Blazing Splendor. Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche
repeated the words I have heard from my precious teachers.
Lord of Activity, the Fifteenth Karmapa
After Khyentse and Kongtrul, no one performed a greater service for the propagation of Chokgyur Lingpa’s New Treasures than Khakyab Dorje, the fifteenth Karmapa.
Before passing on, the Karmapas traditionally write a letter describing where their next incarnation will be born. And so it was that Khakyab Dorje was found as a young child in the Tsang province of Central Tibet by a search party of lamas who used as their guide a letter written by the previous Karmapa. Chokgyur Lingpa further confirmed his identity in an independent prediction that pointed to the same child.
From an early age, Khakyab Dorje was remarkable. While still quite young, he was asked to consecrate a monastery near his family home. “I’ll do it on the first day of the twelfth month,” he replied.
By that time, he was residing in Tsurphu, quite a long distance from the monastery he had been asked to consecrate. But instead of traveling there, on the morning of the chosen day he just asked for a covered basin. His attendants thought he was playing when he told them, “Today I am consecrating a monastery far away!”
They played along with him when he insisted that two attendants carry the basin around Tsurphu. The young Karmapa walked along throwing grains into the basin. Later, some people who lived near the distant monastery made the journey to Tsurphu and said that grain had fallen from the sky on that very day, just like a light rain.
As he grew up, Khakyab Dorje came to possess profound scholarship, but he also performed many miracles. He was a tertön who had access to both earth and mind treasures.
Sometimes terma objects just suddenly appeared in the Karmapa’s hands, very hot and sometimes moving of their own accord. This happened once while he was on a visit to the Amnye region. He received a terma from a local spirit and it was still quite hot while he held it—so hot that when he put it on the table, other people couldn’t touch it without being burned. All these terma objects were still kept at Tsurphu when I was there.
Instead of having to go out somewhere, like a cave, to find the terma, the Karmapa had many terma objects brought to him by the spirits who were keepers of the termas. The Dharma protectors would place terma caskets on the table right in front of him at Tsurphu.
I saw one such terma object that was kept in his sacred treasury box: an image of the Lotus-Born master, highly unusual in that half the body was bronze and the other half pure crystal. I have never seen another like it. I also saw many sacred kilaya daggers and other Padmasambhava statues and was told when and from whom he had obtained them. One kilaya dagger was of meteoric iron with a crystal top, also extraordinary. There were many such exquisite treasures, like nothing I have ever seen anywhere else.
Sometimes in his field of vision the Karmapa would suddenly see terma boxes appear, floating toward him in space. Occasionally these floating boxes were even seen by others. This happened once while the Karmapa was on pilgrimage to Yarlung, a few days from Tsurphu. As he was riding, terma boxes began to swirl around him in midair. Several of the servants saw them.
“Today there was a vicious attack of evil spirits,” one of the servants later commented.
“I’m not sure how vicious it was,” the Karmapa replied.
Because the Karmapa is an emanation of buddha activity, when a tertön connects with him, that in itself increases the propagation of the terma teachings. A look through the history of tertöns reveals again and again that if one of the Karmapas shows respect for a tertön, then the Karmapa’s influence and blessings will make everyone accept the tertön and his teachings without doubt or dispute. This is why major tertöns need to link up with the Karmapa; otherwise, the tertön is at risk of being called crazy or a charlatan.
But although the Karmapa discovered many termas, he himself never seemed to write down the many texts connected to them. The Karmapa once explained, “With the abundance of revelations from Khyentse, Kongtrul and Chokling, there is no need for me to add any new termas.”
At Tsurphu, in the inner chambers, there were forty boxes containing amazing representations of enlightened body, speech and mind given to him by the guardians of various termas. When showing these spiritual treasures to my uncle Samten Gyatso, the Karmapa once again emphasized, “There were teachings to write down, but I didn’t—there is no way I need to compete with the three great tertöns. I find their termas neither incomplete nor in need of correction.”
Samten Gyatso told me, “Khakyab Dorje was an inconceivably great master. I felt sure that he could perceive the three times as clearly as something placed in the palm of his hand.” This remarkable clairvoyance made it possible for the Karmapa to identify close to one thousand tulkus during his lifetime.
Since Samten Gyatso and Khakyab Dorje were very close, my uncle had no qualms about asking even very personal questions. Once he asked the Karmapa how he knew where tulkus would be reborn. Although he had unimpeded clairvoyance, the Karmapa explained that he did not always have complete control over it. On the one hand, sometimes he would know when a lama was going to die and where he would be reborn without anyone first requesting this information. Then, when the disciples responsible for finding the tulku would come to inquire about the lama, he would already have written down the details of the tulku’s death and rebirth.
In other cases, he could only see the circumstances of rebirth when a special request was made and certain auspicious circumstances were created through any of a number of practices. And in a few cases, he couldn’t see anything, even when people requested his help. He would try, but the crucial facts would be “shrouded in mist.” This, he said, was a sign of some problem between the dead lama and his disciples. For instance, if there had been fighting and disharmony among the lama’s following, the whereabouts of his next incarnation would be vague and shrouded in haze.
“The worst obstacle for clearly recognizing tulkus,” he explained, “is disharmony between the guru and his disciples. In such cases, nothing can be done, and the circumstances of the next rebirth remain unforeseeable.”
The Karmapa was supposed to be a major tertön, so there was good reason for him to take a consort, which is necessary to “unlock the treasure chest” of the termas.57 However, the Karmapas were usually monks, and so taking a consort was not readily accepted; in fact it was considered highly inappropriate. His reluctance to reveal termas or take a consort caused him to become seriously ill. Some say this was a punishment meted out by the dakinis to potential tertöns who fail to fulfill their mission.
Whatever the case, in the end, many great masters persuaded him to take a consort; if he didn’t, they pleaded, he would die prematurely. His first consort was the eldest daughter of a noble family from Central Tibet. As predicted by Padmasambhava, she was to be his consort for revealing termas. Afterward, he also married his consort’s younger sister.
Later still, when the Karmapa again fell ill, a prediction by the Lotus-Born appeared in a terma revealed by a tertön from Surmang.58 It stated that if the Karmapa accepted a particular young woman, who was a dakini in human form, his life would be extended by three years.
The Karmapa sent out a search party, who identified her and invited her back to Tsurphu. She became known as Khandro Chenmo, which means “the great dakini.”59 He took her as his consort, and she did indeed seem to extend his life for three years. Any time the Karmapa fell ill, she was invited