama then gave him more teachings on Vajrayoginī, as well as detailed instruction on the Thirteen-deity Yamāntaka
yidam practice. [8] Lozang then moved to Drije Phug, the Demon’s Tongue Cave,
where he completed another set of the preliminary practices and performed the
Thirteen-deity Yamāntaka and the Vajrayoginī meditation practices in solitude
for three years and three fortnights.
When Lozang was meditating in his cave, his tsampa ran out. He became a bit
desperate, but did not want to break his retreat, so he boiled the leather
wrapped around his bone horn and nibbled it for three days. After he had eaten
it all, he remained for a while living on essence pills.[9] He became very weak,
and one day some people came by his cave in the mountains. He sent a letter with
them to a relative who was in charge of the Nepali-Tibetan border area at Rongshar. The family brought him out of his mountain retreat to Rongshar village
and served him until he recovered. They were surprised to find him in such a
deplorable state, and realized that he had truly abandoned attachment to worldly
things.
Lozang Tsultrim returned to Shelkar Chöde and built a small retreat house on the
mountainside, next to a rock called Monkey Face. His sister’s family, the
Lhamdunpa, provided him with tea, butter, and tsampa. He engaged in strict
Yamāntaka practices that necessitated total solitude, so he built a rock wall in
his doorway to completely close himself in his house. He kicked his excrement
out a small opening in the back, so he never had to leave. Occasionally,
relatives and friends would climb the steep mountainside to request divination
and advice through his single small southern window. He continued in this way
for three years and three fortnights. [View
Image no. 4: The retreat house in front of Monkey Face Rock.]
After his retreat, Lozang Tsultrim went on pilgrimage to Lhasa, visited the
important holy sites around the Tibetan capital, and met His Holiness Tenzin
Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet.
The Khari Gompa. An hour’s climb from
Lozang Tsultrim’s village of Drongkha, there was a ruined gompa at a place
called Khari (mkha’ ri), the Sky Mountain. The Khari cliffs are shaped like a
large, right-turning conch shell. The villagers were sad about the old Khari
monastery’s ruinous state, so they offered it to Lozang Tsultrim, who moved
there and continued to meditate in a cave above the ruins.
After his solitary practice at Monkey Face Rock, people regarded Lozang Tsultrim
as a true lama. Nuns and monks came to Khari in order to learn from him because
of his retreat experience, and they began rebuilding the gompa’s dwellings. They
also renovated the nearby Gompa Karbo so the monks could live separate from the
nuns.
At this time in the late 1930’s, Lozang Tsultrim felt that he was on the verge
of understanding emptiness in the meditation and post-meditation state, but had
no teacher to assist him by pointing out the highest view. He remembered the
Dzatul Rinpoche at the Dza Rongphu Gompa, so he decided to visit him for
teachings. The Dzatul Rinpoche Ngawang Tenzin Norbu, born in 1866, was referred
to as the Rongphu Sangye, the Buddha from the Rocky Valley.
Upon arriving at Dza Rongphu, he visited the Dzatul Rinpoche, and received an
Avalokiteśvara empowerment from him. After the transmissions, Lozang Tsultrim
completed the preliminary practices for the Avalokiteśvara practice that he
received from the Nyingma master. Dzatul Rinpoche also gave Dzogchen teachings.
In this way Lozang was assisted in realizing the view. Lozang Tsultrim went back
to Dza Rongphu Gompa many times for chöd [10] and Dzogchen teachings and
practice, and to visit the Dzatul Rinpoche’s heart disciple, Trulshig Rinpoche.
The Dzatul Rinpoche also transmitted the Nyingmapa supplication prayer, the lama
kyangpen, to Lozang Tsultrim, which he used to open up prayers in assembly, a
practice continued to this day at the Khari Gompa. Although Lozang Tsultrim was
Gelugpa, his Dharma was completely nonsectarian, and he received many Nyingmapa
empowerments and teachings from the Rongphu Sangye and the Trulshig Rinpoche.[11]
Some people even referred to him as the baren (mixed) lama,
[12] because he
combined the best of the different spiritual traditions he encountered.
The Lhamdun family continued to sponsor Lozang Tsultrim and the growing monastic
community nestled under Sky Mountain. In 1940, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai
Lama renamed it Khari Samtenling, the Sky Mountain Island of Samadhi (meditative
stabilization).
All the people, lay and monastic, worked very hard to rebuild the Khari Gompa.
The nuns dug and packed mud into bricks to sun bake, which they carried to the
gompa, where the monks and local men stacked them to build walls. Lozang
Tsultrim rarely left the area and the nuns and monks there did not go out and
beg for donations, preferring to let the gompa slowly expand as people gave
offerings.
They celebrated the Great Prayer Festival during the first Tibetan month, and
performed eight two-day Nyungnay retreats during Saka Dawa, as well as during
two other times in the year. Nyungnay retreats are a period of fasting and
prayer to Avalokiteśvara. Influenced by the example of Lozang Tsultrim, the nuns
and monks there also engaged in many retreats, some for three-year
three-fortnight periods.
The chöd master Lama Tsering Wangdu of Langkor was once wandering around Tsibri,
Phadrug, Lapchi, and other holy places practicing chöd, and he came to the Khari
Gompa. On his journey, a woman offered him a sheep, and when Lama Wangdu entered
Lozang Tsultrim’s room, his sheep followed him up the stairs and defecated in
front of Lozang Tsultrim. As it was considered an offering and an auspicious
sign for the future of his lineage, Lozang Tsultrim was delighted, and named the
sheep Kalsang Norbu.
Lama Wangdu stayed two nights at Khari Gompa, performing chöd for one night at
each of the two sites associated with local protectors on the Khari ridge. After
he came down in the morning, Lozang Tsultrim offered him some Tibetan coins and
blessed Lama Wangdu on his way.[13]
In 1954 Lozang Tsultrim went on a second pilgrimage to Lhasa. He walked directly
en route from Dingri south of Lhasa to Ae County, where he spent two weeks
reciting the 100,000 twenty-one Tārā prayers and giving empowerments to the
locals. He visited Samye, the first monastery established in Tibet, and other
pilgrimage sites around Lhasa such as the Potala Palace, the Jokhang, and the
three great monastic centers Ganden, Drepung, and Sera. He also gave a
Vajrayoginī empowerment to his family members in Lhasa.
Lozang Tsultrim became famous in southern Tibet
for healings and divination. He lived a simple life free of possessions, so when
people visited him for blessings, he tore a strip of cloth from his old shirt to
give them, or handed out fistfuls of the tsampa he was eating. Most lamas used a
phurba (ritual dagger) to drive out obscurations from the ill, but Lozang
Tsultrim performed healings by pounding people with his bare hands as he recited
the Migtsema prayer. In fact, Lozang Tsultrim continuously murmured the Migtsema
prayer under his breath at all times.
The nuns at Khari Gompa saved the leftover butter
from Lozang Tsultrim’s teacup to mix with clay and make little healing pills.
Depending on the strength of the faith of the disciple, if these pills were put
in a bottle and saved, they would spontaneously multiply. The nuns and monks
also saved Lozang Tsultrim’s hair clippings to burn in front of a sick person’s
or animal’s nose, in order to exorcise harmful spirits. Once, burning his hair
clippings in front of animals cured a livestock epidemic in Menphur, Dingri.
[View
Image no. 5:
The Khari Gompa in Tibet.]
Many monks, nuns and lay people even used Lozang
Tsultrim’s urine to cure themselves of a variety of illnesses. The nuns at Khari
saved his urine to make healing pills, and some even drank a small amount on a
regular basis.
Exile. By 1959 the Khari Gompa housed
around 115 nuns, and 25 monks lived at Gompa Karbo. Lozang Tsultrim had become
well known in Pharug, so the Chinese army officials made plans to arrest him in
December, 1959. A Tibetan working with the Chinese learned of the plan. A few
days before the arrest date, he rode to the Khari Gompa and left a whip and a
glove at the door, as a signal for Lozang Tsultrim to escape.
Lozang Tsultrim departed with two monks on a
borrowed yak at midnight that night, the eleventh day of the eleventh Tibetan
month, two days before he was to be arrested. They did not bring much, so Lozang
Tsultrim was able to ride on the yak much of the way. They traveled mainly at
night through the mountains, resting in villages during the day. At this point,
Lozang Tsultrim was in his seventieth year, so the winter journey across the
Nangpa La (Pass), at an altitude of 5716 meters, was extremely difficult. The
yak was unable to carry him over the pass into Nepal, so one of the monks
carried him part of the way.
Six days after they left Khari, they arrived at a
small village called Chanyak, and were received by the famous Sherpa mountaineer
Tenzin Norgay’s wife, Ang Dekyi, and her father, Ang Norbu, who took the nuns
and monks into their house. After a few weeks, they walked south to the small
Sherpa gompa at Kyabrog and requested lodging from the abbot, Lama Tenzin, who
graciously offered Lozang Tsultrim a room to continue his meditation practice.
The Chinese destroyed the Khari Gompa, and took
the few valuables. The roof was removed from the main hall and the wood was
stolen, but there was not much to take, because the Khari community never
accumulated much wealth.
After the Chinese came, many Tibetans left over
the Nangpa La, and Khumbu became crowded. Tibetan men broke stones or worked as
porters, some for mountaineering expeditions. Some Tibetan women stitched or
helped Sherpa women in their households. The nuns performed rituals for the
villagers, worked as porters or begged alms from the Sherpas in order to
survive. The Sherpa people were very generous when possible, and made many
offerings of meat and potatoes to the nuns and monks. [View
Image no. 6:
The stūpa at Thangmode, with Kyabrog in the background.]
The nuns and monks lived in tents, about 4 in
each, and experienced many hardships due to the heavy summer rain and winter
cold. Despite these difficulties, Lozang Tsultrim continued to teach and give
empowerments in a large tent erected for assemblies. Some of the monks built a
large wooden box with a window so that he could be protected from the wind and
rain while he taught.
In the summer of 1960, around three hundred monks,
nuns, and layfolk assembled for Lozang Tsultrim’s six-week Lamrim teachings. He
was an expert on the Lamrim and kept a copy of Tsongkapa’s Lamrim Chenmo on his
table at all times, the pages of which were totally worn from use, the covers
disintegrated. He gave many teachings from Dharmavajra’s Lamrim commentary,
although he did not actually have to refer to the text while he taught.
The nuns and monks from Shelkar, Khari and Gompa
Karbo performed a summer retreat together at Kyabrog in 1960 and 1961. In
September 1960, Lozang Tsultrim gave chöd teachings and transmissions to
twenty-eight nuns and monks, instructing on the correct way to beat the Damaru
(hand drum), ring the bell, blow the bone horn, and sing the melody. After the
teachings, the new practitioners sat in retreat for seven days, and then walked
around to remote locations around upper Khumbu performing chöd.
Lozang Tsultrim had the monks read the Ka’’gyur,
and the nuns read the 100,000 twenty-one Tārā prayers, as a prayer for the long
life of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Nuns and monks from many different schools
and lineages all practiced together with him at Kyabrog, participating in his
rituals and teachings.
During the winter of 1960-61, Lozang Tsultrim
walked two days south to Lomtso, a tiny hermitage above Lukla, in order to
practice in a warmer climate. Not many people were aware of his presence there,
but his attendant nuns and monks read texts in the homes of local Sherpas to
make a little money. [View
Image no. 7:
The Lomtso Hermitage, after renovation.]
The next winter Lozang Tsultrim walked with two
monks and two nuns on a pilgrimage to the Kathmandu Valley. The Khari Lama was
in his seventy-second year, and it was difficult for him to make his way on the
steep trails. A monk, Tsultrim Kalsang carried the venerable lama at the passes.
Whenever possible, they made evening offerings on the trail, and on the tenth
and twenty-fifth day of each lunar month they made ritual offerings to
Vajrayoginī.
They visited Namobuddha stūpa, where the Buddha
displayed great compassion in a former life. They then stayed in a small house
at the holy Boudhanāth stūpa for ten days, while they made offerings to the
stūpa, had it whitewashed, and hung many prayer flags for the benefit of all
beings. Lozang Tsultrim presided over two Vajrayoginī ganacakra offering
ceremonies at Boudha, one at the Chini Lama’s old Gompa, and one for the monks
from Nyalam Pengyeling Gompa, who requested it in order to receive the
transmission of the Vajrayoginī self-initiation practice from him.
While at Pharping, he gave teachings on the
enlightened activities of Phelpo Phamding and Phutong Lotsawa, two 11th century
masters who stayed at Pharping. He explained, “Every day Phelpo did Vajrayoginī
practices and then he attained a rainbow body. He went to the Vajrayoginī Pure
Realm. If you can practice this then you can attain it as well.”
In Khumbu, Lozang Tsultrim gave the reading
transmission, empowerment and explanation for the Vajrayoginī practice texts to
about 100 nuns and 50 monks staying at Kyabrog. He also gave transmissions for
the mantras of Avalokiteśvara, Guru Rinpoche, and Tārā as well as many Amitāyus
long-life empowerments, and presided over an Avalokiteśvara empowerment attended
by thousands of local Sherpas and Tibetans.
That year, Lozang Tsultrim transmitted chöd
practices to about sixty nuns and monks, and transmitted the practice of his
personal meditation deity Yamāntaka to experienced practitioners. He taught that
deity practice removes any obstacles and that unlike most of his family, he
would live to eighty due to his Yamāntaka retreats. He also said, “I would like
to die like a bird, leaving nothing behind.”
If the skies were threatening hail, the locals
would become worried about their crops. Lozang Tsultrim would say, “It’s not a
problem,” gaze at the sky, and the black clouds would break up.[14] Some monks
said that Yamāntaka himself once appeared to him, while others said he was a
living embodiment of the deity. He was very humble, though, and rarely even used
a throne. [View
Image no. 8:
The Thame Valley in Khumbu, looking east towards Dzarok.]
Enlightened Activity in Tramo. The Khari
community considered the possibility of settling in a small hamlet above Namche
Bazaar called Dzarok, which means Rocky Place, due to the huge boulders that
ornament the ridge. Early in 1963, ten monks and twenty-five nuns left Kyabrog
and walked east along the Thame Valley to Dzarok. On the way, they stopped for
lunch under the stūpa in the center of Tramo, a modest Sherpa village. Some
Sherpas approached for a blessing from the Khari Lama Lozang Tsultrim, and one
of them asked them to stay in Tramo, saying, “Dzarok has hardly any water, so it
will be a problem to have a gompa there. It would be better to live in Tramo.”
Lozang Tsultrim performed a divination, gazed up
the ridge towards the northwest, and asked, “Whose land is that?” A Sherpa woman
answered, “That land belongs to me. If you would like to stay and live here, I
will offer it to you.” They decided not to go any further. Lozang Tsultrim
declared that they should build the monastery in three days, or there would be
many obstacles to its completion. All of the nuns and monks moved into tents and
caves around the area. Thus, through the selfless kindness of the local Sherpas,
the Khari community came to settle in Tramo.
Tibetan and Sherpa lay people from all over Khumbu
came to help with the construction. They worked hard digging the foundation,
breaking stones, collecting wood, stacking stones and plastering the walls with
mud. Even the elderly Lozang Tsultrim himself carried stones. Due to the hard
work of about one hundred nuns, monks and lay folk working together, they
finished the Tibetan style flat-roofed prayer hall in three days. According to
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, “the building looked a little rough, but there was a very
good and relaxed feeling there.”[15] They then built a kitchen facing the main
assembly hall and small monks’ and nuns’ quarters at about the rate of one per
day. His Holiness the Dalai Lama bestowed upon the new gompa the name Ganden
Tenphel Ling, the Joyful Dharma Island. [View
Image no. 9:
The Stupa in the center of Tramo.]
After the assembly hall was completed, Lozang
Tsultrim continued giving teachings on the Lamrim, Vajrayoginī, Yamāntaka, and
chöd. He stressed the importance of intense practice, so after transmission and
empowerment, new students went directly into retreat. Other monks and nuns
alternated staying in retreat for a month or two. Every evening they made
offerings to protectors, and on ritually important days like the tenth and
twenty-fifth of the lunar month, the nuns and monks performed the chöd tsok of
Machig Labdron and offering rituals for Vajrayoginī.
They performed eight Nyungnay retreats three times
each year. Many Sherpas and Tibetans from the lay community participated in
these retreats.
After Trulshig Rinpoche escaped from Tibet, Lozang
Tsultrim requested that he visit Tramo and give an Avalokiteśvara empowerment (dbang).
He stayed for three days and transmitted the maṇi mantra to a crowd of at least
two thousand Sherpa and Tibetan monks, nuns, and lay folk. The Trulshig Rinpoche
then sang this song in praise of the Khari Lama Lozang Tsultrim:
Nestled between mountain and
flat ground,
Is the temperate sacred place of the Tramo Gompa.
Although known as the Joyful Dharma Island,
Really, it is Vajrayoginī’s holy place.
Here is a lord, a lama protecting beings in this degenerate age,
The Bodhisattva Lozang Tsultrim,
Relying on this gompa to benefit the Dharma and all beings,
In this immaculately appearing attractive place,
He stays perfectly in the state of holy Samādhi.
Although you shower offerings of auspicious flowers to him,
In reality the lama is the noble Wisdom Mind.
I pray that you remain as long as necessary,
As these five current degenerations increase.
Although my ability to spread the impartial teachings of the Buddha,
And my power of truth is minimal,
I offer this aspiration prayer with pure heart and mind.
The nuns in Tramo often chant this song during
prayers.
In the late sixties, while Lama Zopa Rinpoche was
staying at the Lawudo cave above Tramo, he visited the Khari Gompa a few times,
excited that there was such a realized master living so close-by. According to
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, the Khari Lama Lozang Tsultrim “was very pleased to hear
that we were planning to build a monastery [Kopan] and teach Dharma. He told me,
‘you should not have narrow mind and build a small monastery because of the
expenses involved. You should have a very wide, strong mind and build it as
large as possible. It will be very beneficial for the Dharma.’” Lama Zopa and
his teacher Lama Yeshe followed this advice, and that has turned out to be very
true. When asked to pray for the new monastery’s success the Khari Lama quoted
Tsongkhapa: “If the mind is noble, everything becomes noble and successful—the
place, the path, everything. If the mind is evil, everything, all your
enjoyments, become evil.” He then proceeded to predict his own death to Lama
Zopa Rinpoche.[16]
As in Tibet, Lozang Tsultrim became well known for his divinations, and many
Sherpas visited him for this purpose. For example, if someone was preparing to
make a trip for trading purposes, he could tell if it would come out well or
not. He also recommended and performed prayers or rituals for clearing
obstacles. His blessed pills became famous for fevers, the flu, or stomach
illness, and many locals came to Tramo to see Lozang Tsultrim for purifications.
He stayed in a small house next to the main prayer hall, and met people through
his window.
Lozang Tsultrim’s high attainment came from
diligent practice. He remained all night in meditation posture, and normally
arose around one or two in the morning to prostrate, make refuge prayers, and
offer butter lamps, water bowls, and incense. He would then chant the text
Calling the Guru From Afar,[17] and practice the self-initiation of Vajrayoginī
and Yamāntaka. He continued the Dzogchen practices that were transmitted to him
by the Rongphu Sangye Dzatrul Rinpoche.
He always took refuge in the Three Jewels by performing divination for both
major and minor decisions, praying for illumination from the Buddhas and
Bodhisattvas. His aim was to take advantage of every moment as an opportunity
for practice. [View
Image no. 10:
The Khari Lama Lozang Tsultrim in ritual attire.]
Passing. In late 1969, Lozang Tsultrim
became very ill, so Trulshig Rinpoche made the four-day walk from Thupten
Chöling to request the revered lama to remain. Lozang Tsultrim replied, “I don’t
need to, rather it is you that needs to remain,” pointing out the great
importance of the Trulshig Rinpoche to both Sherpa and Tibetan people.
During a November night in 1969, Lozang Tsultrim explained to some close monks
and nuns how to run the monastery, advising them against keeping money, as it
causes problems. He said, “I am now eighty years old. Among my family members, I
have lived the longest life. Although I am the oldest, birth and death is still
present for me, as it is for everyone.” He straightened up into the meditative
posture and asked that his tea bowl be refilled with some good tea and to be
left alone. At around five in the morning he passed away, sitting in meditation.
The Khari Lama Lozang Tsultrim was a totally accomplished yogī with no
attachments to material possessions. When he died, the nuns opened a box that
contained the gompa’s money, and revealed that he only had 400 Nepali rupees. He
always immediately offered whatever he received for rituals and distributed it
among the Sangha, so he had no gold, silver or other precious things, like many
other lamas. Because of this, there was hardly any money for his cremation
rituals.
The Khari Lama remained in thugdam [18] for seven days. Many people from
all over Solu Khumbu came to pay respect. He was cremated in Tramo about a week
after his death, in the morning. Gomchen Gampala, a great Nyingmapa lay lama who
received transmission and instruction from the Rongphu Sangye with Lozang
Tsultrim, came to oversee the final rituals.
After the cremation, Lozang Tsultrim’s eyes were found resting on his heart,
sitting on his tongue, all unburned. There were also pieces of reddish colored
skull and bones remaining. The skull had an emanation of Vajrayoginī on the
front and red sindura powder inside.
When the people at the Khari gompa removed the metal basin over which the
cremation fire was made, two footsteps were stamped in the sand facing towards
the gompa. One was big and the other was of a child. There was also a footprint
discovered in a stone where water was fetched for the gompa. These were taken as
signs that he would take rebirth nearby.
After one month they ground the bones into powder, which they mixed with
cremation ashes and clay, and made 100,000 tsa-tsas (small clay images) of
Vajrayoginī. They then enshrined the stone with the footprint, skull fragments,
and tsatsas in a stūpa built on the cremation site.
About three years before his passing, the Khari Lama wrote a letter to the
community. In that letter, he explained that, “One day I will pass. You do not
need to worry, and there is no need to cry. After it happens, you should stay
and pray. I had this gompa built so that whatever people offered me would not be
wasted. Whatever is left of my body after the cremation should be thrown in a
big river so that it can benefit many sentient beings.”[19] They offered the
leftover ground bone to major rivers in Tibet, Nepal and India.
After the Khari Lama passed away, the Gen Lama Tenzin Tsultrim, who had lived at
the gompa in Tramo for about five years after escaping Tibet, remained there to
lead the community. He was a Sakya lama born in 1921 in Kham, and although he
was from the Ngorba Sakya College, he also practiced according to the Gelugpa
and Nyingma traditions.[20] He stayed until 1972, when he moved to his new
retreat center in Khunde, the Dongwa Chötsok Gompa.
The current incarnation of the Khari Lama currently spends his time between
higher philosophical studies at Sera Me Monastic College in Mysore, India and
the Khari Gompa in Tramo, Khumbu, where he and the thirty nuns are busy
constructing an assembly hall to meet their growing needs. Every year more young
women make the trek from Phadrug to Khumbu to take robes as Buddhist nuns, to
continue the vision of the great yogī Lozang Tsultrim.
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