Pilgrimage!
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I’d been meaning to make the trip to Dartsedo all year. Some of the texts I’m hoping to translate were said to be there, so I knew I’d go eventually. Rather than make the trip over three long bus days, I decided to break it up by taking a small pilgrimage along the way, stopping in various ancient kingdoms throughout the Gyarong Gorges (Chinese: Jiarong).
A note about Gyarong - it is the most breathtaking place I’ve ever visited. It is totally unlike the Amdo grasslands I’ve grown accustomed too. The mountains are gigantic, solid rock, with lush vegetation growing upon them. There are rapids running throughout them and the sound of the rushing water is everywhere. Sometimes clouds are right in front of you, so the whole effect is a bit like walking through the Mists of Avalon. I’ve traveled a fair amount through Amdo now, but nothing has felt quite so magical, so ancient. It’s as if the whole landscape is full of secrets and if you’re still enough, maybe you will hear them. For those of you who know the song “Treasure Valley,” this place captures every description.
Here’s a music video of a song
I first heard while traveling through Gyarong:
">Wangmo's Favorite New Song
The singer is the Tibetan woman Yangchen Lhadzin. She’s singing in Chinese, but I think the part where she sings “OH---“ really captures the feeling of being on the mountaintops of Gyarong. I'm having a friend translate the lyrics for me, but in brief it seems to be all about the exhiliration that nature inspires.
I invited a friend along, a Tibetan woman named Tseko, and we met in the Tibetan town of Dzorge. From there we hired a driver and traveled to Barkham. Our driver was feeling very lucky that day - he’d just bought a brand new car the day before and we were his first clients, hiring him for 2 days of travel. Sadly, his luck soon ran out; as soon as we arrived in Barkham, his lovely new car was towed away; he’d idled too long in a no parking zone. We found another car.
In Barkham, we had to get strategic. There were two places I wanted to visit, several hours away. The first was the town of Thukje Chenpo, which means “Great Compassion” and is the most famous epithet of the deity Chenrezig.
Thukje Chenpo is named as such because the form of Chenrezig spontaneously manifested out of the earth at the peak of the mountain, hundreds of years ago. An entire gompa (monastery) was built around the image, which became the central shrine deity. Over time, the image was put inside of a statue where it remains to this day. When Tibet faced difficult times in the 50’s and 60’s, the statue was rescued by a local family and hidden in their home. Once the turbulence ended and the gompa was restored, it was returned to its original dwelling at the site of the image’s miraculous appearance.
In the autobiography that I’ve been translating, that of the 19th century Buddhist Lama Do Khyentse Dorje, Thukje Chenpo is mentioned countless times. I knew I wanted to go there, to sit before the main shrine in the same spot that Do Khyentse had been seated many times. There is one story in the text about a time when Thukje Chenpo was suffering a massive decline due to people’s unvirtuous actions. Do Khyentse went there, and in a series of prophetic visionary experiences he was instructed as to how to repair the damage. Do
Khyentse remained at Thukje Chenpo, practicing and making offerings day and night. The harm was reversed, and the statue glittered with rays of light as it never had before.
The second place I wanted to visit was Maha Kyilung Gompa, Do Khyentse Yeshe Dorje’s main seat (monastery). According to my guidebook, it was a mere 40 kilometers from Thukje Chenpo so our plan was to hire a car. This idea was laughed at, as the road to Mahakyilung is not drivable at all. Brainstorming with several local people, we came up with several options. The first was to hire two motorcycles and have them drive us. Apparently the 40 kilometer stretch would take about seven driving hours. From there we’d have to walk for about 11 hours, or hope to find a family nearby with horses that we could borrow. The second option was to travel through two other cities, then hire a car to backtrack down the impassable road from the opposite direction. From there, we would again face the same 11-hour walk or horseback ride to the gompa. Tseko and I were unprepared to hike for 11 hours but we decided it would be well worth it
to suffer whatever hardships we had to in order to reach the gompa.
We set out for Thukje Chenpo the next morning, arriving in the early afternoon. I’ve been in many Tibetan towns, but the feeling of Thukje Chenpo caught me off guard. It was like being transported back in time; I had the feeling I was seeing and experiencing things exactly as they’d been hundreds or even a thousand years before. The land had an untamed feeling about it, which was unsettling and at the same time filled me with a strange kind of happiness.
The easiest way to reach the main gompa, which is situated at the utmost peak of the mountain, is to hire a car and drive the long winding road up. We decided it would be more auspicious to walk to the top, so we set out on foot trails. Along the path, we were surprised to find clothing, jewelry and prayer beads hanging off of the rocks and trees. We later found out that these were the belongings of sick and deceased people. By hanging their possessions on the holy mountain, they would receive blessings of good health and fortunate rebirth. About
half way up the mountain, we stopped for an hour to practice and make offerings.
Several hours later, we made it to the top. There we visited the main shrine as well as the newly constructed Zangdok Pelri temple, which greatly resembles my Lama’s stupa in Michigan. We met several old women living at the top of the mountain, and I had the feeling they might be the spiritual guardians of Thukje Chenpo. It seemed they could have lived there for hundreds of years. We turned prayer wheels and breathed in the stillness of the misty mountaintop air. Several kind monks told us the history of the land and generously offered us tea and tsampa. Later we made our way back down the mountain, happy and filled with wonder. Perhaps one of the stranger things about our mountain trip was that neither of us experienced the slightest ache the next day. Four hours of uphill climbing, a body sadly out-of-shape - under normal circumstances I’d expect to be quite sore or tired. Not a single bit.
We received word that evening that the 11- hour hike that we’d planned into Maha Kyilung was impossible. There was heavy snowfall,
so no one would be going in or out for days or maybe weeks. I was disappointed to have come so close to Do Khyentse’s gompa but be unable to make it in.
On the way out of Thukje Chenpo, we stopped at the meditation caves of Berotsana and Yudra Nyingpo, two of Guru Rinpoche’s primary disciples. Inside the caves are all sorts of magical signs of spiritual attainment - sacred symbols that have literally grown out of the rock. In a retreat house nearby, a dakini named Khandro Kyid lives and practices. We met with her, received blessings and a bit of teaching. She gave Tseko and I many gifts - dharma texts, images, and white silk scarves.
From Thukje Chenpo, we traveled down to Rongdrak (Chinese: Danba), another ancient kingdom further south. Every village along the way had its own style of dress, with huge mutations from one place to the next. Language is the same way. Gyarong is known for its unique dialects - not like the variations of Tibetan spoken in other areas. Tseko spoke mainly Chinese with the Tibetans we met because the local language was mostly indiscernible to her. Chinese is the
language most Tibetans must fall back on when they can’t understand one another’s dialect, which is quite often.
From Rongdrak, we made it to the funky city of Dartsedo (Chinese: Kangding). There we met Tsedrup, a monk who is a relative of Do Khyentse Yeshe Dorje, and his aunt Ani Dasel, who is an incarnation of Do Khyentse Yeshe Dorje’s sister, Losel Dronma. They have made it their work to locate and archive the many volumes of Do Khyentse’s dharma teachings. They know of 30 different texts but to date have only been able to locate 10 of them.
In Lhagang, we visited several gompas including Dordrak Gon - one that Do Khyentse practiced in. It’s said that when the monastery was built, the king invited Do Khyentse to come and consecrate the shrine. Do Khyentse, often known for his outlandish behavior, arrived at the gompa with his long hair loose, wearing lay clothes and a gun slung across his back. The doorkeeper didn’t recognize the great Lama, and would not let the ruffian in. Do Khyentse then went up a back stairway, threw some barley grains upon the Guru Rinpoche statue, and suddenly the Guru himself appeared
in the sky. Because of this, the statue was named “Khazigma” which means “Seen in the Sky.” Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures inside of the temple, but since its recent restoration it houses an extraordinary Guru Rinpoche statue that must be 50 feet high.
Tsedrup took us on a day trip to Lhagang, another place that Do Khyentse and his sister visited on different occasions. A small stupa within Tagong Gompa holds some of Do Khyentse's reliquary remains. It is said that when Do Khyentse was offering tsog feast in front of the main shrine at Tagong Gompa, the statue delightly replied with “E MA HO!” which means something like. “How wondrous!” Behind the monastery is a garden with 124 stupas, dating back to the time when the Tibetan emperor Songtsen Gampo had the temple built. Songtsen Gampo is known as the first of the major dharma kings of Tibet. He along with his Chinese wife, Princess Wengchen (aka Gyaza), brought dharma relics, Buddhist teachers and texts into Tibet. Tagong Gompa was the last of 108 temples the king built in order to subdue negative influences in Tibet that were preventing the spread of dharma.
I managed to get a few texts in Dartsedo, including Do Khyentse’s secret biography which I will begin translating this week. When time permits, I will return there for an extended visit, as Tsedrup has invited me to travel with him to many more sacred sites of Do Khyentse.
Tseko and I ended our pilgrimage in Chengdu, a moderately progressive city in Sichuan province. There we ate at Pizza Hut, drank at Starbucks, and shopped for brand-named clothes in Westernized stores. It was indeed culture shock!
For a more extensive photo gallery of the trip, please visit here.
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Gry Chritiansen
non-member comment
Khandro Kyid
I would like to read her bioghraphy. Is there someone who would advise me?