Cave In The Snow: A Western Woman's Quest for Enlightenment

by Vicki Mackenzie

I just had to wait, to sit there and watch it. If I tried to lay down it got worse. Actually, it was quite fascinating. I’d sit there and observe the pain. It was like a symphony. You’d have the drums, the trumpets, the strings, all these very different types of pain

playing on the eye,’ she said in a detached voice.

‘When I counted up how long it lasted it was forty-nine days, which was interesting because that is said to be the duration of the Bardo, the period of transition between death and rebirth. In fact it was really like a kind of Bardo, I was having to wait. Then it gradually got a little better. What I learnt from that was that the exhaustion that pain...

These incidents were eclipsed, however, by a far greater drama. It was March 1979 and Tenzin Palmo was sitting as usual in her meditation box in her cave. Outside a blizzard was raging, as it had been for seven days and seven nights. Tenzin Palmo was well used to storms but this one was particularly strong. The snow piled higher and higher, gradually rising above her window, above her door. On it went without abating, getting thicker and thicker, heavier and heavier. Suddenly the awful

truth dawned on her. She was buried alive.

her mind: ‘I was plunged into total blackness and cold. I couldn’t light my fire because the snow had broken the pipe of my wood stove, which jutted out of the cave, so there was no way of keeping warm or cooking. I didn’t dare light candles either because I thought they would use up oxygen. When I looked out of the window it was nothing but a shee...

window and door completely sealed with snow, she was convinced she was going to be asphyxiated.

As a tantric practitoner, however, Tenzin Palmo knew she could go even further using the moment of death as her final and greatest meditation. Steering her mind through the various stages of death she could, if she were skilful enough, arrive fully aware at the Blissful Clear Light, the most subtle mind of all, and in that sublime state transform her consciousness into a Buddha.

As such, for the yogi death was never to be feared but grabbed as the golden opportunity of a lifetime of endeavour. That, at least was the theory. Tenzin Palmo was now faced with the reality.

think anybody who is making efforts in this life will continue to make efforts in the next life. I don’t see why we should change.

‘But one doesn’t cling even to that. High lamas stay there a while and then return here.

The villagers now knew that their prayers for the safe passing of ’Saab Chomo’in her cave had not been necessary, but nobody thought she could have possibly survived.

explaining why I could not come. It was the hardest letter I had ever written.

‘I pray that I may be reborn as your mother in future lives so that I can help you continue your spiritual path.’ It was the greatest act of love and approbation of her daughter that she could have made.

For all Tenzin Palmo’s training, however, nothing could prepare her for the death of her lama, Khamtrul Rinpoche.

‘I’d go back with questions. During my meditations I would always have paper nearby so that I could jot down queries as they came up. I’d walk in and Khamtrul Rinpoche would lean back and say, “OK, where’s your list?” And I’d bring out this long list of questions,’ she recalled. ‘His answers were absolutely right. He answered from both his scholastic expertise and from his own experience. “According to the books it says this, but from my own experience it is like this,”

him with an idea of a practice I wanted to do and he would suggest something else that hadn’t occurred to me. Immediately he had said it I knew he was right. That is the beauty of a real guru – he knows your mind and can steer your spiritual progress in the direction that is best for you,’ she said.

‘One day I was summoned to the monastery. I thought I was being called for some special teaching or something. On the way I met someone who said, “You look very happy, you couldn’t have heard.”

’The sun had set and there was only darkness. I felt as though I was in this vast desert and the guide had left – completely lost.’

had died of diabetes aged just forty-nine.

He had been ill for only an hour before his death.

Those who were present reported that Khamtrul Rinpoche stayed in tukdam, the ‘clear light’ of death, for some weeks after physiological death had occurred

collapsing but remaining youthful-looking and pleasant-smelling.

whereby at death the whole body is de-materialized, leaving nothing behind but the nails and hair.

Rilbur Rinpoche, a venerable high lama and historian who was imprisoned for many years by the Chinese, tells of several adepts who managed to eject their consciousness at will (the practice of powa) while imprisoned with him. ‘I saw many people who sat down in the corner of their cell and deliberately passed away to another realm. They weren’t ill and there was nothing wrong with them. The guards could never believe it!’ he said.

In his recent best-selling book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sogyal Rinpoche explains precisely what the rainbow body is and how it is achieved:

At the same time an extraordinary display of rainbow-coloured light was seen all around the house. When they looked into

the room on the sixth day, they saw that the body was getting smaller and smaller. On the eighth day after his death, the morning on which the funeral had been arranged, the undertakers arrived to collect his body. When they undid its coverings, they found nothing inside but his nails and hair. My master Jamyang Kyentse asked for these to be brought to him and verified that this was a case of the rainbow body.

‘It’s not a first-class rainbow body, where everything disappears, but it’s pretty good. Actually these feats can be achieved even by Westerners.

Often it is said to happen like this to seemingly “ordinary"people, like old Norbu down the street, who nobody knows is an accomplished practitioner.’

"Oh look, that’s my nun, that’s my nun,” he burst out. He was so excited. His monk attendant turned to him and said, “Yes, that’s your nun, she’s been your disciple for so long.”

Up in his icy, barren cave the great yogi Milarepa, founder of Tenzin Palmo’s own lineage, after years of terrible deprivation and unwavering endeavour, found himself in a realm of surreal splendour. The walls and floor of his cave melted with the imprint of his hands, feet, buttocks where he pressed them into the rock.

No one will ever know exactly what Tenzin Palmo went through in all those years of solitary retreat, the moments of dazzling insight she might have had, the times of darkness she may have endured. She had learnt well from the Togdens, those humble yogis whose qualities had touched her so deeply, that one never reveals, let alone boasts, of one’s spiritual prowess. Getting rid of the ego, not enhancing it, was the name of the game. Besides, her tantric vows forbade her to divulge any progress she may have made. It was a long-held tradition, ever since the Buddha

himself had defrocked a monk for performing a miracle in public, declaring the transformation of the human heart was the only miracle that really counted.

’The whole point is not to get visions but to get realizations,’ she said

sharply, referring to the stage when a truth stops being a mental or intellectual construct and becomes real. Only when the meditation dropped from the head to the heart, and was felt, could transformation begin to take place. ‘And realizations are quite bare,’ she continued.

‘They are not accompanied by lights and music. We’re trying to see things as they really are. A realization is non-conceptual. It’s not a product of the thinking process or the emotions – unlike visions which com...

light at the centre of the prism, not the rainbow co...

’The only problem with bliss is that because it arouses such enormous pleasure, beyond anything on a worldly level, including sexual bliss, people cling to it and really want it and then it becomes another obstacle,’ she added, before launching on a story to illustrate her point.

When you meet more mature practitioners they’re not completely speechless with all this great bliss, because they’ve learnt how to deal with it. And of course they see into its empty nature.

‘You see, bliss in itself is useless,’ she continued. ‘It’s only useful when it is used as a state of mind for understanding Emptiness – when that blissful mind is able to look into its own nature. Otherwise it is just another subject of Samsara. You can understand emptiness on one level but to understand it on a very subtle level requires this complement of bliss. The blissful mind is a very subtle mind and that kind of mind looking at Emptiness is a very different thing from the gross mind looking at emptiness. And that is why one cultivates bliss.

‘You go through bliss. It marks just a stage on the journey. The ultimate goal is to realize the natu...

The nature of the mind, she said, was unconditioned, non-...

It was the state of Knowing withou...

And when it was realized it wasn’t very dramatic at all. There was no cosmic explosion, no fanfare of celestial trumpets. ‘It’s like waking up for first time – surfacing out of a dream and then realizing that you have been dreaming. That is why the sages talk about all things being an illusion. Our no...

Waking up is not sensational. It’s ordinary. But it’s...

Once you begin to see the nature of the mind then you can begin to meditate.

Suddenly the Buddha’s First Noble Truth which she had learnt when she first encountered Buddhism struck her with renewed force. ’I thought, “Why are you still looking for happiness in Samsara? and my mind just changed around. It was like: That’s right- Samsara is Dukka [the fundamental unsatisfactory nature of life]. It’s OK that it’s snowing. It’s OK that I’m sick because that is the nature of Samsara.

There’s nothing to worry about. If it goes well that’s nice. If it doesn’t go well that’s also nice. It doesn’t make any difference. Although it sounds very elementary, at the time it was quite a breakthrough.

‘What the meditator is doing in those long retreats is a very technical thing. He’s not just sitting there communing with the Great Oneness. He’s technically going down, pulling apart his own nervous system to become self-aware from out of his own cells. It’s like you are using Word Perfect and you are in the chip. And you are self-aware of being in the chip. The way you have done that is by stabilizing your mind where you can go down to the dots and dashes, and you’ve gone down and down even into that.