Two hours away by horse was the Chi-me Lung Gompa, home for about nuns of the Gelug tradition. Following his advice they found the young Lama Yeshe to whom they brought many offerings and gave the name Thondrub Dorje. Afterwards the nuns would often take the young boy back to their convent to attend the various ceremonies and other religious functions held there. During these visits—which would sometimes last for days at a time—he often stayed in their shrine room and attended services with them.
Even though the young boy loved his parents very much, he felt that their existence was full of suffering and did not want to live as they did. From a very early age he expressed the desire to lead a religious life. Whenever a monk would visit their home, he would beg to leave with him and join a monastery.
The nuns offered him robes and the other necessities of life he required at Sera, while the uncle supervised him strictly and made him study very hard. He stayed at Sera until he was twenty-five years old. There he received spiritual instruction based on the educational traditions brought from India to Tibet over a thousand years ago. From Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche, the Junior Tutor of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, he received teachings on the Lam-rim graded course to enlightenment which outlines the entire sutra path to buddhahood.
Such tantric teachings as Lama Yeshe received provide a powerful and speedy path to the attainment of a fully awakened and purified mind, aspects of which are represented by a wide variety of tantric deities.
Some of the meditational deities into whose practice Lama Yeshe was initiated were Heruka, Vajrabhairava and Guhyasamaja, representing respectively the compassion, wisdom and skilful means of a fully enlightened being. In addition, he studied the famous six yogas of Naropa, following a commentary based on the personal experiences of Je Tsongkhapa. At the age of eight he was ordained as a novice monk by the venerable Purchog Jampa Rinpoche. This phase of his education came to an end in At the Tibetan settlement camp of Buxaduar he continued his studies from where they had been interrupted.
While in Tibet he had already received instruction in prajnaparamita the perfection of wisdom , Madhyamika philosophy the middle way and logic. In India his education proceeded with courses in the vinaya rules of discipline and the abhidharma system of metaphysics. Zopa Rinpoche was a young boy at the time and the servant caring for him wanted very much to entrust him permanently to Lama Yeshe. Upon consultation with Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche, this arrangement was decided upon and they have been together ever since.
From the house where he was born he could look up the mountain side and see Lawudo, where the cave of the late Lawudo Lama was situated. While his predecessor had belonged to the Sakya tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, the Lawudo Lama himself had been a great master of the complete tantric teachings of the Nyingma tradition.
For the last twenty years of his life he had lived in his cave, attended by his wife and two children, and had spent all his time either meditating or giving teachings and spiritual advice to the people of the Solo Khumbu and neighboring regions. His energy on behalf of all beings was inexhaustible and it is said that in his later years he passed completely beyond the need for sleep. From the time he was able to crawl, Zopa Rinpoche would spend most of his time trying to climb the steep path leading to the cave of this deceased lama.
We went back and forth several times, and somehow no rocks fell while we were crossing. However, every time we were resting and drinking after reaching the top of the mountain on the other side, the rocks would come down woorooroo! Many times I thought, "Oh, somebody will be killed.
All the way across everybody recited whatever mantras they knew. The main sect in Solu Khumbu is Nyingma, so most of the people recited Padmasambhava's mantra with single-pointed concentration.
I don't remember what I did during that time, whether I recited any mantras or not, but I do remember that I was carried by my uncle. Of course, as soon as everybody reached the other side, where there was no danger, all the prayers stopped. I lived for seven years in Rolwaling. Rolwaling Valley has a river running through it and mountains all around.
On one side of the river was a monastery, with a gompa surrounded by other houses in which lived my uncle, then a fully ordained monk, and other married lamas, practitioners who did a lot of retreat but were not monks. There was also a large stupa on some flat ground with a road running through the middle of it. On the other side of the river was a very nice grassy place where Western trekkers used to camp.
In the summertime and in the autumn, tourists would come to Rolwaling—not all the time, just sometimes. Sherpa porters would guide them there and sometimes bring them to my teacher's house, or sometimes we would go down to see them in their tents. Once or twice I went there to see them. The bridge crossing the river to that spot was just two tree trunks tied together. You had to walk on that, and it wasn't very wide. One day I went to give some potatoes to the Westerners in their camp—I don't remember who they were.
My teacher told me not to go, but I think I pushed him; somehow I really wanted to go to give the Westerners the potatoes. So, my teacher put some potatoes in a brass container used for eating rice or drinking chang , the local beer, and off I went, alone. I walked onto the bridge. The river was quite wide and when I reached the middle of it, in my view the bridge tilted, and I fell into the water.
My head came up, then went down again. According to what my teacher told me later, at first I was facing upriver, then later down river. I was carried along by the river, with my head coming up from time to time. All the time I was closer and closer to danger, to where river was very, very deep. One time when my head came up, I saw my teacher running toward the river from the monastery, which was quite far away.
There was some flat ground, then a huge mountain with the monastery a little way up it. I saw my teacher running down the mountain to the flat ground, holding up the simple cloth pants he was wearing. At that time, the thought came into my mind, "Now what people call 'Lawudo Lama' is going to die. This is going to end. There was no fear. If death came now it would be difficult for me, but at that time my mind was completely comfortable.
There was no fear at all—just the thought, "What people call 'Lawudo Lama' is going to die. I was about to reach very deep water where it would have been very difficult for my teacher to catch me, when he finally grabbed me and pulled me out. I was dripping wet. I'm not sure, but I think he said, "I told you not to go!
I later heard from some people who were watching that one of the Western tourists came with his camera and was taking pictures as I was being carried along by the water. I stayed in Rolwaling seven years, memorizing prayers and reading texts, including all the many hundreds of volumes of the Buddha's teachings, the Kangyur, and the commentaries by the Indian pandits, the Tengyur.
Lay people would ask us to read these as a puja, so my teacher would read all day long. I don't know how long they took to read—many months, I think. Sometimes I went outside to go to the toilet and would spend a lot of time out there, just hanging around. I didn't return to the reading very quickly. After seven years, when I was about ten, I went to Tibet with my two uncles. The reason for our journey was to visit another of my uncles, who was living at Pagri, a major trading center.
I have an idea that the journey took us six months, walking every day. Because I was quite small, I didn't have to carry anything; my uncles carried everything. I spent seven days at Tashi Lhunpo, the Panchen Lama's monastery, but from the time we left Solu Khumbu, my heart was set on going to study at the greatest Nyingma monastery in Tibet, Mindoling, because all the Sherpa monasteries are Nyingma. My plan was to go to this monastery and practice. There were many other monasteries along the way, but somehow I had no particular desire to live in them.
Earlier, when I was seven or eight years old, I had read Milarepa's life-story three or four times, mainly to practice reading the Tibetan letters. Somehow at that time my mind was very clear, and I had a strong desire in my heart to be a really good practitioner by finding an infallible guru like Marpa, just as Milarepa had. At Tashi Lhunpo I met Gyaltsen, a Sherpa monk who was like a dobdob; he had a black shemtab covered with butter and always carried a long key.
He didn't seem to study or go to pujas, but mainly traveled back and forth between the monastery and the city. My two uncles were there with me, and one other Sherpa man. We didn't go to the pujas, but got into the line of monks to get the money when the pujas finished. I think Gyaltsen probably guided us. On the very last night before we were to leave, Gyaltsen insisted that I stay and become his disciple.
I don't think I had any sleep that whole night! I was wondering how I could escape from this because both my uncles agreed that I should stay there and become his disciple. But I had not the slightest desire to become his disciple, couldn't think of how to escape, of what I could do the next day.
Fortunately, the next morning, my uncles finally agreed that I should go with them to Pagri. My two uncles, my uncle who lived in Pagri, and one of his relatives who was a nun, all went to Lhasa to visit the monasteries and make offerings.
While they were away, I just wandered around Pagri, wearing an old red chuba and an old hat. Somehow I had the karma to become a monk because one day, outside my uncle's house, I met a tall monk who was the manager of one of Domo Geshe's monasteries. It must be due to some past karma that he immediately asked me, "Do you want to be my student? Because my uncles were away he talked to my uncle's wife, and she accepted his suggestion. The next day she made a thermos of tea, filled a Bhutanese container made of woven bamboo with round breads she made very good Tibetan bread, served with a lot of butter and took me to the monastery where the manager lived, just a few minutes walk from where we were living.
In the beginning the manager did not know the story of how I was thought to be an incarnation, but somehow he came to hear of it. To make sure, he checked with an oracle. The oracle invoked the main protector related to the monastery and the manager then asked the protector whether the story was true or not.
I can remember that the prediction that I was a reincarnated lama given by the protector came in a very powerful way. When my uncles returned from Lhasa, they wanted me to go back with them to Solu Khumbu. I said that I wouldn't go back. My second uncle, the one with whom I spent seven years, was very kind—although at that time, I didn't know he was being kind. He beat me. When I rejected the idea of going back, my other uncle—the one who lived in Tibet and was a businessman—brought out a whole set of new robes with brocade, which he had bought in Lhasa, horse decorations, everything!
He piled everything up and said: "If you go back to Solu Khumbu I will give you all these things; otherwise you won't get anything. By , 12 centers had started. FPMT is an organization devoted to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation, and community service.
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