Zamba 2

“... I met Tenzin Palmo—we met on a bus. And I looked at her, and she had Tibetan robes on, and she looked at me and I was also wearing Tibetan robes, and I said, “Where are you going?” And she said, “I’m going to a Sufi meeting. Where are you going?” And I said, “I’m also going to a Sufi meeting”! And then we got talking, and we met again, and she kept talking about her lama Khamtrul Rinpoche and the Togdens, in Tashi Jong. She talked about the wonderful yogis there and how she was inspired. So I thought, “I’m going to Tashi Jong! This sounds like what I’ve been looking for.”

I started to go to Tashi Jong regularly and to take teachings from Khamtrul Rinpoche, Dugu Choegyal Rinpoche, Dorzong Rinpoche, and the teacher of the Togdens, Togden Choelek Rinpoche. More and more, I felt embraced by that tradition, which was the Drukpa Kagyu tradition. I really wanted to live there with Khamtrul Rinpoche, but there was nowhere to live—it was a refugee community, a handicrafts community. It wasn’t very supportive for meditation practice, and the Togdens lived away from the gompa. Anyway I went to Khamtrul Rinpoche and said, “Please can I come and live here,” but he said, “It’s probably better you stay in Dharamsala.” I was very disappointed. And then again I asked him, so he did a mo[divination] and he said, “It’s not good and it’s not bad. If you really want to come, you can come, but I don’t know where you’re going to live.” And that was the situation. I went there and it was hot, dry, dusty, and noisy because of all the activity. There was nowhere to really go and sit quietly and get on with practice. I had a room in one of the Tibetans’ houses, which was tiny. So, though I was happy to be there with Rinpoche, I really didn’t feel it was the right place to be able to go into retreat.

I’d had quite a few teachings by then, and I’d heard about the community in Tso Pema [Rewalsar], so I went there. There were many monks, nuns, yogis, yoginis, ngakpas [Tantric lay practitioners], and one other Westerner. And I went to Lama Wangdor, who is a holder of the Drukpa Kagyu and Nyingma lineages—they are very close. When I arrived, he was sitting in his cave in a gomtri [meditation box]. By that time he’d already been there for about 16 years and hadn’t lain down to sleep at all—an amazing practitioner, what an inspiration! And I said, “I’d like to come and live here.” And he said, “I don’t know. All the caves are full at the moment, but we’ll go and look around.” Off we went and walked around, and we came across a rock at whose base was a tiny triangle. I remembered the story of Milarepa’s horn,** and I jokingly said to Lama Wangdor, “I’ll live there.” He looked at me and laughed, and said, “Maybe.” And then the following day he got some Indian workers from the village nearby and some of the monks, and we all went there and started digging under that little triangle. As we dug deeper, we could move inside, and it became the largest cave in Tso Pema. It was also the wettest cave, and I almost died the first week I was there, I was so ill. But I persevered, stubborn as I am, and I stayed there and did my practice.

I could go at any time to get whatever teachings I wanted from Lama Wangdor, whose main teaching at that time was Garab Dorje’s “The Three Statements that Strike the Essential Points.” That was wonderful. And the great tsa lung [channels and winds] master Kunzang Dorje Rinpoche was living almost next door to me. I stayed there in retreat until I heard that the head of the Nyingma lineage, the great Dzogchen master HH Dudjom Rinpoche, was going to give the Dudjom Tersar empowerments in Nepal. I knew that I really wanted to attend these empowerments and that Chagdud Rinpoche, whom I had met whilst I was living in Tashi Jong, would want to attend them too.

At that time Chagdud Rinpoche was my friend, not my teacher as such—we used to hang out together in a very informal way at his place in Bir. He was very poor in those days, so I managed with a few friends to raise the money to pay for his ticket to Nepal. We all left India with a group from Tso Pema and went to Nepal, and that’s really when I made a connection with Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Thinley Norbu Rinpoche, Dudjom Rinpoche, and many of the other great Nyingma lamas and yogis, who were all there at that time. It wasn’t so much the tradition, it was the way the teachings were being communicated. For me, there was something about Dzogchen that was crystal clear, whereas all the other teachings I’d had seemed to be so elaborate. Sometimes it can be very hard to keep track of the essential point of the teachings until you really become familiar with their skillful means, but Dzogchen just went straight to my heart. I felt, “That’s it. I don’t need any other teachings. I have what I need now.”
In Nepal I got closer and closer to Thinley Norbu Rinpoche, who was an incredible master, a remarkable teacher. So unorthodox!

He could really penetrate through so many of the neurotic games we play, so many of our tendencies to want to use everything as a credential for the ego. He could see it so quickly and cut through it just like the sharpest of knives. Somehow I could squirm away from many other masters, but not from Thinley Norbu Rinpoche. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. It was like standing there naked. Every time you tried to put some clothes on, they were stripped off. It was incredibly painful! But I had so much love and respect and natural devotion—nobody had to tell me to have devotion. Wow! What incredible wisdom! I never knew the meaning of compassion until I met him—it’s not what we think it is at all, compassion. It can be totally ruthless. It’s that wish to free you, no matter what it takes. To take you on that journey, to connect you with your own basic freedom.

I had the fortune to sit for one month with Dudjom Rinpoche through all the empowerments and all the teachings, and then other private teachings, and then three months with Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche through all the Chokling Tersar empowerments, because he was giving back all the Chokling lineage to the young Neten Chokling, who was three years old and had just been recognized. In between, there were private teachings. People would come in and say, “Please, Rinpoche”! Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche never got up from his throne, he was always there from morning to night. That glory, that magnificence! Majestic—that’s all you can say about Dilgo Khyentse—majestic! Gold—the aura, unbelievable, the embrace of wisdom. The immensity of his physical presence. And then, his realization just took you, just wrapped you in a different dimension and allowed you to see in a different way. Blissfulness. An amazing way of communicating another way of seeing, where everything began to melt in his presence. You just couldn’t hold on to all the things that you would normally hold on to, the way you identify yourself. You just melted into bliss. You didn’t want to be anywhere else—that was it, you were there. And you never had to ask him a question, you just had to think. He would just go ahead and answer every question you had..."
~ Ani Zamba Chozom

Photos ~ Ani Zamba, Lama Wangdor, Thinley Norbu Rinpoche,
Dudjom Rinpoche, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche