The Treasury of Lives

Delok Tenzin Chodron ('das log bstan 'dzin chos sgron) was born into a family called the Rakar (ra dkar) in the Mu Valley of northwestern Tsang, near Takmo Ling Monastery (stag mo gling).

Her birth year is recorded only as a female water-bird year, with no indications about which sexagenary cycle. If she was indeed an historical person, the sole hint in the hagiography regarding the dates of her life comes during the narrative of her travels in the lower realms during which she encounters a man who had been a "student of the [lama] of Orgyen Mindroling" (o rgyan smin grol gling)—likely a reference to Mindroling's founder, Terdak Lingpa (gter bdag gling pa, 1646–1714).[1] This would suggest the year of her birth to be 1753/54.[2]

Her father, Sitar Tsering (srid thar tshe ring), and her mother, Ponmo Pelkyi (dpon mod pal skyid), raised cattle, horses, and sheep, and they had many children. Tendzin Chodron was the sixth child. Her parents named her Dzompa Butri ('dzoms pa bu khrid).

According to her biography, Tenzin Chodron showed an interest in Buddhism from a young age, and the first time she saw a group of male and female yogis, she longed to join them.[3]

When she was about fourteen, one of her elder friends renounced worldly life and went to practice dharma exclusively. Through this friend, when Tenzin Chodron was seventeen—in 1770–1771—if our dates are correct—she and seven others had the opportunity to receive Mahāmudrā teachings from a master named Ngawang Chodrub (ngag dbang chos grub), who gave her the name Tendzin Chodron. After receiving these instructions, she served as her friend's retreat attendant for about a year.[4]

The next year, she entered a long retreat of her own under Ngawang Chodrub's supervision. During this period, it is said that her experiences and realization flourished, and she enjoyed good health. After about a year, however, she fell seriously ill. Her lama and others did rituals and invited doctors to treat her, but nothing helped. One doctor diagnosed that a gyelpo (rgyal po) spirit was affecting her vital winds (srog rlung); another said it was a blood pressure problem; another said it had to do with decreased body temperature; another administered intensive treatment using hot coals, which only produced anguish.[5] Her respected elder friend took care of her, as did her lama and another friend named Ngawang Chodzom (ngag dbang chos 'dzoms). To spare them from the burden of nursing her, she contemplated suicide. For eleven months, she suffered in this way.

By the time she turned twenty-two, her illness was causing her to pass in and out of consciousness. Her biography details many hallucinatory experiences she underwent in this state, including seeing an ethereal young woman dressed in immaculate silks and bone ornaments approaching her out of the sky. The woman handed Tenzin Chodron an arrow banner and danced before her. Worried about his disciple, her teacher performed divinations that indicated they should make extensive offerings to the deities.[6] He and her parents also enlisted a spirit medium who determined that her illness was not caused by the dissolution of her four elements—the harbinger of death—but by supernatural forces in her subtle body caused when three ḍākinīs from Mount Kailash could not get inside her subtle channels. He told them that if those three ḍākinīs could enter her, she would recover.[7]

On the fifteenth day of the first month of the lunar calendar, known as the "month of miracles" (cho 'phrul zla ba), they performed a ritual to open her channels, and, it is said, a ḍakinī entered her. As soon as this happened they could hear the sacred syllable HŪṂ and other esoteric sounds. They prayed to Vajradhara, Padmasambhava, Cakrasaṃvara, and the buddhas of the five families and ten directions.

Her teacher asked the deity who had entered her, "Where are you from? What's your name?" The deity replied, "I am from Mount Kailash (gangs ri ti se). My father's name is Cakrasaṃvara. My mother is Lake Manasarovar (ma pham g.yu mtsho). I am known as Khandro Gyangdrak, the "Far-Call Ḍākinī" (mkha' gro rgyang grags). Of my siblings, Liying (li dbyings) is the eldest and the mistress of the legions of ḍākinīs. She abides in the space over Khotan (li yul) and showers beings with the nourishing light of her compassion. My other sister is Khandro Trinkar Gyelmo, the Queen of White Clouds Ḍākinī (mkha' 'gro sprin dkar rgyal mo). She is the mistress of offerings and abides in clouds and mist giving to the buddhas of the ten directions."[8]

Her teacher then asked why she had come, and the ḍākinī explained that she and her sisters had been sent by their mother, Lake Manasarovar, to help beings in Tibet by inhabiting the body of a suitable medium. After three years, they failed to find a proper vessel and returned home. Then, their mother investigated and found indications that they must go find an overlooked but noble being near Takmo Ling Monastery in the Mu Valley of Tsang, whose channels had been disturbed for more than a year.[9]

After learning the source of her unwellness, she and her teacher gained confidence in her destiny and she contemplated a journey to Kailash under the direction of her ḍākinī guides.

Visions and Dreams of Holy Beings

Most of her twenty-second year was spent in acute illness, visions, and dreams.[10] At the beginning of the summer, she dreamed that she traveled to Mount Kailash, which she perceived as an immense stūpa. She also encountered masters of the Kagyu lineage, donned white cotton robes, immersed herself in meditative absorption, and received the blessings of the Kagyu lineage. Her hagiography then describes elaborate and poetic visionary interactions with her ḍākinī interlocutors.

In another episode of her visionary journey, she meets Gotsangpa (rgod tshang pa, 1189–1258) and Orgyenpa (o rgyan pa, 1229–1309) presiding over a vast retinue of ḍākinīs. At the end of one of the rows of this retinue was a young woman who summoned Tenzin Chodron to her and gave her a drink of alcohol from the skull cup she was holding. Tenzin Chodron drained the cup and immediately felt so drunk she was afraid she would be ridiculed. The young woman who had offered her the drink sang her a song:

Our connection is made. It's OK. Show me your face.
Now that you've drunk from my skull cup
Don't be distracted. Don't be distracted. Rest in the clearness.
Don't be tight. Don't be tight. Let go in relaxation.
Don't clench up. Don't clench up. Be loose and easy.

The woman explained that it was auspicious that she drank all the liquor at once; if Tenzin Chodron had taken three sips, she would have needed three more lives in saṃsāra; if she had taken two sips, two lives; and if she had not drunk at all, she would never break the cycle of rebirth.[11]

Another ḍākinī tells Tenzin Chodron that in a previous life, during the time of the mahāsiddha Nāropa (1012/1016–1100), she had served as a retreat attendant for the great ḍākinī Sukhasiddhī (su ka sid+d+hI) and had gained realization under her guidance.[12]

In other episodes, she meets a great variety of buddhas and masters, including Padmasambhava, who taught her Dzogchen,[13] and Vajradhara, who conferred on her the complete teachings and empowerments of Mahāmudrā.[14] Her guardian ḍākinīs also took her to the god realms where she met Brāhma, Viṣṇu, Mahādeva, and countless other gods.[15]

Visiting the Lower Realms

The next chapter of her hagiography begins when she was twenty-three, after a Dākinī Day ceremony on the twenty-fifth day of the second month, presumably of the female fire-bird year, or 1777 if our dating is correct, Tenzin Chodron lost consciousness and found herself on an extensive tour of the lower realms and the boundless suffering therein.[16] She met dozens of beings there, heard their stories, and arranged to help many of them return to the human realm by means of rituals and offerings. At one point, viewing the torments endured by beings who were suffering the consequences of having killed animals while being human, she felt overwhelming pity for them and despair at not being able to help them. Her dākinī guide told her, "There is nothing truly substantial about any of this. Don't be upset; don't be upset; meditate on Mahāmudrā"[17]—advice she repeats on several occasions.[18]

In another vision in the bardos, she saw a long narrow path, about as long as it would take to cover by horseback in three days. Innumerable beings were crowded onto this path, hemmed in by cliffs and dense jungle on both sides. She noted that many of them appeared frantic, jostling miserably in an attempt to reach the end of the path, which forever eluded them. Others, by contrast, strolled easily down the path reciting mantras, finally reaching its end and exiting the scene. She asked her ḍākinī guide why these beings had such different experiences of the same environment. The ḍākinī explained that those stuck on the path had, in the human realm, been the kind of people who stole iron from bridges and thus prevented others from traveling freely. The untroubled beings, on the other hand, had been those who contributed to the maintenance of bridges and roads and regularly observed the Tenth Day holiday dedicated to Padmasambhava.[19]     

A bit later, she saw countless beings drowning in a vast lake and was able to pull one of them out. As the being warmed itself, Tenzin Chodron asked how they had arrived at such an unfortunate state. The being explained that in the human realm, they had been a doctor who would only treat those who could afford high fees, turning away those too poor to afford the services. The effect of this was to experience drowning repeatedly for eons.[20]

After at least a dozen more such detailed visionary experiences, to conclude her journey, Tenzin Chodron's ḍākinī guardians tell her it was time to return to her life in the human realm, where she should teach people about karmic consequences in light of what she saw in the realms beyond death. They give her parting advice about her meditation and tell her that she will always be able to call on them through her prayers.[21]

After this, she lost consciousness until strong feelings of hunger and thirst overtook her and she looked for food and water. She then found herself observing her friends and companions back in her old room, but she could not get their attention and grew frustrated. Gradually, she found herself drawn back into her body, and she felt cold and numb. She heard her lama saying something but could not make it out. Finally, she was able to ask for water and her lama called for tea to be brought to her, though she was not able to drink it. When the tea was mixed with milk and spooned into her mouth, she started regaining her strength. Still disoriented, she reflected on what had happened to her. It is said that when she remembered all the suffering she saw in the hell realms, she wept.[22]

Shortly after her recovery, as she entered her twenty-fourth year, she narrated her stories to her lama and two scribes named Jamyang Rangdrol ('jam dbyangs rang grol) and Gelong Konchok Zangpo (dge slong dkon mchog bzang po).[23]

Her life after recounting her experiences as a delok is not recorded.

Biography Publication Background

Her longest available biography was compiled by a lama named Lobzang Chodrak (blo bzang chos grags) of Ganden Puntsok Ling (dga' ldan phun tshogs gling), a Geluk monastery near her birthplace that was previously a Jonang monastery. Nothing more is known about him, and the book's publishing date is not given. However, we can guess from the modern conventions of his introduction to the codex edition of Tenzin Chodron's biography that he lived in the twentieth century. In his introduction to her biography, he writes that her story appears anecdotally in the Snow Mountain Catalog (gangs ri'i dkar chag)—likely a reference to a nineteenth century pilgrimage guide written by a Bon scholar and explorer named Karu Drubwang Tenzin Rinchen (dkar ru grub dbang bstan 'dzin rin chen, b. 1801).[24] He mentions that her story also appears in the collected works of Ngulchu Yangchen Drubpai Dorje (dngul chu dyang can grub pa'i rdo rje, 1809–1887), although no explicit account of her life is found in the table of contents of the standard edition of Ngulchu's collected works.[25] In a strongly worded foreword, Lobzang Chodrak defends himself against possible sectarian criticism from his Geluk colleagues for publishing a book so heavy with Nyingma and Kagyu imagery, writing that his Geluk monastery decided to expand on and make two separate printings of her biography because it is valuable for all Buddhists. He challenges skeptics, saying that if they reject the value of Delok Tenzin Chodron's story, they might as well also reject the tale of the famous delok Nangsa Wobum (snang gsa 'od 'bum), which is beloved by all Tibetans[26]

In addition to the sources mentioned by Lobzang Chodrak, the French scholar Corneille Jest recorded seeing a copy of her biography in Dolpo in the mid-twentieth century. It was titled, A Biography of Delok Tenzin Chodron who Traveled in the Bardo of Becoming ('das log bstan 'dzin chos sgron gi srid pa bar do byon ba'i rnam thar),[27]

 

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