Like a Waking Dream

The Autobiography of Geshe Lhundub Sopa

Lhundub Sopa, Paul Donnelly, Paul Donnelly

• Publisher: Wisdom Publications
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781614290360
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Biographies

Among the generation of elder Tibetan lamas who brought Tibetan Buddhism west in the latter half of the twentieth century, perhaps none has had a greater impact on the academic study of Buddhism than Geshe Lhundub Sopa. He has striven to preserve Tibetan religious culture through tireless work as a professor and religious figure, establishing a functioning Buddhist monastery in the West, organizing the Dalai Lama's visits to the U.S., and offering countless teachings across the country. But prior to his thirty-year career in the first ever academic Buddhist studies program in the United States - a position in which he oversaw the training of many among the seminal generation of American Buddhist studies scholars - Geshe Sopa was the son of peasant farmers, a novice monk in a rural monastery, a virtuoso scholar-monk at one of the prestigious central monasteries in Lhasa, and a survivor of the Tibetan uprising and perilous flight into exile in 1959.In Like a Waking Dream, Geshe Sopa frankly and observantly reflects on how his life in Tibet - a monastic life of yogic simplicity - shaped and prepared him for the unexpected. His is a tale of an exemplary life dedicated to learning, spiritual cultivation, and the service of others from one of the greatest living masters of Tibetan Buddhism.

1. Life in Tsang

UNTIL I was about ten years old, I had many misfortunes: accidents, illnesses, and brushes with death. But when I entered into religious life, my situation improved. Once I entered the monastery I became healthier and happier, and possibilities began to open up that were inconceivable for a layperson from my rural part of Tibet at that time. After that, there was slow but steady progress. I still had many hardships of course, but when I think back on where and when I started, it seems almost unbelievable that I ended up in America. How is it that I am where I am today? I came from a small village in Tsang, went to Lhasa, was forced to flee from Tibet to India, and then somehow found myself in America. Even when I consider only what has happened to me here in America it is amazing. All these things that happened to me seemed like big things at the time. Now they seem like a dream. It’s like a waking dream. When I was young, the West was a place you only heard about in stories; no ordinary person like me knew about such things firsthand. People said that beyond Tibet was India, which had been taken over and ruined by the British. Beyond that, far beyond the ocean, they said that there was a place called America. Ordinary Tibetans would never imagine that they could go to America. But here I am.

I was born in the Shang region of the Tsang province of Tibet.² Shang is best known as the region where the Shangpa Kagyü sect was established by Khyungpo Naljor at the beginning of the second propagation of Buddhism in Tibet in the eleventh century. Shang has many smaller areas within it, and as is often the case with settled areas in Tibet, my village was in a valley between two mountains. The valley itself was called Shum, and my village was called Phordok.

The name Shum comes from the word for “cry.” There is an area of white sand on one of the mountains that can be seen from farther down the valley in the east. When you look up at the mountain from the valley, this white patch looks like a human face. Some say that this has a connection to the time when Padmasambhava was in this area. I’m not sure of the exact story, but it may have been that the name Shum came from people crying when they saw this face, the face of Padmasambhava, and remembered the great things that Padmasambhava did for Tibet. In Tibet there are many places that are named after such features. Phordok means any kind of a mound or bump that sticks up above flat ground. The name of our village was derived from the hill, so Phordok was both the name of the hill and of the village that lay at the foot of the hill.

My family consisted of only my father, my mother, and me. I am their only son. It was the custom in our part of Tibet to use just one part of your full name in everyday use. My father’s name was Losang, and my mother’s name was Buti. The full name that my parents gave me was Dorjé Tsering. My parents married late in their lives. When I was born, my mother was around forty and my father was already fifty, or maybe even older than that. I don’t know for certain.

It was not common in Tibet for one to record the exact date of one’s birth. The year was noted, and when the New Year came around everyone was considered to be one year older. Some high lamas and other important people would know their exact birth month and day, but ordinary people would know just the year and that was enough. I did not have many relatives, so after my parents died there was no one who remembered the exact month and day of my birth. So like many Tibetans, I don’t know my exact birthdate. The Tibetan calendar has a twelve-year cycle. Each year is associated with one of twelve animals as well as one of five elements.³ Finally, there is also a two-year cycle: the first year is male, and the second year is female. So every twelve years is the same animal though the element changes. I was born in a pig year. His Holiness the Dalai Lama was also born in a pig year; he is twelve years younger than I am. His Holiness was born in the wood-pig year, and I was born in the water-pig year. In the Western calendar, this was 1923.

Pordok was a farming community; people in the area grew many crops. They grew barley, wheat, and a kind of black pea that we ground and added to tsampa. Tsampa is a Tibetan staple made of coarsely ground roasted barley flour. Tibetans usually eat tsampa by mixing it with butter tea and making a ball of dough. The black peas we grew were larger than the peas here in America. When they were coarsely ground, we also used them for horse feed. Wealthier people especially would use these peas in this way. Ordinary people ground them into flour and mixed this with barley flour for our tsampa. This gave the tsampa a slightly sweet taste. We also grew mustard plants and extracted oil from the seeds. The mustard plants had long rigid stems with beautiful yellow flowers on top. The plants had pods, with many seeds inside. We planted mustard and peas in a field together. The peas had a thin, weak stem and a tendency to bend down when the pods developed. By planting them mixed in with the mustard plants, they were protected, and the pods wouldn’t lie on the ground and rot. That is the way farming was done in that area of Tibet. In the summer when the mustard plants flowered, the peas couldn’t be seen. From high on the mountainside one would see entire fields filled with huge, beautiful yellow flowers.

My family had a small piece of farm land. I’m not sure if we owned the land we farmed or if it belonged to someone else. Land was often owned by the local or central government, or by aristocratic families or a monastery or a labrang, which is the estate of a lama, but ordinary people would work the land like their own. There was a basic unit of land called a kang. I don’t know if it was an acre or more or less, but in any case it was a sizeable area. Some families held one of these units or only a half, and some families had two, three, or more. My family held half a kang.

People had to pay a tax based on how much land they farmed, so those who held several kang would have to pay more than someone who just had one or one half. A local official, who was something like a governor, collected this tax and sent it to the administration. Tsang was part of the domain ruled by the Panchen Lama’s government in Shikatsé, so our taxes went there, but most other parts of Tibet would pay tax to the central government in Lhasa. The Panchen Lama was widely considered to be the second-highest religious figure in Tibet, after the Dalai Lama. The lineage of the Panchen Lamas began when the Fifth Dalai Lama bestowed the title of Panchen Lama on his own teacher, Losang Chökyi Gyaltsen. Panchen is a shortened form of pandita chenpo, which means “great scholar.” The Panchen Lamas had political power over the Tsang region for centuries, though by our time this power was not absolute.

In the fall, people who worked the land had to send grain to the central government, or a local representative of the government would collect money from the people who lived in the area under his jurisdiction. Similarly, if the government needed to raise an army, each family would be responsible for providing support for it based on how much land they held. I don’t really know the system very well, but it worked something like that.

On the hilltop above our village there was a Nyingma lama’s labrang. It was not a monastery—the head lama there was married. There were three lamas living at this labrang, a senior one and two younger ones. Unlike the lama lineages that most people are familiar with, these lamas were actually a father and his two sons. The estate had a big house where the whole family lived. In the summer, the lamas were hired by people in the area to protect their crops from hail. The lamas were paid a salary to stay in a small house in the middle of the fields, where they would perform rituals to drive away hailstorms so that the crops were protected from damage.

Every year an elaborate series of rituals was performed at the labrang to drive away all negative forces. This was an important event in our area, and it was an exciting time for people all over the area. People dressed in their finest clothes, and everyone gathered to watch the public events. We children would imitate these things when we played.

The main ritual was performed on the twenty-ninth day of the twelfth Tibetan month, which usually falls sometime in February. Before the main ritual began, there were preparatory rituals. For a week we heard horns sounding from inside the labrang, inviting the gods in. Part of the public ritual took place in the labrang courtyard. The ceremony could be viewed from a balcony that overlooked the courtyard, and people came from all over Shum to see it. I don’t recall very much of that part of the event, but I remember the playing of trumpets and long horns, and that there was some kind of a religious dance. The other part of the public ritual took place outside the labrang compound. One implement used was a yak horn with mantras written on the outside that was filled with some substance, though I don’t remember what. Arrows were shot in the ten directions,⁴ and a human figure was drawn on the ground with a ritual dagger called a phurba. The lama took a large meta l conta iner, which had mantras written inside it, and turned it upside down on top of the figure, stepping up on it and performing a dance. Then ritual cakes called tormas were thrown into a triangular fire. There were more dances, and finally another torma was thrown over the side of the hill, which represented the final banishing of evil forces. This was all done according to the ritual system of the Nyingmapas. It was said that if the ritual were successful, the enemies of the teachings and obstacles to religion would be destroyed.

Some people said that this ritual could also be employed as a type of black magic and could be used against an evil person or family. It was said that when the ritual was done for this purpose, fire would be seen coming from the sky, landing on the house of the person. Much misfortune, including sickness and even death, would befall them as a result of this ritual. People said these things, but the basic purpose of the ritual was to drive away hindrances prior to the new year.

In Tsang, Buddhism was so deeply ingrained in the culture that it was customary for each family to have at least one son go to the monastery. If a family had three or more sons, then two sons would become monks, one son would stay at the family home and continue to tend the farmland, and the last would engage in business outside of the home. The lay sons could, of course, marry. If a family had several children and none of the sons were sent to the monastery, people would think badly of that family. Ordinary people were very religious, even if they didn’t really know very much about their religion. There were many monasteries and nunneries then, and also many small shrines. Even ordinary families had a hanging scroll painting, called a thangka, or an altar in their houses. Everyone knew the refuge formula to the Three Jewels,⁵ and they knew the mantra of Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion: Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ. No one had to be taught these things; we grew up with them all around.

For ordinary people there wasn’t really a sense of belonging to one sect or another in any exclusive way. It depended on what was present in the area where one lived, rather than individual people or families choosing one sect based on their own inclinations or consideration of the different teachings. I went to Ganden Chönkhor basically because I had relatives there, so there was a family connection. Not far beyond Ganden Chönkhor there was another smaller monastery called Dechen Rapgyé where others in our area had relatives. There were perhaps one hundred and eighty monks there. Dechen Rapgyé Monastery was connected to Tashi Lhünpo monastery and followed its traditions.

Historically, much of the Tsang region had been under the control of the Panchen Lama’s government in Tashi Lhünpo dating back to the time of the Fifth Dalai Lama and his teacher, the First Panchen Lama. The Fifth Dalai Lama had given his teacher authority over the area around Tashi Lhünpo. So while we had to follow the orders of and send taxes to the central government in Lhasa, we also had to obey orders from Tashi Lhünpo and send taxes there too. There was a fortress above Ganden Chönkhor that was the government center of our area. The government administrator there was sent by the central government in Lhasa. If there was an order to be delivered or a punishment to be dealt out, it was done by this administrator. Ganden Chönkhor, however, was connected to the Dalai Lama’s government in Lhasa and to the three great monasteries there. For the most part these two systems were similar in that they were both of the Geluk sect, but there were differences. Because of my years at Ganden Chönkhor, my knowledge and experience is primarily of the system followed by the three great monasteries in the Lhasa area.

2. Early Memories

ISTILL REMEMBER A story that my parents told me from when I was very young, around the time that I first began to talk and walk. I think it may have been an indication of a previous life. Far down in the eastern part of the valley, there was another town where an important noble family lived. My parents said that when I was very young I said, “My house is down there, and I have a horse that’s bluish gray. I want to see my horse.” They said, “Where is your horse?” I pointed my finger in the direction of the lower part of the valley, saying, “Way down there.” I was pointing in the direction where the noble family lived. Perhaps one of the old grandfathers or some religious person had died there, and my family thought that I was the rebirth of this person. But my parents never said anything to anyone in the other family or took me there. They were a high noble family and we were just ordinary people, so nothing came of it.

When I was very young I encountered many illnesses and accidents. The first time I came close to death I was only two or three years old, but I remember it clearly. In front of our house there was a hill of piled-up dirt from which you could get up onto the roof. One day my mother laid me down at the bottom of the hill because she had to go up on the roof for some reason. Then she stumbled, which caused a large rock to roll down the hill and hit me where I was lying. I started crying of course, and my mother screamed, “I’ve killed my baby!” The rock hit me on the forehead and, curiously, on the foot. I still have the scars. If the rock had hit me more squarely, I think I would have been killed instantly. Instead it wasn’t really that serious, but there was a lot of blood, so it looked pretty bad. We didn’t have modern medicine then, but we had our own ancient methods. In old houses like ours there were many spiders’ nests. My mother collected some of these and put them on the wounds. This was supposed to stop the bleeding and keep the wounds from getting infected. It must have worked. It’s funny that I so clearly remember my mother crying out and running to me. That was my first brush with death.

In Tibet many natural locations such as mountains, lakes, and streams are considered to be sacred places where deities and nāgas live. One type of deity called a sadak was said to inhabit such places, and it was said that one must be careful not to bother or upset the sadaks or they would become angry. Often, when a child was born, the parents would go to one of these sacred places and make an offering to the deity. They offered prayer flags and incense, and the child would then always have a connection with that deity, who became known as his birth deity.

Because my family farmed a little piece of land, they needed a bull to pull the plow. We had some some cows and sheep as well. Our house had a courtyard where the animals were tied when they came home. There were many trees around our house, and a huge willow tree grew right next to our door. The tree was bent way over, parallel to the ground, with branches that reached all the way to the earth. A pillar supported the trunk of the tree to keep it from bending all the way to the ground or breaking. The branches of the tree formed a closed-in area, and when I was young, maybe five or six years old, I really enjoyed playing around that tree. I went there to sit or play, and I probably didn’t bother to go somewhere else to go to the bathroom, so you can imagine what it was like. Old trees like this were also home to deities and nāgas. We believed that if someone harmed or cut one of these trees, then he would get sick because he had upset the deity. It was said that nāgas did not like dirtiness or impurity, so their places had to be kept clean and protected or they would cause problems. My constant playing under the tree probably made it dirty, and I became very sick.

I grew weak and was afflicted with a kind of rash or pimples. I was sick almost constantly. Though my parents were very poor, they called in an oracle healer. While people are more familiar with the famous major oracles such as Nechung, at that time there were numerous local oracles as well.⁶ Many local deities had oracles whom people consulted on many matters, including sickness. Usually a person would begin a career as an oracle because he had been possessed by one of these deities. Though it began involuntarily, eventually these people came to be able t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Publisher’s Acknowledgment
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama
• Editor’s Preface
• Introduction: A Brief History of Tibet
• 1. Life in Tsang
• 2. Early Memories
• 3. The History of Ganden Chönkhor
• 4. The Beginning of My Life as a Monk
• 5. My Relative the Ritual Specialist
• 6. Living the Religious Life at Ganden Chönkhor
• 7. A Young Monk’s First Two Teachers
• 8. Daily Assemblies and Classes
• 9. Running Away from the Monastery
• 10. Completing One’s Basic Education
• 11. My Uncle and His Position in the Monastery
• 12. Sustenance in the Monastery
• 13. The Structure and Schedule of Education at Ganden Chönkhor
• 14. The System of Philosophical Education
• 15. The Status of Scholar Monks
• 16. The Education of Scholar Monks
• 17. My Teacher Gen Mönlam
• 18. Taking the Kālacakra Empowerment the First Time
• 19. Deciding to Go to Sera
• 20. Getting My Parents’ Permission
• 21. The Journey to Sera
• 22. History of Sera Monastery
• 23. Entry into Tsangpa Regional House and Sera Jé
• 24. Tri Rinpoché
• 25. Geshé Losang Chönden
• 26. Geshé Ngawang Riksal
• 27. Geshé Ngawang Gendün
• 28. Gen Lhündrup Thapkhé and the Pure Monastic Life
• 29. The Monastic Way of Life
• 30. The Disciplinarian’s Lecture
• 31. The Curriculum of Education at Sera Jé
• 32. Studying and Teaching at Sera Jé
• 33. The Structure of Debates at Sera
• 34. The Jang Winter Session
• 35. The Honor of Being Named Rikchung
• 36. The Higher Honor of Being Named Rikchen
• 37. The Different Grades of the Geshé Degree
• 38. The Conferring of the Geshé Degree
• 39. Gyümé and Gyütö Tantric Colleges
• 40. The Reting Affair and Other Troubles
• 41. Being Named Tutor
• 42. Finding Time for Practice
• 43. Phabongkha Rinpoché and His Legacy
• 44. Teachings from Other Great Lamas
• 45. Vajrayoginī Retreat at Phabongkha Labrang
• 46. What I Gained and Lost in Becoming a Tutor
• 47. The Dalai Lama Takes Power and the First Exile
• 48. Gen Lhündrup Thapkhé Is Appointed Abbot of Sera Jé
• 49. A Gradual Transformation
• 50. The Tenth Panchen Lama
• 51. Debating the Dalai Lama
• 52. The Tibetan Uprising of 1959
• 53. Deciding to Leave Sera
• 54. The Beginning of the Exile
• 55. A Brief Respite and the Long Journey out of Tibet
• 56. Arriving in India
• 57. Beginning Life as a Refugee
• 58. From Assam to Dalhousie
• 59. Learning to Live in Exile
• 60. Trying to Keep Tibetan Culture Alive
• 61. An Attempted Trip to Bhutan
• 62. A Letter from His Holiness
• 63. The Situation for Those Who Did Not Escape Tibet
• 64. Going to America
• 65. Our New Life in New Jersey
• 66. Beginning to Teach in America
• 67. Starting a Dharma Center
• 68. His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s First Visit to Madison
• 69. The First Kālacakra Empowerment in America
• 70. My Return to Tibet
• 71. Meeting the Panchen Lama and the Passing of Gen Thapkhé Rinpoché
• 72. The Recent Past
• 73. The Future
• Table of Tibetan Spellings
• Notes
• Glossary
• Select Bibliography
• Index