Fearless in Tibet: The Life of the Mystic Terton Sogyal (22 page)

Without a constant spiritual guide to look over Nyagtrül’s progress, the original pure motivation behind his spiritual practices became obscured by a sinister urge to acquire many disciples, wealth, and temples. Nyagtrül began to picture himself ruling over a monastic estate similar to Tengyeling, where thousands of students would bow at his feet. As his motivation to benefit others was overshadowed by an egoistic longing for material abundance, he began to rely solely on magic and worldly spells. He used them not to help others but rather for prosperity and influence for himself and for his patrons.

Just after dusk one evening, Nyagtrül agreed to assist Norbu Tsering in his conspiracy. Norbu Tsering did not mention the name of the Dalai Lama to Nyagtrül, however, saying only that a person needed to be eliminated in order for Tengyeling’s power to return. Nyagtrül set about the task straightaway.

On thin rice paper, Nyagtrül sketched the body of a naked man, around which he drew a mantra wheel; bound with chains at the neck, the man was pinned down by two large scorpions that held his head and feet in their mouths. Then he inscribed a spell on the paper, slowly enunciating aloud each syllable—a specific spell used to deplete an individual’s vital life-force. He recited the spell again and again, infusing the diagram with its injurious power. He strengthened the spell by visualizing scorpions and snakes dispensing the essence of their venom into the sketch. Burning poisonous herbs on a small ember, Nyagtrül held the diagram over the bluish smoke to saturate the paper with noxious fumes. After he folded the paper into a square smaller than the palm of his hand, he drew a smaller diagram on the outside, with flames around the edge, and inscribed more wrathful and violent spells. As he wrapped the paper square with black and red thread, Nyagtrül knew that the black magic he had employed was the strongest possible, and he was confident in its efficacy.

At the conclusion of the ritual, Nyagtrül called Norbu Tsering into the dark room where the wicked diagram lay on the table. “Give me the name and birth year of the person,” Nyagtrül said. “I will write it on the paper.”

“Thubten. Thubten Gyatso. Born in the year of the Fire Rat.”

Nyagtrül paused. The bamboo pen in his hand hovered above the paper as the butter lamp fizzled out.

“You want to kill the Dalai Lama?” Nyagtrül questioned.

“Do it. I’ve backed you this whole time in Lhasa and provided you with whatever you wanted. Now just write what I have told you!”

Nyagtrül knew that his incantations and sorcery were powerful enough to take the life of any individual, no matter how holy that person may be. He stared at the diagram. The ring of flames sketched around the edge and the inward-coiling mantras left just enough space to write the name of the intended victim.

“You write it. I am not writing his name,” Nyagtrül said, thrusting the pen at Norbu Tsering.

“I don’t care who is the scribe or the sorcerer. I just want what is due to me.” Norbu Tsering grabbed the pen and wrote, “
SUPPRESS THUBTEN GYATSO, BORN IN THE FIRE RAT YEAR.”

Nyagtrül hung his head between his shoulders as the Dalai Lama’s name in ink dried on the agent of death.

When the Dalai Lama was 24 years old, he began having recurring ominous dreams. He consulted Tertön Sogyal, who interpreted the dreams as life threatening and suggested antidotes and rituals to drive away the source of the aggression. The Nechung Oracle began to warn of similar dangers to the Dalai Lama’s life. A new menace had emerged. While the Oracle often gave cryptic allegories in his counsel, on this occasion he stated plainly that measures needed to be taken to protect the Dalai Lama.

The Nechung Oracle most often delivered his prophecies and advice to the Dalai Lama and government ministers in formal ceremonies. With the Dalai Lama presiding on a throne and the officials arranged by rank, the Oracle’s medium would enter the temple in a meditative state, waiting to become possessed. As the assembly chanted invocation verses, the medium’s ritual brocade robes and circular chest plate, weighing more than 100 pounds, were securely fastened. When Nechung entered the medium’s body, the monk stomped and jerked in wrathful dances as a massive helmet-crown that weighed more than 30 pounds was tied to his head. As he hissed and jumped, bowed and twirled, attendants scrambled to listen to the Oracle’s prophecies uttered through the medium. Helpful attendants supported the possessed monk and hoped his limbs and neck would not snap from the weight.

Before the Great Prayer Festival in 1899, although the Nechung Oracle strongly warned of threats to the Dalai Lama and cautioned him against being in any public space, the ruler still took part in ceremonies at the Jokhang Temple with Lhasa residents. Days after the ceremonies were complete, the Dalai Lama suffered from dizziness and nausea. Potala Palace doctors were summoned to assess the Dalai Lama’s weakened condition. That evening, the Medium of the Nechung Oracle went into a trance at his small temple on the outskirts of Lhasa. The medium’s attending monks knew something was very serious because Nechung rarely entered the medium when not summoned during a formal ceremony. But the message was indecipherable. The puzzling message mentioned death, the Dalai Lama, and a pair of boots.

A messenger was immediately dispatched on horseback to the Potala with the dire warning in writing for the Dalai Lama. As soon as Nechung had departed the monk’s body, the exhausted medium put on his monk’s habit and dashed to the Potala. A separate runner was sent in the dead of night to fetch Tertön Sogyal, for the Oracle had also said, “Ask the one with the title of Tertön.”

By the time Tertön Sogyal arrived at the Potala, the Dalai Lama’s attendants and advisors were trying to decipher the meaning of the Nechung Oracle’s enigmatic warning, which spoke of perilous spells, ill will, jealousy, and footwear. The group made no headway in deciphering the Oracle’s message. As they spoke in hushed voices, confused by the inclusion of footwear in the warning, a disturbed and tired Dalai Lama walked into the room. All present bowed their heads and bent at the waist.

“What then is this about?” the Dalai Lama questioned bluntly. “Sogyal, tell me!”

Tertön Sogyal asked the chamber attendants if a pair of boots had recently been gifted to the Dalai Lama. One of the attendants nodded affirmatively, grabbed a torch to illuminate the dark hallways, and ran to retrieve the footwear.

Some weeks before, Tertön Sogyal had visited Demo at Tengyeling Monastery. While there, Norbu Tsering had asked Tertön Sogyal to put on a pair of boots that, he was told, had recently been delivered from an expert boot maker. Tertön Sogyal did not know that Norbu Tsering had sewn the black magic diagram into the heel of one of the boots. Norbu Tsering wanted Tertön Sogyal to wear the boots because if a powerful tantric practitioner like Tertön Sogyal stomps on such a heinous diagram, the curse is kick-started. As soon as Tertön Sogyal pulled on the knee-high boots, however, blood dripped from his nose. He took this as an extremely inauspicious sign and removed the boots immediately and departed from Tengyeling. Failing to get Tertön Sogyal to wear the boots, Norbu Tsering decided to try to have the Dalai Lama effect the spell himself by wearing the boots. Norbu Tsering arranged for the cursed boots to be offered to the Dalai Lama by Tengyeling Monastery during an offering ceremony that took place during the Great Prayer Festival two weeks before the Dalai Lama fell ill—precisely when the Oracle had warned of dangers.

The Dalai Lama looked on sternly at his most trusted attendants, the medium, and his teacher Tertön Sogyal, as they waited for the attendant to return with the boots. The echo of the scurrying steps of the chamber attendant grew louder in the hallway. Two separate pairs of boots had been given to the Dalai Lama during the offering ceremony, and the attendant held both pairs. Tertön Sogyal recognized the pair he had tried on a fortnight earlier. Upon seeing the boots, the Dalai Lama almost vomited, while the Medium of the Nechung Oracle began to sway back and forth as if he were going to be possessed.

“Give me those,” Tertön Sogyal said as he seized a single boot with both hands.

Tertön Sogyal’s body surged with wrath. He tore at the boot’s leather and brocade and slammed the sole to the floor until the dense insulation in the heel broke open. The cursed talisman was ejected from the boot’s heel and fell to the cold stone floor. The medium reached forward to grab it, but Tertön Sogyal pushed him away. Dark shadows slid around the room as wind pushed at the flames of the torches set in the walls. Holding the sorcerer’s black magic diagram in the air, Tertön Sogyal did not dare voice what he read inscribed.

“Show it to me,” the Dalai Lama commanded.

Tertön Sogyal dutifully walked toward the ruler and held the diagram in the torchlight.

Dizzy and nauseated, the Dalai Lama squinted in anger, now realizing the gravity of the Oracle’s pronouncement.

“There may be more than one person in Lhasa with the name Thubten Gyatso,” the Dalai Lama said. “But only one Thubten Gyatso was born in the Fire Rat year. Find out who is trying to kill me.”

The Dalai Lama’s orders to find his would-be assassins were completed swiftly. Tibetan government documents show that ministers oversaw a brief investigation and judicial proceeding. Tengyeling was immediately suspected. As the former regent was ultimately responsible for the activities of Tengyeling Monastery, Demo was implicated in the assassination plot. He was summoned to the Potala on the pretext of an important ceremony. Upon his arrival, he was placed in shackles and thrown into the Shol prison below the Potala Palace. His nephew, Norbu Tsering, was also tricked into coming to the Potala on the fake summons that he was to be honored for his exemplary service to the Tibetan government. Nyagtrül was taken from the Barkhor neighborhood and dragged into a prison cell.

The black magician Nyagtrül was identified as the sorcerer assassin, and Norbu Tsering admitted being the ringleader of the plot, not only because of the deadly spell in the boot, but he had also buried four ceramic vases around the Potala Palace, empowered with different black magic substances. Demo and other family members at Tengyeling were not spared. More than two dozen individuals at Tengyeling sat in the dungeon below the Potala Palace within a week. News spread quickly around Lhasa of the assassination attempt on the Dalai Lama.

The Nechung Oracle continued to warn of other sorcery. The Oracle directed the Tibetan government officials to unearth additional buried spells. Another oracle was also consulted, and discovered a hand-size scorpion from under a willow tree in the courtyard of the Ramoche Temple. When attendants examined the scorpion, they found shreds of the Dalai Lama’s monastic robe in its belly, which was seen as particularly harmful and inauspicious, and evidence of further black magic.

Punishment for crimes in 19th-century Tibet was severe; corporal and capital punishment were regularly employed. After a brief trial for treason, all the accused were found guilty and sentenced to death. Even though the Council of Ministers called for the conspirators from Tengyeling to pay with their lives, the Dalai Lama intervened and forbade any capital punishment in his domain.

Norbu Tsering and others at Tengyeling were sentenced to life in prison. Demo was never seen again in Lhasa. Perhaps he was held under house arrest in Lhasa for the rest of his life. But it is more likely that Demo was exiled to Ngari in western Tibet. The Demo incarnation line was banned, and much of the record of his previous incarnations’ activities was scrubbed from the history books. The Tibetan government confiscated Tengyeling’s vast estates, and statues and gold from its grand shrines were distributed to temples across the Tibetan Plateau. One hundred statues were offered to Tertön Sogyal to take on his return journey to Nyarong to be housed in newly constructed chapels at Kalzang.

As for Nyagtrül, despite the Dalai Lama’s commutation of the death penalty upon Tertön Sogyal’s urging, as well as the Nechung Oracle’s strong and repeated urgings not to kill the Nyarong sorcerer, he was dead soon after imprisonment. Some say Nyagtrül was treated so badly by guards that he stabbed himself and died in a toilet; others say he was bound in a leather bag and beaten to death. Nyagtrül’s body was buried at a location named the Black Mouth at Nyen, and a black stupa the size of a small house was built over the top in an attempt to suppress any further negative energy. If the revenge that the spirit of Nyagtrül soon sought for his treatment in prison was any indication, his death had certainly been horrific.

Escaping from beneath the black stupa, Nyagtrül’s spirit haunted Lhasa and meddled in the Dalai Lama’s affairs. The stupa built above Nyagtrül’s corpse inauspiciously cracked whenever the Dalai Lama traveled the two miles between the Potala and the gardens of the Norbulingka estate, and the spirit stirred up dust and windstorms at the same time. The spirit became even more audacious and on a number of occasions tried to enter the Medium of the Nechung Oracle to confuse the government with misguided prophecies. The Dalai Lama finally summoned the individuals whom he thought capable of suppressing Nyagtrül’s spirit—Tertön Rangrik and Tertön Sogyal.