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Meeting Khenpo Jikme Phuntsok in Eastern Tibet

Khenpo Jikmé Phuntsok (1933–2004) was the most prominent teacher who emerged from the Cultural Revolution to begin teaching and reviving Buddhism in Tibet. He is one of two simultaneous reincarnations of Tertön Sogyal and, here, holds the tertön’s phurba dagger.
from Chapter 2 of Matteo Pistono's "In the Shadow of the Buddha: One Man's Journey of Discovery in Tibet"

Winter 1999, Year of the Earth Hare
Larung Buddhist Encampment, Eastern Tibet

The younger monk with whom I had traveled in the bus to the encamp¬ment had space on his kitchen floor for me to sleep. We wound our way through the muddy alleyways of the encampment to his shack. Monks and nuns chanted scriptures behind the doors we passed. Smoke rose from simple tin chimneys in the homes of those who had money to buy yak dung for fuel. A few refugee dogs were curled against the doors of some of the huts, trying to stay warm. My head pounded from the lack of oxygen at this altitude. When we arrived at my host’s small home, he started a fire as I fell into a corner, exhausted from the journey. The monk put a kettle of water on to boil and then ran out the door halfway down the valley to Khenpo’s residence to deliver my request to meet the teacher, and pass along a letter Sogyal Rinpoche had written for me requesting assistance on my pilgrimage.

For the next week, while waiting for a response to the request to speak privately with Khenpo, I attended his teachings in the huge, three-tiered, open-air assembly hall of Larung, huddled together with thousands of monks. Nuns sat on the opposite side of the hall, which was separated by thousands of plastic flowers. During the afternoons, after adjusting to the altitude, I wandered the surrounding ridgelines as the shadows of the moun¬tains lengthened across the valley and plains below.

One day after an early-morning prayer session, while exiting with the other seven thousand monks and nuns, I was pulled from the flood of ma¬roon robes that flowed out of the assembly hall.

“Yishin Norbu—Wish-Fulfilling Jewel—will see you now, but only briefly,” the monk whispered, tearing my jacket as he dragged me against the human tide.

Through a snow-covered courtyard of the pagoda-style temple, up three flights of rickety wooden stairs, I tiptoed past two sleeping mastiffs. Then, as I rounded a corner of the temple, I found myself before Khenpo. He was seated as if huge mountain, not unlike the stoic photograph of his predecessor, Tertön Sogyal. I saw next to his wooden bowl of steaming tea the letter of introduction from Sogyal Rinpoche, his spiritual brother. A piece of ripped cardboard was set out for me to sit on.

I presented a series of scroll paintings that Sogyal Rinpoche had sent with me for Khenpo. Khenpo inquired about his brother-by-incarnation and told me the immense kindness he had felt when he visited Sogyal Rinpoche in France in 1993 on his only visit to the West. Khenpo asked me to con¬vey to Sogyal Rinpoche an invitation to come to Larung to teach Khenpo’s disciples.

We spoke for half an hour, then Khenpo become suddenly still, ar¬resting all sound and movement around us. His eyes widened, unblinking and unmoving. And then, just as when a cloud dissolves effortlessly in the sky, there was an expansive spaciousness, free of tension, free of thinking. Looking into his eyes, I felt Khenpo’s thought-free awareness being poured into me. Only crystal-clear awareness remained. I was looking into the face of awareness itself, where the looker, the looking, and that which is being looked at dissolve of their own accord. Time did not stand still—there was no time; there was nothing before or after, only freedom.

With a slow blink, Khenpo reclined.

“You will need protection on your journey,” he said softly.

He reached to his belt and pulled out an eight-inch, three-sided, single-pointed phurba, not unlike the first phurba I had seen Uncle Apu using years before in Kathmandu. Khenpo’s attendant handed him a smaller phurba, shorter than my index finger. Khenpo wrapped his coral prayer beads around the two, as if to bind the transfer of blessing from the mother-phurba to the smaller child-phurba. His eyes turned upward with only the whites visible.

Rolling the two phurbas and crimson beads between his hands, he chanted the mantra of the enlightened deity Vajrakilaya, “Om Benza Kili Kilaya Hung Phet, Om Benza Kili Kilaya Hung Phet . . .”

“Wear this phurba for protection. By reciting the mantra, Om Benza Kili Kilaya Hung Phet, and continually visualizing Vajrakilaya, you will remove obstacles to your spiritual path.” He dropped the small phurba into a silk pouch, tying it closed with a red cord, and placed it around my neck.

“Now, go to Kalzang Monastery in Nyarong, the Cave That Delights the Senses near Palpung Monastery, the Jokhang Cathedral in Lhasa, and then, go to Nyagar in Golok. You will find what you need to know about Ter¬tön Sogyal, and how to wield the phurba for your own and others’ benefit.”
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