The three lamas
Short story
In Tibetan Buddhism, the teacher is said to be the foundation of all realisations. But all teachers are not the same - which one is for us? In this short story I explore one aspect of this profound and multi-dimensional subject.
The word ‘lama’ has many meanings. The one I like best is that ‘la’ means higher or superior - in this case, higher wisdom - and ‘ma’ means mother. The role of the lama is therefore to nurture a student in higher/superior wisdom.
I hope you enjoy this story - and may it enhance your experience of the Dharma!
The photo above is to offer you an idea of a valley in Ladakh - a remote, border province of India which culturally is strongly Tibetan.
There was once a boy called Dawa, born to a peasant family in the remote Nala valley of Ladakh, who had very strong inclination towards the Dharma. From a very young age, when other kids along the valley liked running about playing boisterous games, he preferred taking himself off to a quiet place to chant the mantras he’d heard his father recite. If ever a lama visited nearby Nala Monastery to offer a public teaching or blessing, he’d beg his parents to take him, even though he couldn’t understand most of what was being said. And from the time he was able to speak, he would beg his father, Palden, and mother, Dechen, to allow him to become a monk.
Palden and Dechen were devoted practitioners. They had received empowerments from no less than His Holiness the Dalai Lama. In Dawa, the youngest of their four children, they recognised the arising of auspicious karma. But as they explained to their little son, because nearby Nala Monastery was residence to only a few elderly monks, if he was to be trained in the proper way he’d have to go far away to Hemis Monastery. Hemis was famous as a seat of learning as it was for its collection of priceless relics. But importantly, because the monastery was a two day hike from home, Dawa could only go there when he was old enough to look after himself.
If his heart was still set on becoming a monk after harvest time the year he had turned nine, his parents told him, Palden would take him to Hemis Monastery where they could request that he be granted a teacher. There was, of course, no guarantee that he would be.
For Dawa, his ninth birthday seemed like an eternity away. But his resolve to become a monk never wavered. And when the Losar finally arrived that he turned nine – as is tradition, all Tibetans celebrate their birthday on the same day of Losar, the Tibetan New Year – he could hardly wait for the summer, followed by the harvest, and the day to arrive when finally his wish would be fulfilled. In the meantime, he studied and learned any texts he could off by heart, so that he could impress the authorities at Hemis Monastery with his understanding.
As was the custom, friends and neighbours helped each other with the harvest, and that particular year a young man from the neighbouring valley came to help the family. Jampa was a distant cousin, 18 years old, and over the autumn it emerged that he, too, wished to be accepted as a novice monk at Hemis Monastery. Although he had received no Dharma training, he had been educated to a high standard at a local school. It was decided that when their farming work was over, Palden, Jampa and Dawa would set off to Hemis together.
Dechen tried, unsuccessfully, to quell her tears, early the day that her husband set out from home with her nine-year-old son, and his cousin Jampa. Even though she knew that Dawa was resilient, determined and fulfilling his dreams, the figure of the small boy dwindling out of sight among the towering mountains was a deeply poignant moment for her. If he was accepted at the monastery she knew she’d only ever see much of him during autumn, when monks usually returned to their family homes to help with harvesting. Her heart already ached being separated from her young and sensitive child.
Palden and the two boys under his guardianship, made good progress walking. The weather was fine and Dechen had made sure that they had all the food and drink they needed for their journey. They made their first stop at the end of the Nala Valley, next to Yonten’s modest, whitewashed stupa, at the foot of a great boulder. There, Palden recounted the story of the toothless old peasant, overlooked and even disparaged by most of his contemporaries along the valley, whose devotion to reciting mantras had been so great that he had demonstrated the very highest spiritual attainments. Even to this day, rainbow lights were sometimes seen to emanate from the stupa.
They arrived in Hemis the following afternoon. It had been several years since Palden had visited the village and he was surprised to find how many more shops and tourists there were. Having lived in the Nala valley their whole life, the two boys were astonished to see Westerners with their blonde hair and expensive clothing.
The three of them approached the monastery and explained their purpose. Having done his best to subdue the boys’ expectations, Palden was surprised when they were not only admitted,but told that they would be granted an audience with the abbot that same day.
“Perhaps the monastery is eager to take on more novices?” Dawa suggested hopefully, as the three of them sat in the courtyard, sipping butter tea.
“Or maybe, out of kindness, he wants to tell us right away that the monastery is full,” Palden, once again, sought to temper his son’s expectations.
They were shown to the abbot’s quarters sometime later. Abbot Ling was an elderly man with hazel eyes and a perceptive face sitting on a meditation cushion on a slightly raised platform. Behind him, through an open window, the clear light of an autumn dusk filled the room. After the visitors from Nala had prostrated before the lama, an attendant set three cushions in front of him. The abbot smiled slightly, nodding at each of them in turn, before sitting in meditation posture, his gaze lowered.
Even though all Dawa wanted to do was to stare at the abbot and his room and take in everything that he could, and Jampa was similarly tempted, the two of them followed the example of the devout Palden, who sat before the lama with a straight back, lowered face, and hands in his lap. For a long while they remained in a state of contemplation, the silence broken only by the occasional sound of a few stray words of conversation from the courtyard carrying through the window, and a distant cockerel heralding the end of the day.
For young Dawa, once his mind had settled somewhat during that time of silence he had felt as if he had found himself in a leaping stream – whenever his agitated mind was caught up in some form of diversion or side-eddy, he’d feel the strong tug of a current back towards the main flow.
For Jampa, it was more like being part of a fast-moving river as he became subtly aware of all manner of tributaries expanding the breadth and depth of his awareness.
As for Palden, he felt a sublime convergence of the kind when a great river meets the vast and tranquil ocean which has been its destination all along.
“This is where we find ourselves, yes?” When Abbot Ling finally spoke, it was in a voice so delicate, so refined, that for a while Palden wondered if the lama had actually said anything, or if he’d only been somehow imagining it.
Raising his head, he saw the lama was looking at him directly. The two of them exchanged a smile, Palden sensing that he had received the most extraordinary blessing.
“In search of a lama,” said the abbot, wasting no time as he looking from Dawa to Jampa. “It is your extremely good fortune-” he told them, “-that several of our graduate monks have recently been offered places at the prestigious tantric college of Sera-Je. As a result, we have two teachers who may be able to take you on.”
Dawa shot a thrilled glance at his father.
“Both lamas will be giving classes tomorrow,” he continued. “I will tell them to expect you.” He nodded. “In the evening, you can come to see me again at the same time and we will discuss further.”
Palden brought his palms together at his heart in deep gratitude. The two boys followed suit. With the subtlest nod to his attendant, waiting in the corner, the abbot indicated that their meeting was over. But Dawa, unable to bear the suspense burst out, “Will you tell us which one will be our lama tomorrow, Rinpoche?”
Abbot Ling smiled wryly at Palden.
Leaning forward towards Dawa he told him gently, “First, you must see if one of the lamas is right for you. You may not like either!”
Dawa was already shaking his head.
“Second, the lamas themselves must agree to accept you as a student.”
“But I have learned the Bodhisattva Vows off by heart!” Dawa felt impelled to tell him. “And I can recite The Heart Sutra from beginning to end.”
“Can you indeed?” chuckled the abbot. “Well, this is most useful. But it’s not me you need to persuade, young man. It is one of the lamas.”
Dawa looked as if he was about to say something else before Palden silenced him with a stern look.
That night, in the guest room assigned to them by the abbot’s attendant, the three agreed that it had been the most auspicious of occasions. Not only an audience with the abbot himself on the very day that they had arrived, but most promisingly of all, the possibility of being taken on as a novice, as had been the boys’ long and heartfelt yearning.
As it happened, both the lamas whose teachings they attended next day had the same ordination name. At Hemis Monastery, to differentiate the two, they were known as Lama Yeshe, and Yeshe-la.
Lama Yeshe, the younger of the two, was in his thirties, and even before he sat on his teaching throne, the three visitors were rivetted. There was a certain charisma about him, even in the way he performed his prostrations and, on sitting, brought his hands together at his heart.
When he spoke, he did so with an enthusiasm and sense of urgency that was infectious. He referred to these teachings and that practice with such passion, that anyone listening wanted, immediately, to seek them out and master them too. He demonstrated a comprehensive grasp of the sutras as well as commentaries by great masters, many of whose names the visitors had never heard before. He made connections between different insights with such effortless panache there could be no doubting that he was a master, a virtuoso. Every time Palden looked at Dawa’s face, he saw his son’s eyes shining in the reflected brilliance of the teacher.
After class, they followed the abbot’s parting instruction which had been to avoid influencing one another’s view of the two lamas. By all means discuss the teachings, the abbot had urged them, but try to avoid affecting one another’s experience of the teachers themselves. Palden knew his son well enough to feel his excitement about Lama Yeshe. He doubted that, in Dawa’s eyes, another teacher could surpass him.
That afternoon they attended a class given by Yeshe-la. More than twenty years older than Lama Yeshe, Yeshe-la had none of the drama of his younger colleague but spoke about the texts with a simplicity that was derived from great contemplation. He had the gift of rendering the complex understandable. There was a humility, an openness about him as he encouraged students to ask questions if they didn’t grasp something, or to debate a point if they felt that a metaphor could perhaps be improved upon. His class was less a transferring of information than a process by which he sought that every student should leave with a clear understanding of what was being discussed.
Observing his son and Jampa, Palden noticed, several times, how Dawa was struck by the lucidity of a particular point as Yeshe-la answered a question from one of his students. For his part, Jampa was even more engaged, as if he couldn’t wait to join a discussion prompted by Yeshe-la, to ask a burning question of the lama himself.
That day at Hemis passed in a whirl. With the teachings and meals and monastic activities, before they knew it the three visitors were being led to Abbot Ling’s room, as he had instructed the evening before.
Once again there was silence after they were seated. The feeling of panoramic timelessness as they were held together for a long while in the autumn evening – the sky, once again, dazzling in its radiance.
“This mind, like the autumn sky, is who we truly are, yes?” The abbot spoke after a while.
Palden glanced out the window. The sky had a luminosity with which he was deeply familiar after a lifetime of autumns in the Nala Valley. And for that reason, the simplicity of the observation seemed somehow both perfect as well as extraordinary. It felt like the clicking into place of an extraordinary insight. In the abbot’s presence he felt as if he had been offered a taste of the reality that had been the ultimate focus of his many practices and prayers throughout his life.
Abbot Ling looked at the two boys. “You attended the teachings?”
They nodded dutifully.
“You made a choice?”
“Lama Yeshe, please Rinpoche!” Dawa couldn’t contain his excitement.
When the abbot turned to Jampa, the young man told him, “It would be a great privilege to have Yeshe-la as a teacher.”
Abbot Ling nodded to his attendant who stood up from where he had been sitting, walked to the door and gestured that the boys should follow. “Sonam will take you to see them now,” he said.
After they left the room, the abbot met Palden’s eyes with a twinkle of amusement.
“The boys are very eager.”
Palden nodded.
“I am sure we will be able to offer them both places.”
Palden, beaming, brought his hands to his chest. “Dawa has had his heart set on this since the time he could speak.”
“He was fortunate to have you and his mother as parents,” the abbot said in such a way that Palden wondered if he was speaking from a perception enabled by siddhis, or special powers. “You are a devout practitioner.”
Palden glanced down modestly.
“Tell me,” asked the abbot, following a pause. “If it had been you coming to Hemis Monastery, which of the two lamas would you have chosen to be your teacher?”
This wasn’t a subject that Palden had considered, but the moment the abbot asked the question, the answer arose spontaneously in his heart.
He began shaking his head.
“Neither?” probed Abbot Ling.
“No, Rinpoche,” Palden looked up meeting his clear, hazel eyes. “I would request you to be my teacher.”
The lama smiled as he nodded, regarding Palden approvingly. “All is as it should be,” he murmured.
For the longest time the two of them sat together in the silent rapture of the clear light.
‘Generally all phenomena are mind itself.
Your guru arises from this very mind.
There is nothing other than mind.
Whatever appears is all the nature of mind,
and that too is primordially unestablished.
Maitripa’s teaching to Marpa
Geshe Acharya Thubten Loden, Great Treasury of Mahamudra, Tushita Publications, Melbourne, 2009
Listening, thinking and meditating are sometimes offered as the three practices we need to transform Buddhist teachings from a collection of ideas into wisdom that we embody for ourselves. While all three are needed on our Dharma journey, there is a particular emphasis in the early stages on listening, the middle stages on thinking, and the latter stages on meditating as the concepts move from being mere ideas, to who we are.
Listening, thinking and meditating are sometimes known as ‘the three wisdoms’ and also as a definition of ‘faith’ in Buddhism. It is auspicious to find a lama who can inspire us where we are on our journey.
The remote Nala Valley in Ladakh is the starting point for a short story about a very different pilgramage to Hemis Monastery, called The Tale of the Toothless Old Peasant. You can find it in my book of short stories, The Astral Traveler’s Handbook & Other Tales available in print, electronic and audio form from the usual online retailers.
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It seems that the teacher we choose will match the stage of our spiritual development. In the listening stage we would probably prefer Lama Yeshe because he is charismatic and engaging. In the thoughtful stage we would prefer Yeshe La because he speaks with more deliberation which would give the student time and space to ponder and ask questions. And during the meditation stage, a more seasoned teacher would guide us. The wonderful news is that all teachers are needed and the universe seems to do a good job is finding the teacher as the student comes forth. Thank-you David...