The following is an excerpt from Chagdud Rinpoche's autobiography, Lord of the Dance, to be published by Padma Publishing in the fall of 1992. See Padma Publishing News for further details.
My mother Dawa Drolma was remarkable for her beauty, her fierce temper and her unconditional generosity. When she was a child, the family found this last quality most disturbing. "Venerable people, I am old, penniless, and very hungry. Please, do you have something for a poor unfortunate one like me?" A plaintive plea by one of the numerous beggars who wandered up to the family tent would set off a flurry of activity. Someone would rush to the beggar with some tsampa, a bit of butter and perhaps yogurt; someone else would dash to Dawa Drolma to divert her from attending to the beggar herself. Others would station themselves protectively by the precious shrine objects and the various repositories of the family's wealth.
If relatives and servants couldn't restrain Dawa Drolma intime, or worse, if the beggars called when they were away, inevitably she would seize some valuable item from the family coffers–the silver offering bowls, a piece of Chinese silk, an auntie's favorite turquoise hair ornament–as her offering to the incredulous mendicants. Her compassion was limitless, and she wept over their predicament. Her attachment to the family's wealth was slight, so they took to hiding it, even though they commented among themselves that the child's spontaneous generosity was definitely a sign that she was extraordinary, surely an emanation of the deity Tara herself, an embodiment of enlightened wisdom and compassion.
Our family, the Tromges, was a large clan that lived in the Tromtar region of Eastern Tibet. Tromtar is a high plateau, probably more than 13,000 feet in elevation. Pilgrims making their way from Tromtar to Lhasa, which is at 11,000 feet, used to complain about the heaviness of the low land atmosphere. It is a region of glittering lakes, green meadows, alpine flowers and resplendent skies, and there the family's thousands of sheep and yaks were pastured. Our family, like most in that region, lived in black, yak hair tents. Ours was a prosperous clan, and one of our tents was large enough to hold four hundred persons. There was only one other tent that large in all of Eastern Tibet. Occasionally, when lamas and monks were assembled to conduct great ceremonies, the tent would be filled to capacity. The assembly sat in long rows on Tibetan rugs and sheepskins, with the high lamas on thrones at the far end, and everyone drank salt tea and made jokes until the ceremony began. Then, as the warm glow of butterlamps and the smoke of cedar incense filled the atmosphere, the deep chanting of the liturgy would commence with its awesome accompaniment of cymbals, drums, oboes, conches and horns, resonating far beyond the tent until it dissolved in the stillness of the thin air.
There were several highly realized lamas in each generation of Tromge family, and my mother was the most famous in hers. She was one of Tibet's five great wisdom dakinis–female emanations who spontaneously benefit beings by their activities. Terton Jigme Khakyod Wangpo had prophesied her birth as an emanation of the longevity deity White Tara and an incarnation of Yeshe Tsogyal, Tibet's most revered female practitioner and the spiritual companion of Padmasambhava, the Vajrayana master who propagated Buddhist teachings in Tibet in the 8th century.
Dawa Drolma was also a delog, one who has crossed the threshold of death, traveled in realms of existence beyond those visible to us as humans and returned to tell about it. One day, when she was about sixteen, Tara appeared to her, not in a luminous vision, but in person, and told her that she would soon fall ill and die. However, if she followed certain instructions explicitly, she would be able to revivify her dead body and benefit others by teaching about her experience. Soon after, Dawa Drolma had a series of bad dreams that revolved around three demonic sisters who were robbing all beings of their vitality. With black lariats and silk banners they tried to ensnare Dawa Drolma around the waist, but the deity White Tara prevented them from doing so by surrounding her with a protection circle. Eventually, however, the menace in the dreams was so strong that Dawa Drolma knew it foretold her imminent death. She went to her uncle, the great Tromge Trungpa Rinpoche, and with his help made the necessary arrangements, just asTara had instructed. Then she became extremely sick and, despite the efforts of the many doctors who were summoned, she died.
Exactly as she had stipulated, in the presence of an attendant named Drolma, her corpse was washed in consecrated saffron water and dressed in new clothes. It was carefully laid out in a room without a morsel of food or a drop of water. The door was draped in blue cloth, padlocked and sealed with the sign of the wrathful fire scorpion, and a man dressed in blue stood guard outside. Everyone was warned to refrain from any ordinary chatter, to recite only prayers and mantra. For the next five days and nights Tromge Trungpa, along with several other lamas and monks, did prayers and ceremonies continuously in the adjacent room. At the completion of this vigil, Tromge Trungpa entered the room where the corpse lay, cold and pale as he had left it, and recited powerful long-life prayers to summon Dawa Drolma's mindstream back into her body. In the account she dictated several days after her return, she described her reentry into her body:
When the consciousness re-entered my physical body, I sneezed violently and experienced total disorientation. An instant later, I was in a state of faith and joy at the visions of the pure realm, and horror at the karmic visions of the hells. I felt as though I were waking up from sleep. Uncle Trungpa was standing in front of me, holding a longevity arrow and looking at me with concern in his bloodshot eyes. I was unable to say a word, as though I were a bit shy. Everyone was crying and excited, and saying things such as, "Wasn't it difficult?" "You must be hungry!" "You must be thirsty!" They were almost pouring food and drink over my head. Although I protested, "I feel absolutely no discomfort due to hunger or thirst," they didn't believe me. Everyone was saying, "Eat! Drink!" They all felt joy as immeasurable as a she-camel who has found her lost calf. We all partook of a feast to celebrate.”
During her five-day journey as a delog, my mother's consciousness, unhindered by the constraints of a physical body, traveled freely through all the realms of mind, from the hell realms with their ceaseless, unbearable suffering, to the most exalted purelands of the wisdom beings. For the rest of her life, whenever my mother taught, she drew from her experiences as a delog. Her descriptions of the misery of the other realms were very vivid, and tears came to her eyes as she spoke. "No matter how difficult your life is in this human experience," she would say,"there is no comparison between the difficulties here and those in other realms." No one doubted that she spoke from direct experience, and her credibility was enhanced by the messages she brought to people from their deceased relatives. In particular there was a very wealthy businessman named Drilo whose sister had died and was now in a state of tortuous suffering. By chance my mother encountered her, and she begged my mother to relay a message to Drilo, telling him the whereabouts of certain valuables she had secreted. ''Tell my brother to use those things for ceremonies and dedicate the prayers to me so that I may find release from this terrible suffering more quickly." When my mother returned to the human realm, she sent a message to Drilo, but he was busy shearing sheep and refused–rather rudely–to meet with her. So she sent him a letter telling him where the valuables were hidden. Drilo was astounded, for only he had known that these things were missing. Upon finding them by the letter's instructions, he decided it would be worthwhile to meet my mother. Their meeting produced a second startling revelation when my mother informed him, "Unless you take certain steps, you will join your sister in the realms of hell."
Drilo replied, "If you can tell me exactly what to do, I will do it, but only if it prevents me from going to hell altogether. I won't do anything just to go to hell for less time, and I won't meditate. I'm a businessman, not a practitioner, and I won't devote my time to practice."
''Then I will be very direct," she said "Each day you must sponsor at least a hundred butterlamps, each year you must sponsor a reading of all one hundred and eight volumes of the Buddhist canon and in your lifetime you must sponsor the building of a mani wall." A mani wall is a wall built of stones carved with the mantra Om Mani Padme Hung. As a businessman, sponsoring these devotions seemed to Drilo a good bargain, a relatively easy way to buy his way out of hell. But when my mother told him that he needed to recite the mantra Om Mani Padma Hung daily, he balked. "I won't do it I don't have time." Almost every Tibetan recites this mantra of the lord of compassion, Avalokiteshvara, many times a day, and some very virtuous practitioners go into retreat to recite one hundred and eight million. Drilo stubbornly refused to do even one hundred and eight until another demonstration of my mother's extraordinary abilities changed his mind.
My mother was asked to do seven days of long-life ceremonies for another lama. At the beginning of the ceremonies, as was customary, an arrow decorated with streamers of colored silk was put on the altar and a piece of string was cut the same length as the arrow. If the length of the arrow increased in the course of the ceremonies, it would be an indication that the length of the lama's life had correspondingly increased. My mother gave Drilo the piece of string and told him to keep it until the conclusion of the ceremonies.
Usually my mother was a perfectionist about every aspect of ritual. There are monks living today who remember occasions when she flung her bell across the room or whacked them on the head with her bone trumpet because they weren't mindful and made a foolish error. However, on the occasion of this long-life ceremony she herself seemed distracted. On the last day she actually slept through the morning session, but upon awakening, she told her attendant that she had had a wonderful dream in which a wisdom being had brought a blessing. "Go look on the altar."
He went, but found nothing unusual. Thinking it a very bad sign to come back empty-handed, he gathered up some black mustard seeds. Seeing them, my mother was puzzled and said, "I don't think this is it. Go look again."
This time the attendant found hundreds of small pills sprinkled everywhere. Such pills hold the essence of long-life blessing, and their spontaneous manifestation was regarded as an indisputable sign of the effectiveness of the ceremonies.
My mother then called Drilo and they measured the string he had kept against the arrow on the altar. The length of the arrow had increased by an inch, another sign that the ceremonies had borne fruit.
Drilo's faith in my mother became so strong that he could no longer refuse to say Om Mani Padme Hung one hundred and eight times a day. He wouldn't buy a mala (rosary) for counting, so he counted the recitations on his fingers. No one ever suspected him of making a mistake and saying one hundred and nine. He did, however, walk around murmuring, "Delog Dawa Drolma Chen"-"Great Delog Dawa Drolma"- and he became the sponsor of many of her dharma projects, including the construction of a huge and costly prayer wheel filled with the mantra of the deity Vajrasattva.
*Excerpted from DawaDrolma's account of her experience as a delog, to be published by Padma Publishing.
The following is an excerpt from Chagdud Rinpoche's autobiography, Lord of the Dance, to be published by Padma Publishing in the fall of 1992. See Padma Publishing News for further details.
My mother Dawa Drolma was remarkable for her beauty, her fierce temper and her unconditional generosity. When she was a child, the family found this last quality most disturbing. "Venerable people, I am old, penniless, and very hungry. Please, do you have something for a poor unfortunate one like me?" A plaintive plea by one of the numerous beggars who wandered up to the family tent would set off a flurry of activity. Someone would rush to the beggar with some tsampa, a bit of butter and perhaps yogurt; someone else would dash to Dawa Drolma to divert her from attending to the beggar herself. Others would station themselves protectively by the precious shrine objects and the various repositories of the family's wealth.
If relatives and servants couldn't restrain Dawa Drolma intime, or worse, if the beggars called when they were away, inevitably she would seize some valuable item from the family coffers–the silver offering bowls, a piece of Chinese silk, an auntie's favorite turquoise hair ornament–as her offering to the incredulous mendicants. Her compassion was limitless, and she wept over their predicament. Her attachment to the family's wealth was slight, so they took to hiding it, even though they commented among themselves that the child's spontaneous generosity was definitely a sign that she was extraordinary, surely an emanation of the deity Tara herself, an embodiment of enlightened wisdom and compassion.
Our family, the Tromges, was a large clan that lived in the Tromtar region of Eastern Tibet. Tromtar is a high plateau, probably more than 13,000 feet in elevation. Pilgrims making their way from Tromtar to Lhasa, which is at 11,000 feet, used to complain about the heaviness of the low land atmosphere. It is a region of glittering lakes, green meadows, alpine flowers and resplendent skies, and there the family's thousands of sheep and yaks were pastured. Our family, like most in that region, lived in black, yak hair tents. Ours was a prosperous clan, and one of our tents was large enough to hold four hundred persons. There was only one other tent that large in all of Eastern Tibet. Occasionally, when lamas and monks were assembled to conduct great ceremonies, the tent would be filled to capacity. The assembly sat in long rows on Tibetan rugs and sheepskins, with the high lamas on thrones at the far end, and everyone drank salt tea and made jokes until the ceremony began. Then, as the warm glow of butterlamps and the smoke of cedar incense filled the atmosphere, the deep chanting of the liturgy would commence with its awesome accompaniment of cymbals, drums, oboes, conches and horns, resonating far beyond the tent until it dissolved in the stillness of the thin air.
There were several highly realized lamas in each generation of Tromge family, and my mother was the most famous in hers. She was one of Tibet's five great wisdom dakinis–female emanations who spontaneously benefit beings by their activities. Terton Jigme Khakyod Wangpo had prophesied her birth as an emanation of the longevity deity White Tara and an incarnation of Yeshe Tsogyal, Tibet's most revered female practitioner and the spiritual companion of Padmasambhava, the Vajrayana master who propagated Buddhist teachings in Tibet in the 8th century.
Dawa Drolma was also a delog, one who has crossed the threshold of death, traveled in realms of existence beyond those visible to us as humans and returned to tell about it. One day, when she was about sixteen, Tara appeared to her, not in a luminous vision, but in person, and told her that she would soon fall ill and die. However, if she followed certain instructions explicitly, she would be able to revivify her dead body and benefit others by teaching about her experience. Soon after, Dawa Drolma had a series of bad dreams that revolved around three demonic sisters who were robbing all beings of their vitality. With black lariats and silk banners they tried to ensnare Dawa Drolma around the waist, but the deity White Tara prevented them from doing so by surrounding her with a protection circle. Eventually, however, the menace in the dreams was so strong that Dawa Drolma knew it foretold her imminent death. She went to her uncle, the great Tromge Trungpa Rinpoche, and with his help made the necessary arrangements, just asTara had instructed. Then she became extremely sick and, despite the efforts of the many doctors who were summoned, she died.
Exactly as she had stipulated, in the presence of an attendant named Drolma, her corpse was washed in consecrated saffron water and dressed in new clothes. It was carefully laid out in a room without a morsel of food or a drop of water. The door was draped in blue cloth, padlocked and sealed with the sign of the wrathful fire scorpion, and a man dressed in blue stood guard outside. Everyone was warned to refrain from any ordinary chatter, to recite only prayers and mantra. For the next five days and nights Tromge Trungpa, along with several other lamas and monks, did prayers and ceremonies continuously in the adjacent room. At the completion of this vigil, Tromge Trungpa entered the room where the corpse lay, cold and pale as he had left it, and recited powerful long-life prayers to summon Dawa Drolma's mindstream back into her body. In the account she dictated several days after her return, she described her reentry into her body:
When the consciousness re-entered my physical body, I sneezed violently and experienced total disorientation. An instant later, I was in a state of faith and joy at the visions of the pure realm, and horror at the karmic visions of the hells. I felt as though I were waking up from sleep. Uncle Trungpa was standing in front of me, holding a longevity arrow and looking at me with concern in his bloodshot eyes. I was unable to say a word, as though I were a bit shy. Everyone was crying and excited, and saying things such as, "Wasn't it difficult?" "You must be hungry!" "You must be thirsty!" They were almost pouring food and drink over my head. Although I protested, "I feel absolutely no discomfort due to hunger or thirst," they didn't believe me. Everyone was saying, "Eat! Drink!" They all felt joy as immeasurable as a she-camel who has found her lost calf. We all partook of a feast to celebrate.”
During her five-day journey as a delog, my mother's consciousness, unhindered by the constraints of a physical body, traveled freely through all the realms of mind, from the hell realms with their ceaseless, unbearable suffering, to the most exalted purelands of the wisdom beings. For the rest of her life, whenever my mother taught, she drew from her experiences as a delog. Her descriptions of the misery of the other realms were very vivid, and tears came to her eyes as she spoke. "No matter how difficult your life is in this human experience," she would say,"there is no comparison between the difficulties here and those in other realms." No one doubted that she spoke from direct experience, and her credibility was enhanced by the messages she brought to people from their deceased relatives. In particular there was a very wealthy businessman named Drilo whose sister had died and was now in a state of tortuous suffering. By chance my mother encountered her, and she begged my mother to relay a message to Drilo, telling him the whereabouts of certain valuables she had secreted. ''Tell my brother to use those things for ceremonies and dedicate the prayers to me so that I may find release from this terrible suffering more quickly." When my mother returned to the human realm, she sent a message to Drilo, but he was busy shearing sheep and refused–rather rudely–to meet with her. So she sent him a letter telling him where the valuables were hidden. Drilo was astounded, for only he had known that these things were missing. Upon finding them by the letter's instructions, he decided it would be worthwhile to meet my mother. Their meeting produced a second startling revelation when my mother informed him, "Unless you take certain steps, you will join your sister in the realms of hell."
Drilo replied, "If you can tell me exactly what to do, I will do it, but only if it prevents me from going to hell altogether. I won't do anything just to go to hell for less time, and I won't meditate. I'm a businessman, not a practitioner, and I won't devote my time to practice."
''Then I will be very direct," she said "Each day you must sponsor at least a hundred butterlamps, each year you must sponsor a reading of all one hundred and eight volumes of the Buddhist canon and in your lifetime you must sponsor the building of a mani wall." A mani wall is a wall built of stones carved with the mantra Om Mani Padme Hung. As a businessman, sponsoring these devotions seemed to Drilo a good bargain, a relatively easy way to buy his way out of hell. But when my mother told him that he needed to recite the mantra Om Mani Padma Hung daily, he balked. "I won't do it I don't have time." Almost every Tibetan recites this mantra of the lord of compassion, Avalokiteshvara, many times a day, and some very virtuous practitioners go into retreat to recite one hundred and eight million. Drilo stubbornly refused to do even one hundred and eight until another demonstration of my mother's extraordinary abilities changed his mind.
My mother was asked to do seven days of long-life ceremonies for another lama. At the beginning of the ceremonies, as was customary, an arrow decorated with streamers of colored silk was put on the altar and a piece of string was cut the same length as the arrow. If the length of the arrow increased in the course of the ceremonies, it would be an indication that the length of the lama's life had correspondingly increased. My mother gave Drilo the piece of string and told him to keep it until the conclusion of the ceremonies.
Usually my mother was a perfectionist about every aspect of ritual. There are monks living today who remember occasions when she flung her bell across the room or whacked them on the head with her bone trumpet because they weren't mindful and made a foolish error. However, on the occasion of this long-life ceremony she herself seemed distracted. On the last day she actually slept through the morning session, but upon awakening, she told her attendant that she had had a wonderful dream in which a wisdom being had brought a blessing. "Go look on the altar."
He went, but found nothing unusual. Thinking it a very bad sign to come back empty-handed, he gathered up some black mustard seeds. Seeing them, my mother was puzzled and said, "I don't think this is it. Go look again."
This time the attendant found hundreds of small pills sprinkled everywhere. Such pills hold the essence of long-life blessing, and their spontaneous manifestation was regarded as an indisputable sign of the effectiveness of the ceremonies.
My mother then called Drilo and they measured the string he had kept against the arrow on the altar. The length of the arrow had increased by an inch, another sign that the ceremonies had borne fruit.
Drilo's faith in my mother became so strong that he could no longer refuse to say Om Mani Padme Hung one hundred and eight times a day. He wouldn't buy a mala (rosary) for counting, so he counted the recitations on his fingers. No one ever suspected him of making a mistake and saying one hundred and nine. He did, however, walk around murmuring, "Delog Dawa Drolma Chen"-"Great Delog Dawa Drolma"- and he became the sponsor of many of her dharma projects, including the construction of a huge and costly prayer wheel filled with the mantra of the deity Vajrasattva.
*Excerpted from DawaDrolma's account of her experience as a delog, to be published by Padma Publishing.
The following is an excerpt from Chagdud Rinpoche's autobiography, Lord of the Dance, to be published by Padma Publishing in the fall of 1992. See Padma Publishing News for further details.
My mother Dawa Drolma was remarkable for her beauty, her fierce temper and her unconditional generosity. When she was a child, the family found this last quality most disturbing. "Venerable people, I am old, penniless, and very hungry. Please, do you have something for a poor unfortunate one like me?" A plaintive plea by one of the numerous beggars who wandered up to the family tent would set off a flurry of activity. Someone would rush to the beggar with some tsampa, a bit of butter and perhaps yogurt; someone else would dash to Dawa Drolma to divert her from attending to the beggar herself. Others would station themselves protectively by the precious shrine objects and the various repositories of the family's wealth.
If relatives and servants couldn't restrain Dawa Drolma intime, or worse, if the beggars called when they were away, inevitably she would seize some valuable item from the family coffers–the silver offering bowls, a piece of Chinese silk, an auntie's favorite turquoise hair ornament–as her offering to the incredulous mendicants. Her compassion was limitless, and she wept over their predicament. Her attachment to the family's wealth was slight, so they took to hiding it, even though they commented among themselves that the child's spontaneous generosity was definitely a sign that she was extraordinary, surely an emanation of the deity Tara herself, an embodiment of enlightened wisdom and compassion.
Our family, the Tromges, was a large clan that lived in the Tromtar region of Eastern Tibet. Tromtar is a high plateau, probably more than 13,000 feet in elevation. Pilgrims making their way from Tromtar to Lhasa, which is at 11,000 feet, used to complain about the heaviness of the low land atmosphere. It is a region of glittering lakes, green meadows, alpine flowers and resplendent skies, and there the family's thousands of sheep and yaks were pastured. Our family, like most in that region, lived in black, yak hair tents. Ours was a prosperous clan, and one of our tents was large enough to hold four hundred persons. There was only one other tent that large in all of Eastern Tibet. Occasionally, when lamas and monks were assembled to conduct great ceremonies, the tent would be filled to capacity. The assembly sat in long rows on Tibetan rugs and sheepskins, with the high lamas on thrones at the far end, and everyone drank salt tea and made jokes until the ceremony began. Then, as the warm glow of butterlamps and the smoke of cedar incense filled the atmosphere, the deep chanting of the liturgy would commence with its awesome accompaniment of cymbals, drums, oboes, conches and horns, resonating far beyond the tent until it dissolved in the stillness of the thin air.
There were several highly realized lamas in each generation of Tromge family, and my mother was the most famous in hers. She was one of Tibet's five great wisdom dakinis–female emanations who spontaneously benefit beings by their activities. Terton Jigme Khakyod Wangpo had prophesied her birth as an emanation of the longevity deity White Tara and an incarnation of Yeshe Tsogyal, Tibet's most revered female practitioner and the spiritual companion of Padmasambhava, the Vajrayana master who propagated Buddhist teachings in Tibet in the 8th century.
Dawa Drolma was also a delog, one who has crossed the threshold of death, traveled in realms of existence beyond those visible to us as humans and returned to tell about it. One day, when she was about sixteen, Tara appeared to her, not in a luminous vision, but in person, and told her that she would soon fall ill and die. However, if she followed certain instructions explicitly, she would be able to revivify her dead body and benefit others by teaching about her experience. Soon after, Dawa Drolma had a series of bad dreams that revolved around three demonic sisters who were robbing all beings of their vitality. With black lariats and silk banners they tried to ensnare Dawa Drolma around the waist, but the deity White Tara prevented them from doing so by surrounding her with a protection circle. Eventually, however, the menace in the dreams was so strong that Dawa Drolma knew it foretold her imminent death. She went to her uncle, the great Tromge Trungpa Rinpoche, and with his help made the necessary arrangements, just asTara had instructed. Then she became extremely sick and, despite the efforts of the many doctors who were summoned, she died.
Exactly as she had stipulated, in the presence of an attendant named Drolma, her corpse was washed in consecrated saffron water and dressed in new clothes. It was carefully laid out in a room without a morsel of food or a drop of water. The door was draped in blue cloth, padlocked and sealed with the sign of the wrathful fire scorpion, and a man dressed in blue stood guard outside. Everyone was warned to refrain from any ordinary chatter, to recite only prayers and mantra. For the next five days and nights Tromge Trungpa, along with several other lamas and monks, did prayers and ceremonies continuously in the adjacent room. At the completion of this vigil, Tromge Trungpa entered the room where the corpse lay, cold and pale as he had left it, and recited powerful long-life prayers to summon Dawa Drolma's mindstream back into her body. In the account she dictated several days after her return, she described her reentry into her body:
When the consciousness re-entered my physical body, I sneezed violently and experienced total disorientation. An instant later, I was in a state of faith and joy at the visions of the pure realm, and horror at the karmic visions of the hells. I felt as though I were waking up from sleep. Uncle Trungpa was standing in front of me, holding a longevity arrow and looking at me with concern in his bloodshot eyes. I was unable to say a word, as though I were a bit shy. Everyone was crying and excited, and saying things such as, "Wasn't it difficult?" "You must be hungry!" "You must be thirsty!" They were almost pouring food and drink over my head. Although I protested, "I feel absolutely no discomfort due to hunger or thirst," they didn't believe me. Everyone was saying, "Eat! Drink!" They all felt joy as immeasurable as a she-camel who has found her lost calf. We all partook of a feast to celebrate.”
During her five-day journey as a delog, my mother's consciousness, unhindered by the constraints of a physical body, traveled freely through all the realms of mind, from the hell realms with their ceaseless, unbearable suffering, to the most exalted purelands of the wisdom beings. For the rest of her life, whenever my mother taught, she drew from her experiences as a delog. Her descriptions of the misery of the other realms were very vivid, and tears came to her eyes as she spoke. "No matter how difficult your life is in this human experience," she would say,"there is no comparison between the difficulties here and those in other realms." No one doubted that she spoke from direct experience, and her credibility was enhanced by the messages she brought to people from their deceased relatives. In particular there was a very wealthy businessman named Drilo whose sister had died and was now in a state of tortuous suffering. By chance my mother encountered her, and she begged my mother to relay a message to Drilo, telling him the whereabouts of certain valuables she had secreted. ''Tell my brother to use those things for ceremonies and dedicate the prayers to me so that I may find release from this terrible suffering more quickly." When my mother returned to the human realm, she sent a message to Drilo, but he was busy shearing sheep and refused–rather rudely–to meet with her. So she sent him a letter telling him where the valuables were hidden. Drilo was astounded, for only he had known that these things were missing. Upon finding them by the letter's instructions, he decided it would be worthwhile to meet my mother. Their meeting produced a second startling revelation when my mother informed him, "Unless you take certain steps, you will join your sister in the realms of hell."
Drilo replied, "If you can tell me exactly what to do, I will do it, but only if it prevents me from going to hell altogether. I won't do anything just to go to hell for less time, and I won't meditate. I'm a businessman, not a practitioner, and I won't devote my time to practice."
''Then I will be very direct," she said "Each day you must sponsor at least a hundred butterlamps, each year you must sponsor a reading of all one hundred and eight volumes of the Buddhist canon and in your lifetime you must sponsor the building of a mani wall." A mani wall is a wall built of stones carved with the mantra Om Mani Padme Hung. As a businessman, sponsoring these devotions seemed to Drilo a good bargain, a relatively easy way to buy his way out of hell. But when my mother told him that he needed to recite the mantra Om Mani Padma Hung daily, he balked. "I won't do it I don't have time." Almost every Tibetan recites this mantra of the lord of compassion, Avalokiteshvara, many times a day, and some very virtuous practitioners go into retreat to recite one hundred and eight million. Drilo stubbornly refused to do even one hundred and eight until another demonstration of my mother's extraordinary abilities changed his mind.
My mother was asked to do seven days of long-life ceremonies for another lama. At the beginning of the ceremonies, as was customary, an arrow decorated with streamers of colored silk was put on the altar and a piece of string was cut the same length as the arrow. If the length of the arrow increased in the course of the ceremonies, it would be an indication that the length of the lama's life had correspondingly increased. My mother gave Drilo the piece of string and told him to keep it until the conclusion of the ceremonies.
Usually my mother was a perfectionist about every aspect of ritual. There are monks living today who remember occasions when she flung her bell across the room or whacked them on the head with her bone trumpet because they weren't mindful and made a foolish error. However, on the occasion of this long-life ceremony she herself seemed distracted. On the last day she actually slept through the morning session, but upon awakening, she told her attendant that she had had a wonderful dream in which a wisdom being had brought a blessing. "Go look on the altar."
He went, but found nothing unusual. Thinking it a very bad sign to come back empty-handed, he gathered up some black mustard seeds. Seeing them, my mother was puzzled and said, "I don't think this is it. Go look again."
This time the attendant found hundreds of small pills sprinkled everywhere. Such pills hold the essence of long-life blessing, and their spontaneous manifestation was regarded as an indisputable sign of the effectiveness of the ceremonies.
My mother then called Drilo and they measured the string he had kept against the arrow on the altar. The length of the arrow had increased by an inch, another sign that the ceremonies had borne fruit.
Drilo's faith in my mother became so strong that he could no longer refuse to say Om Mani Padme Hung one hundred and eight times a day. He wouldn't buy a mala (rosary) for counting, so he counted the recitations on his fingers. No one ever suspected him of making a mistake and saying one hundred and nine. He did, however, walk around murmuring, "Delog Dawa Drolma Chen"-"Great Delog Dawa Drolma"- and he became the sponsor of many of her dharma projects, including the construction of a huge and costly prayer wheel filled with the mantra of the deity Vajrasattva.
*Excerpted from DawaDrolma's account of her experience as a delog, to be published by Padma Publishing.
The following is an excerpt from Chagdud Rinpoche's autobiography, Lord of the Dance, to be published by Padma Publishing in the fall of 1992. See Padma Publishing News for further details.
My mother Dawa Drolma was remarkable for her beauty, her fierce temper and her unconditional generosity. When she was a child, the family found this last quality most disturbing. "Venerable people, I am old, penniless, and very hungry. Please, do you have something for a poor unfortunate one like me?" A plaintive plea by one of the numerous beggars who wandered up to the family tent would set off a flurry of activity. Someone would rush to the beggar with some tsampa, a bit of butter and perhaps yogurt; someone else would dash to Dawa Drolma to divert her from attending to the beggar herself. Others would station themselves protectively by the precious shrine objects and the various repositories of the family's wealth.
If relatives and servants couldn't restrain Dawa Drolma intime, or worse, if the beggars called when they were away, inevitably she would seize some valuable item from the family coffers–the silver offering bowls, a piece of Chinese silk, an auntie's favorite turquoise hair ornament–as her offering to the incredulous mendicants. Her compassion was limitless, and she wept over their predicament. Her attachment to the family's wealth was slight, so they took to hiding it, even though they commented among themselves that the child's spontaneous generosity was definitely a sign that she was extraordinary, surely an emanation of the deity Tara herself, an embodiment of enlightened wisdom and compassion.
Our family, the Tromges, was a large clan that lived in the Tromtar region of Eastern Tibet. Tromtar is a high plateau, probably more than 13,000 feet in elevation. Pilgrims making their way from Tromtar to Lhasa, which is at 11,000 feet, used to complain about the heaviness of the low land atmosphere. It is a region of glittering lakes, green meadows, alpine flowers and resplendent skies, and there the family's thousands of sheep and yaks were pastured. Our family, like most in that region, lived in black, yak hair tents. Ours was a prosperous clan, and one of our tents was large enough to hold four hundred persons. There was only one other tent that large in all of Eastern Tibet. Occasionally, when lamas and monks were assembled to conduct great ceremonies, the tent would be filled to capacity. The assembly sat in long rows on Tibetan rugs and sheepskins, with the high lamas on thrones at the far end, and everyone drank salt tea and made jokes until the ceremony began. Then, as the warm glow of butterlamps and the smoke of cedar incense filled the atmosphere, the deep chanting of the liturgy would commence with its awesome accompaniment of cymbals, drums, oboes, conches and horns, resonating far beyond the tent until it dissolved in the stillness of the thin air.
There were several highly realized lamas in each generation of Tromge family, and my mother was the most famous in hers. She was one of Tibet's five great wisdom dakinis–female emanations who spontaneously benefit beings by their activities. Terton Jigme Khakyod Wangpo had prophesied her birth as an emanation of the longevity deity White Tara and an incarnation of Yeshe Tsogyal, Tibet's most revered female practitioner and the spiritual companion of Padmasambhava, the Vajrayana master who propagated Buddhist teachings in Tibet in the 8th century.
Dawa Drolma was also a delog, one who has crossed the threshold of death, traveled in realms of existence beyond those visible to us as humans and returned to tell about it. One day, when she was about sixteen, Tara appeared to her, not in a luminous vision, but in person, and told her that she would soon fall ill and die. However, if she followed certain instructions explicitly, she would be able to revivify her dead body and benefit others by teaching about her experience. Soon after, Dawa Drolma had a series of bad dreams that revolved around three demonic sisters who were robbing all beings of their vitality. With black lariats and silk banners they tried to ensnare Dawa Drolma around the waist, but the deity White Tara prevented them from doing so by surrounding her with a protection circle. Eventually, however, the menace in the dreams was so strong that Dawa Drolma knew it foretold her imminent death. She went to her uncle, the great Tromge Trungpa Rinpoche, and with his help made the necessary arrangements, just asTara had instructed. Then she became extremely sick and, despite the efforts of the many doctors who were summoned, she died.
Exactly as she had stipulated, in the presence of an attendant named Drolma, her corpse was washed in consecrated saffron water and dressed in new clothes. It was carefully laid out in a room without a morsel of food or a drop of water. The door was draped in blue cloth, padlocked and sealed with the sign of the wrathful fire scorpion, and a man dressed in blue stood guard outside. Everyone was warned to refrain from any ordinary chatter, to recite only prayers and mantra. For the next five days and nights Tromge Trungpa, along with several other lamas and monks, did prayers and ceremonies continuously in the adjacent room. At the completion of this vigil, Tromge Trungpa entered the room where the corpse lay, cold and pale as he had left it, and recited powerful long-life prayers to summon Dawa Drolma's mindstream back into her body. In the account she dictated several days after her return, she described her reentry into her body:
When the consciousness re-entered my physical body, I sneezed violently and experienced total disorientation. An instant later, I was in a state of faith and joy at the visions of the pure realm, and horror at the karmic visions of the hells. I felt as though I were waking up from sleep. Uncle Trungpa was standing in front of me, holding a longevity arrow and looking at me with concern in his bloodshot eyes. I was unable to say a word, as though I were a bit shy. Everyone was crying and excited, and saying things such as, "Wasn't it difficult?" "You must be hungry!" "You must be thirsty!" They were almost pouring food and drink over my head. Although I protested, "I feel absolutely no discomfort due to hunger or thirst," they didn't believe me. Everyone was saying, "Eat! Drink!" They all felt joy as immeasurable as a she-camel who has found her lost calf. We all partook of a feast to celebrate.”
During her five-day journey as a delog, my mother's consciousness, unhindered by the constraints of a physical body, traveled freely through all the realms of mind, from the hell realms with their ceaseless, unbearable suffering, to the most exalted purelands of the wisdom beings. For the rest of her life, whenever my mother taught, she drew from her experiences as a delog. Her descriptions of the misery of the other realms were very vivid, and tears came to her eyes as she spoke. "No matter how difficult your life is in this human experience," she would say,"there is no comparison between the difficulties here and those in other realms." No one doubted that she spoke from direct experience, and her credibility was enhanced by the messages she brought to people from their deceased relatives. In particular there was a very wealthy businessman named Drilo whose sister had died and was now in a state of tortuous suffering. By chance my mother encountered her, and she begged my mother to relay a message to Drilo, telling him the whereabouts of certain valuables she had secreted. ''Tell my brother to use those things for ceremonies and dedicate the prayers to me so that I may find release from this terrible suffering more quickly." When my mother returned to the human realm, she sent a message to Drilo, but he was busy shearing sheep and refused–rather rudely–to meet with her. So she sent him a letter telling him where the valuables were hidden. Drilo was astounded, for only he had known that these things were missing. Upon finding them by the letter's instructions, he decided it would be worthwhile to meet my mother. Their meeting produced a second startling revelation when my mother informed him, "Unless you take certain steps, you will join your sister in the realms of hell."
Drilo replied, "If you can tell me exactly what to do, I will do it, but only if it prevents me from going to hell altogether. I won't do anything just to go to hell for less time, and I won't meditate. I'm a businessman, not a practitioner, and I won't devote my time to practice."
''Then I will be very direct," she said "Each day you must sponsor at least a hundred butterlamps, each year you must sponsor a reading of all one hundred and eight volumes of the Buddhist canon and in your lifetime you must sponsor the building of a mani wall." A mani wall is a wall built of stones carved with the mantra Om Mani Padme Hung. As a businessman, sponsoring these devotions seemed to Drilo a good bargain, a relatively easy way to buy his way out of hell. But when my mother told him that he needed to recite the mantra Om Mani Padma Hung daily, he balked. "I won't do it I don't have time." Almost every Tibetan recites this mantra of the lord of compassion, Avalokiteshvara, many times a day, and some very virtuous practitioners go into retreat to recite one hundred and eight million. Drilo stubbornly refused to do even one hundred and eight until another demonstration of my mother's extraordinary abilities changed his mind.
My mother was asked to do seven days of long-life ceremonies for another lama. At the beginning of the ceremonies, as was customary, an arrow decorated with streamers of colored silk was put on the altar and a piece of string was cut the same length as the arrow. If the length of the arrow increased in the course of the ceremonies, it would be an indication that the length of the lama's life had correspondingly increased. My mother gave Drilo the piece of string and told him to keep it until the conclusion of the ceremonies.
Usually my mother was a perfectionist about every aspect of ritual. There are monks living today who remember occasions when she flung her bell across the room or whacked them on the head with her bone trumpet because they weren't mindful and made a foolish error. However, on the occasion of this long-life ceremony she herself seemed distracted. On the last day she actually slept through the morning session, but upon awakening, she told her attendant that she had had a wonderful dream in which a wisdom being had brought a blessing. "Go look on the altar."
He went, but found nothing unusual. Thinking it a very bad sign to come back empty-handed, he gathered up some black mustard seeds. Seeing them, my mother was puzzled and said, "I don't think this is it. Go look again."
This time the attendant found hundreds of small pills sprinkled everywhere. Such pills hold the essence of long-life blessing, and their spontaneous manifestation was regarded as an indisputable sign of the effectiveness of the ceremonies.
My mother then called Drilo and they measured the string he had kept against the arrow on the altar. The length of the arrow had increased by an inch, another sign that the ceremonies had borne fruit.
Drilo's faith in my mother became so strong that he could no longer refuse to say Om Mani Padme Hung one hundred and eight times a day. He wouldn't buy a mala (rosary) for counting, so he counted the recitations on his fingers. No one ever suspected him of making a mistake and saying one hundred and nine. He did, however, walk around murmuring, "Delog Dawa Drolma Chen"-"Great Delog Dawa Drolma"- and he became the sponsor of many of her dharma projects, including the construction of a huge and costly prayer wheel filled with the mantra of the deity Vajrasattva.
*Excerpted from DawaDrolma's account of her experience as a delog, to be published by Padma Publishing.
The following is an excerpt from Chagdud Rinpoche's autobiography, Lord of the Dance, to be published by Padma Publishing in the fall of 1992. See Padma Publishing News for further details.
My mother Dawa Drolma was remarkable for her beauty, her fierce temper and her unconditional generosity. When she was a child, the family found this last quality most disturbing. "Venerable people, I am old, penniless, and very hungry. Please, do you have something for a poor unfortunate one like me?" A plaintive plea by one of the numerous beggars who wandered up to the family tent would set off a flurry of activity. Someone would rush to the beggar with some tsampa, a bit of butter and perhaps yogurt; someone else would dash to Dawa Drolma to divert her from attending to the beggar herself. Others would station themselves protectively by the precious shrine objects and the various repositories of the family's wealth.
If relatives and servants couldn't restrain Dawa Drolma intime, or worse, if the beggars called when they were away, inevitably she would seize some valuable item from the family coffers–the silver offering bowls, a piece of Chinese silk, an auntie's favorite turquoise hair ornament–as her offering to the incredulous mendicants. Her compassion was limitless, and she wept over their predicament. Her attachment to the family's wealth was slight, so they took to hiding it, even though they commented among themselves that the child's spontaneous generosity was definitely a sign that she was extraordinary, surely an emanation of the deity Tara herself, an embodiment of enlightened wisdom and compassion.
Our family, the Tromges, was a large clan that lived in the Tromtar region of Eastern Tibet. Tromtar is a high plateau, probably more than 13,000 feet in elevation. Pilgrims making their way from Tromtar to Lhasa, which is at 11,000 feet, used to complain about the heaviness of the low land atmosphere. It is a region of glittering lakes, green meadows, alpine flowers and resplendent skies, and there the family's thousands of sheep and yaks were pastured. Our family, like most in that region, lived in black, yak hair tents. Ours was a prosperous clan, and one of our tents was large enough to hold four hundred persons. There was only one other tent that large in all of Eastern Tibet. Occasionally, when lamas and monks were assembled to conduct great ceremonies, the tent would be filled to capacity. The assembly sat in long rows on Tibetan rugs and sheepskins, with the high lamas on thrones at the far end, and everyone drank salt tea and made jokes until the ceremony began. Then, as the warm glow of butterlamps and the smoke of cedar incense filled the atmosphere, the deep chanting of the liturgy would commence with its awesome accompaniment of cymbals, drums, oboes, conches and horns, resonating far beyond the tent until it dissolved in the stillness of the thin air.
There were several highly realized lamas in each generation of Tromge family, and my mother was the most famous in hers. She was one of Tibet's five great wisdom dakinis–female emanations who spontaneously benefit beings by their activities. Terton Jigme Khakyod Wangpo had prophesied her birth as an emanation of the longevity deity White Tara and an incarnation of Yeshe Tsogyal, Tibet's most revered female practitioner and the spiritual companion of Padmasambhava, the Vajrayana master who propagated Buddhist teachings in Tibet in the 8th century.
Dawa Drolma was also a delog, one who has crossed the threshold of death, traveled in realms of existence beyond those visible to us as humans and returned to tell about it. One day, when she was about sixteen, Tara appeared to her, not in a luminous vision, but in person, and told her that she would soon fall ill and die. However, if she followed certain instructions explicitly, she would be able to revivify her dead body and benefit others by teaching about her experience. Soon after, Dawa Drolma had a series of bad dreams that revolved around three demonic sisters who were robbing all beings of their vitality. With black lariats and silk banners they tried to ensnare Dawa Drolma around the waist, but the deity White Tara prevented them from doing so by surrounding her with a protection circle. Eventually, however, the menace in the dreams was so strong that Dawa Drolma knew it foretold her imminent death. She went to her uncle, the great Tromge Trungpa Rinpoche, and with his help made the necessary arrangements, just asTara had instructed. Then she became extremely sick and, despite the efforts of the many doctors who were summoned, she died.
Exactly as she had stipulated, in the presence of an attendant named Drolma, her corpse was washed in consecrated saffron water and dressed in new clothes. It was carefully laid out in a room without a morsel of food or a drop of water. The door was draped in blue cloth, padlocked and sealed with the sign of the wrathful fire scorpion, and a man dressed in blue stood guard outside. Everyone was warned to refrain from any ordinary chatter, to recite only prayers and mantra. For the next five days and nights Tromge Trungpa, along with several other lamas and monks, did prayers and ceremonies continuously in the adjacent room. At the completion of this vigil, Tromge Trungpa entered the room where the corpse lay, cold and pale as he had left it, and recited powerful long-life prayers to summon Dawa Drolma's mindstream back into her body. In the account she dictated several days after her return, she described her reentry into her body:
When the consciousness re-entered my physical body, I sneezed violently and experienced total disorientation. An instant later, I was in a state of faith and joy at the visions of the pure realm, and horror at the karmic visions of the hells. I felt as though I were waking up from sleep. Uncle Trungpa was standing in front of me, holding a longevity arrow and looking at me with concern in his bloodshot eyes. I was unable to say a word, as though I were a bit shy. Everyone was crying and excited, and saying things such as, "Wasn't it difficult?" "You must be hungry!" "You must be thirsty!" They were almost pouring food and drink over my head. Although I protested, "I feel absolutely no discomfort due to hunger or thirst," they didn't believe me. Everyone was saying, "Eat! Drink!" They all felt joy as immeasurable as a she-camel who has found her lost calf. We all partook of a feast to celebrate.”
During her five-day journey as a delog, my mother's consciousness, unhindered by the constraints of a physical body, traveled freely through all the realms of mind, from the hell realms with their ceaseless, unbearable suffering, to the most exalted purelands of the wisdom beings. For the rest of her life, whenever my mother taught, she drew from her experiences as a delog. Her descriptions of the misery of the other realms were very vivid, and tears came to her eyes as she spoke. "No matter how difficult your life is in this human experience," she would say,"there is no comparison between the difficulties here and those in other realms." No one doubted that she spoke from direct experience, and her credibility was enhanced by the messages she brought to people from their deceased relatives. In particular there was a very wealthy businessman named Drilo whose sister had died and was now in a state of tortuous suffering. By chance my mother encountered her, and she begged my mother to relay a message to Drilo, telling him the whereabouts of certain valuables she had secreted. ''Tell my brother to use those things for ceremonies and dedicate the prayers to me so that I may find release from this terrible suffering more quickly." When my mother returned to the human realm, she sent a message to Drilo, but he was busy shearing sheep and refused–rather rudely–to meet with her. So she sent him a letter telling him where the valuables were hidden. Drilo was astounded, for only he had known that these things were missing. Upon finding them by the letter's instructions, he decided it would be worthwhile to meet my mother. Their meeting produced a second startling revelation when my mother informed him, "Unless you take certain steps, you will join your sister in the realms of hell."
Drilo replied, "If you can tell me exactly what to do, I will do it, but only if it prevents me from going to hell altogether. I won't do anything just to go to hell for less time, and I won't meditate. I'm a businessman, not a practitioner, and I won't devote my time to practice."
''Then I will be very direct," she said "Each day you must sponsor at least a hundred butterlamps, each year you must sponsor a reading of all one hundred and eight volumes of the Buddhist canon and in your lifetime you must sponsor the building of a mani wall." A mani wall is a wall built of stones carved with the mantra Om Mani Padme Hung. As a businessman, sponsoring these devotions seemed to Drilo a good bargain, a relatively easy way to buy his way out of hell. But when my mother told him that he needed to recite the mantra Om Mani Padma Hung daily, he balked. "I won't do it I don't have time." Almost every Tibetan recites this mantra of the lord of compassion, Avalokiteshvara, many times a day, and some very virtuous practitioners go into retreat to recite one hundred and eight million. Drilo stubbornly refused to do even one hundred and eight until another demonstration of my mother's extraordinary abilities changed his mind.
My mother was asked to do seven days of long-life ceremonies for another lama. At the beginning of the ceremonies, as was customary, an arrow decorated with streamers of colored silk was put on the altar and a piece of string was cut the same length as the arrow. If the length of the arrow increased in the course of the ceremonies, it would be an indication that the length of the lama's life had correspondingly increased. My mother gave Drilo the piece of string and told him to keep it until the conclusion of the ceremonies.
Usually my mother was a perfectionist about every aspect of ritual. There are monks living today who remember occasions when she flung her bell across the room or whacked them on the head with her bone trumpet because they weren't mindful and made a foolish error. However, on the occasion of this long-life ceremony she herself seemed distracted. On the last day she actually slept through the morning session, but upon awakening, she told her attendant that she had had a wonderful dream in which a wisdom being had brought a blessing. "Go look on the altar."
He went, but found nothing unusual. Thinking it a very bad sign to come back empty-handed, he gathered up some black mustard seeds. Seeing them, my mother was puzzled and said, "I don't think this is it. Go look again."
This time the attendant found hundreds of small pills sprinkled everywhere. Such pills hold the essence of long-life blessing, and their spontaneous manifestation was regarded as an indisputable sign of the effectiveness of the ceremonies.
My mother then called Drilo and they measured the string he had kept against the arrow on the altar. The length of the arrow had increased by an inch, another sign that the ceremonies had borne fruit.
Drilo's faith in my mother became so strong that he could no longer refuse to say Om Mani Padme Hung one hundred and eight times a day. He wouldn't buy a mala (rosary) for counting, so he counted the recitations on his fingers. No one ever suspected him of making a mistake and saying one hundred and nine. He did, however, walk around murmuring, "Delog Dawa Drolma Chen"-"Great Delog Dawa Drolma"- and he became the sponsor of many of her dharma projects, including the construction of a huge and costly prayer wheel filled with the mantra of the deity Vajrasattva.
*Excerpted from DawaDrolma's account of her experience as a delog, to be published by Padma Publishing.
