Gate of Heaven

"You’re a writer, you like stories? My mother-in-law has a story from when she was young, a story of a journey she took into the glaciers of the high Himalayas. You might think it’s fiction, the imaginings of an old woman, but I assure you it is not. It will make you question your sense of reality’… ‘How can her journey into the mountains make me question my sense of reality?’ I asked Tinley. He laughed. ‘It’s better she tells you herself, but, trust me,’ He looked me in the eye: ‘I tell you, it will stretch your sense of what’s possible. You’ll think she’s spun the tale in her head. But it’s entirely true.’ ‘What’s entirely true?’ ‘That’s for her to say!’ he laughed…

She walked into the room dressed in her nun’s robes. One hand was working the beads of her mala, a Tibetan rosary, and the other she ran across the stubble of her shaved head and smiled when she saw me… She said something in Tibetan and Tinley interpreted: ‘She said that since you are meeting again after such a long time, it means you still have karma together. Otherwise you wouldn’t be meeting again.’ ‘It must be that story,’ I said, laughing. ‘It is a story that has changed many people’s fates,’ Tinley said, with an enigmatic twinkle in his eye. ‘We’ll see what happens to you’…

She began by telling me that she was from Bhutan. She and her husband had a small farm—a few cows, chickens, and they grew their own grain. Even as a child she had heard that there was a place called Beyul Demoshong, a hidden valley in Sikkim she described as a heaven you enter through a cave, a place where you would live forever. This valley is on the slopes of Mount Kanchenjunga. In a matter-of-fact manner, as if she were telling me that she had a hundred rupees stashed under her mattress, she told me that half the wealth of this world and great stores of what she called spiritual attainment were hidden inside the mountain. ‘Why do you think it is so peaceful here in Sikkim and there is so much happiness?’ she asked, her eyes clear and penetrating. ‘It is because we are living so close to Mount Kanchenjunga.’

Sipping her tea, spinning her prayer wheel and looking off into the distance she recalled her childhood: ‘My village lama back in Bhutan used to tell us, and our parents told us too, “There is a cave, and there are people who have made it.” There was a man from Tibet who went to Sikkim. He was high in the mountains when there was a big snowfall and he got lost. He saw a cave, and he went inside for refuge. It was so beautiful that he could never explain it in words. He went inside for maybe twenty minutes, and when he came out years had passed without his knowing, and zip-zip—he was old. Old age in a moment!’ Dorje Wangmo laughed, not because of the unreality of her tale but because of the incredulity she saw on my face.

‘I didn’t meet this man,’ she said. ‘I only heard his story.’ As she spun her prayer wheel thoughtfully, she explained that the story was unusual and must be based on the man’s special karma. ‘Usually you cannot just go there, on your own,’ she said. ‘It has to be “opened” by a special type of Tibetan Buddhist lama.’ Tinley explained that this special type of lama is called a terton, or treasure revealer. A few of these visionary lamas had attempted the opening but their karma wasn’t right. Obstacles came in their way and they failed.

Dorje Wangmo was thirty-six when she heard that the lama who had all the signs had come. His name was Tulshuk Lingpa. Though he was from Tibet, he was staying at the Tashiding Monastery, which was considered the auspicious holy center of the Kingdom of Sikkim. It was there that it was prophesied the lama would make his appearance. She recalled for me her departure: ‘A monk-brother of mine—he wasn’t really my brother but all followers of the dharma are like brothers and sisters—was going to Sikkim to be there when the lama opened the way. When he told me, a tremendous feeling of longing awoke within me. I didn’t want to be left out. So I told my husband “If you want to go, let’s go together. If you don’t want to go, I’ll go by myself.”

‘“What?” my husband said. “You must be crazy!”’ Dorje Wangmo chuckled at the recollection and spun her prayer wheel a little faster. Her old eyes glinted. ‘“It doesn’t matter,” I told him. “I’m going—whether you come or not.” ‘“Then I’ll go, too,” he said. ‘We gave away our house and fields. We sold enough so we had the money to make the journey, and the rest we gave away. What use would we have for extra money? In Beyul there would always be food; you wouldn’t have a care. And once you enter Beyul, you’ll never leave. Who’d want to? Our tickets were all one-way. All tickets to Beyul are one-way.’

Dorje Wangmo laughed so long and hard it was infectious. By the time they got to Tashiding—it took over two weeks to get there in those days—the lama had already left with his hundreds of followers to open the way. So they set off immediately, north to Mount Kanchenjunga. They stopped at Yoksum, the last village on the way, and bought enough food for the long journey: a sack each of ground corn, wheat and tsampa, the roasted barley flour the peoples of the high Himalayas never tire of eating. They wet the flour with tea and butter or sometimes just water, form it into balls of moist dough and pop them into their mouths.

Both the men she ‘chose’ for the journey, her husband and her monk-brother, were not really fit for mountain travel. They tired quickly, with the sacks of food they had to carry, the bedding and everything else. Their faith wasn’t as great as hers. ‘What was the weight of a bedroll,’ she asked, ‘when you were on your way to the Hidden Land? We had been waiting for generations.’ They found themselves on the edge of the snow. Though she was the woman, she went in front to cut the way when the snow came up to their hips. She even made steps in the snow for them. They hadn’t a clue what secret trails the lama had taken to find this hidden place, and the mountain was huge—stretching from Sikkim to Nepal and Tibet. Sometimes they came upon stones stacked on top of each other. They believed the lama left those stones to mark the way. So when they saw them, they followed them—and into the snow and windswept heights they went.

After a few days her monk-brother gave up and went back to Yoksum. He had begun to fear the heights, which made his mind play tricks on him and he began to have doubts. Now there was more for her and her husband to carry. They would take two of the sacks a kilometer ahead, hide them in a cave or cliff for safekeeping and go back for the third. They also had with them a small bag of dried fish. But if they fried them in the fire they would smoke and the mountain gods would get upset. So they kept them in the bag in case of emergency.

The next day they met a Sikkimese couple who were felling a tree over a rushing stream to make the crossing. A baby was strapped to the woman’s back. They were also looking for the lama. They had a donkey but hardly a handful of food, which impressed Dorje Wangmo greatly: only someone with tremendous faith would venture into such high mountains without food. It was because of this she agreed to continue their search together. They shared their food with them and put the sacks of food on the donkey, which made it easier especially since they had heard from some nomads that the lama was on the Nepal side—the mountain straddles the Sikkim–Nepal border—and they had to cross a high and snowy pass to get there. Soon they came upon others and yet others, all looking for the lama. The band of pilgrims became a dozen strong: three children, four women and five men.

They had to cross a glacier on their way to the pass and it became extremely dangerous. Deep cracks in the glacial ice were hidden under newly fallen snow. While they knew how to tell when the snow was hiding a crack, the donkey didn’t. It stepped on to a thin layer of frozen snow and fell into a very deep crack. Held only by its lead rope it dangled over the deep, braying. Two of the sacks fell from the donkey’s back and disappeared forever without a sound into the huge crack. They were able to rescue the third. It was the sack of tsampa. Then, with three of them pulling on its rope and two others grabbing its neck and legs, they were somehow able to haul the donkey to safety.

That night there was a huge snowstorm with a tremendous wind, and since they had no shelter they had to sleep huddled together beneath their jackets and blankets. They had nothing to eat but tsampa. Not even water. So they ate dry tsampa with melted snow in their mouths. Tsampa and snow—that’s all they had. The next morning they fanned out to search for shelter. Dorje Wangmo found a cave about a kilometer away into which they all could easily fit. They spent two days in that cave eating dry tsampa and melted snow while the howling wind blew blinding snow outside. The weather in high mountains, she explained, is controlled by the mountain gods, and they were clearly not happy with the intrusion of this band of human beings into their realm. They offered prayers to the gods, prostrated and burned incense.

On the third day, they awoke to sunshine. But the snow was so deep it was impossible to walk through, especially with the children. They hardly knew which way to go. Since their tsampa wouldn’t last long, Dorje Wangmo decided some of them would have to go ahead and try to find the lama and his followers, or at least some nomads who could spare a little food. She chose the two strongest men to come with her. The newly fallen snow hid all but the widest crevasses, making the way all the more treacherous. They left before sunrise when the snow was the hardest and would be more likely not to give way. It was Dorje who chose the direction and broke the trail. Tinley broke his almost simultaneous translation to interject his own observation. ‘She’s a powerful mother-in-law,’ he said with a twinkle, ‘a real warrior. Even her name Wangmo means The Powerful One.’

When they reached the first settlement in Nepal they heard that the lama and his followers were at a monastery farther down. He hadn’t yet opened the secret cave. So they cut some grass for the donkey, filled a sack with cooked potatoes and climbed back over the pass to where the others were waiting in the cave. The next day, she led the others across the pass on the trail she had cut. It took two days for them to reach the lama. For a few months the lama was busy doing special pujas, or rituals, to appease the local spirits. Then he led hundreds of them high into the mountains in order to open what she called the Gate of Heaven.

With that she got up. To my amazement, night had fallen. A glance at my watch told me almost three hours had passed. ‘That’s how it was,’ she said. ‘If I were still young I’d show you the way. But now I can hardly walk. My legs hurt and my feet are swollen.’ She bent down and rubbed her left knee and looked at her bare feet, gnarled with arthritis. ‘Just look at my feet,’ she said. ‘See what time has done to them. And to think I was the one to walk in front and stamp down the snow! Now all I can do is pray.’ She spun her prayer wheel, and muttering the mantra of Padmasambhava beneath her breath she left the room…”

~ Thomas Shor, A Step Away from Paradise: A Tibetan Lama's Extraordinary Journey to a Land of Immortality

“Natasha: Do you think this hidden land exists?
Thomas Shor: I’ve asked myself this question many times. In the book I purposefully keep the question open. The book is neither about me nor my opinions. The British mystical poet William Blake once said, “If the sun had but a doubt, it would immediately go out. The closest I’ve ever come to an answer is this: If you believe without even a tiny bit of doubt that the Hidden Land exists, surely it will be there. That is the power of vision...

When I realized her story was true, I knew immediately that I had to explore it. It wasn’t long before I realized this would be my next book. It felt like this story had fallen into my lap for a reason. Call it writer’s grace.

I spent the next years traveling across the Himalayas, tracking down Tulshuk Lingpa’s surviving disciples—an amazing group of people, all of whom had been willing to give up this world for one far greater—and piecing together what happened and just who this charismatic lama Tulshuk Lingpa was. I also conducted quite a bit of research into the tradition within Tibetan Buddhism of the hidden lands. This brought me in touch with many high lamas and some of the world’s top scholars of Tibetan Buddhism.”

~ Tulkshuk Lingpa (1916-1962) was a charismatic and learned tertön, and a student of Dudjom Rinpoche. His name means 'Crazy Treasure Revealer'.

Kunzang, the only son of Tulshuk Lingpa, describes his father: "My father was just like the eighth emanation of Padmasambhava, Guru Nyima Özer. Guru Nyima Özer was like a sadhu, a wandering holy man, never staying in one place. He was not a stable type of person. He was a crazy yogin like my father. And like my father, he drank a lot." Tulkshuk Lingpa was born in the Golok region of eastern Tibet with the name Senge Dorje.

His father was Kyechok Lingpa, a lama at the Domang Monastery in eastern Tibet. His father was forced by the invading Chinese to flee over the Himalayas to India with his wife, Kilo. Kyechok Lingpa then had a monastery in Patanam, a few days' march from Tulshuk Lingpa's monastery in Simoling, Lahaul, until he died.

Tulkshuk Lingpa was recognised as a tertön by Dorje Dechen Lingpa (also know as the Domang Tulku) at the Domang Monastery in eastern Tibet. Dorje Dechen Lingpa made an attempt to open Beyul Demoshong in 1920's, which failed. He died on his return journey. While still young, Tulkshuk Lingpa was able to catch a phurba, a namter, sky-treasure. Tulkshuk Lingpa moved to India in his early twenties, lived and had monasteries in Himachal Pradesh, in India's western Himalayas.

In the early 1960s, Tulshuk Lingpa came from Tibet to the then independent Kingdom of Sikkim in the Eastern Himalayas—sandwiched between Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, and Indian Bengal—in order to ‘open the way’ to a hidden valley of immortality fabled in Tibetan tradition. After receiving visions that indicated he was to open the hidden valley in Sikkim, Beyul Demoshong, he went to Sikkim with 300 followers." ~ Rigpa Wiki