Dohas of Düsum Khyenpa
Teachings from Ringu Tulku Rinpoche’s spring tour 2011
On the occasion of the 900 anniversary celebration year of the First Karmapa Düsum Khyenpa (1110-1193) Rinpoche taught from the two remaining volumes of teaching by Düsum Khyenpa. Among those is a collection of dohas. Doha is a song of realization, a poem of experience of the ultimate: the Mahamudra, the Dzogchen; the emptiness.
Here is transcribed the Rinpoche’s teachings on some of these dohas by the First Karmapa.
Transcribed by Albert Harris
This year, we are celebrating the nine-hundredth anniversary of the death of the first Karmapa, Dusum Khyenpa, and the nine-hundredth year of the existence of karmapas as karmapas because the first Karmapa, Dusum Khyenpa was born in 1110 (eleven-hundred and ten) in Tibet, in Kham, in a very kind of remote place – in fact, not very far from the place where I was born – and since then, 2010 (two-thousand and ten) was the nine-hundredth year. So, the Karmapa’s birth date is not recorded, it’s not known. So, it was decided to start this celebration from the day of his passing away; and that happened in December, 2010. And so in one year the Karmapa’s nine-hundredth anniversary will be celebrated.
The first Karmapa was called Dusum Khyenpa but he was not called Dusum Khyenpa from the beginning. Later on, because of his clairvoyance that he happened to be called Dusum Khyenpa: Dusum Khyenpa means seer of the three-times. This quality he had right from the beginning, even when he was very young and he was just looking after yaks. His friends, when they had kind of lost a yak, then they would go to him and say, “Where’s my yak?” And he would kind of sit down and he would close his eyes and say, “You go in that village,” and they would go and find them.
Then around the age of twenty he became a monk. He got renounced from the samsara. Some say, because he was very much disappointed by a love affair, he didn’t look that good [laughter]. Some say that he looked a little bit like a monkey and he later told that it is because a long, long time back he used to insult a monk and call him “monkey” and because of that he had to take rebirth as a monkey for five-hundred times. Then, when he became a human being, he looked a little bit like a monkey. But he said, “This is the last time I’m looking like a monkey! [Laughter] I’ve totally purified that karma. So since now, I’m looking very good and since then all karmapas looked very handsome. [Laughter]
So, he went to central Tibet and he studied very much under many kadampa masters: the madyamaka philosophy; all kinds of abhidhamma teachings; Buddhist logic. Some of those teachers [were the] main kind of lineage holders of these teachings he studied with. He became a very learned and renowned scholar. And then he met the Gampopa. So you know all about Gampopa, the main lineage holder of Milarepa. As you know, Milarepa was one of the main students of Marpa. Marpa was the translator who brought teachings from India. He studied at Nalanda University and studied under great masters like Naropa and Maitripada and many others, even Saraha – not Saraha, in Saraha his dreams – Shantipa and many others. He translated lots of tantras into Tibetan.
So he had two – you can say – different lineages. One was his academic or study lineage. So he had some students like Tilopa, to whom he passed on the studies of tantras, Guhyasamaja tantra and many other tantras and those tantric study lineage went another way, not through Milarepa. Actually, it went very much to the gelugpas. Tsongkhapa, the founder of gelugpa, is very much like the lineage holder of Marpa. It is not very much well-known and I don’t think it’s very much talked about, but it is a fact that Marpa is studied more by gelugpas than by the kagyupas.
I recently met a monk, a gelugpa geshe and he was saying that whenever he hears the name of Marpa he’s so inspired the tears come to his eyes. It was true, we were talking about Marpa and he was shedding tears and “What’s wrong with you?” you know. [Laughter] So that’s because he has very much studied in the Gelugpa tradition and Tsongkhapa loves him and talks so highly of him. The pitt instructions of Marpa were given to Milarepa: like mahamudra, six-yogas and chakrasambara and vajrayogini. These kind of pitt given to him and then he became totally realised. He actualised those teachings and became, as you know, one of the most renowned yogis of Tibet – the singing yogi sometimes people call him.
So this lineage was passed on to Gampopa and Gampopa also studied lots of kadampa teachings. So he combined these two: the Mahayana and the Bodhisatavyana teachings, created path teachings that he received from kadampa masters which comes from Atisha Dipankar and the pitt instruction teachings of Mahamudra and six-yogas which came from Milarepa. This combined together that he taught to his students, he used to teach that make the main kind of course of his teachings and that became quite later on called kagyupa. So sometimes kagyu is called karpu kagyu from takpo LaJen, the name of Gampopa is sometimes called Takpo LaJen the doctrine of Takpo Lajen is the name of the place. Gampopa is also the name of the place, Gampo is the name of the mountains; so from the name of the place where he was meditating, his monastery later became…he was known as Gampopa.
So Karmapa went to see him along with another two Khampas – monks – from around that region where he was so they were known later on as the three-men from Kham. The three-men from Kham became the main students of the Gampopa and he was not only studying very hard but he was also practising, sometimes in very harsh conditions. Once he was put into a cave where he couldn’t at all stand up or stretch his body, he just had only a place to sit and nothing else for several months. Like this, he practised and he practised very hard.
And then, it is said, he sometimes also hard tested. Some of you know the story that once he thought that he had the realisation, he had some experience of the truth, the nature of the mind. Then he went to tell this to his teachers and he told him thinking that his teacher would be very happy offering of his experience which he thought would be very good. But it was not like that. His teacher was not happy at all. Gampopa said, “You got it totally wrong. I thought you were one of my best students and I had so much hope for you. But what you have said, what you have understood is one-hundred percent wrong. So you just go back and check everything, revise everything, make it totally right and then only come back.”
So he went back and had full confidence in his teacher, really like a great devotion and reverence. So he went back and revised everything, he tried to change everything and then came back and told him again. And he was even more upset. He said, “You know, this is nothing different from what you told me last time. You just go back and check everything; it’s a hundred percent opposite to me and then only come back.”
So he went back and he tried to change and he couldn’t change anything. He came back after a few months and he fell at his feet and said, “Now you can beat me, you can kill me if you want but there is nothing I can change, this is what I see.”
Then Gampopa said, “You are right. You are right. [laughter] You have been always right but I wanted to make sure that you were that confident. That even your own teacher, in whom you have complete devotion, tells you that it’s wrong, still you cannot change it. I want that kind of conviction and confidence. Now we have got it. Now you know how to practise. Now you go away! Go back to Kham! Go to this mountainous place.” Khampu Kangra. You know Tibet has lots of snowy mountains, glaciers, at least used to have, now it’s all melting, but…”So you go there!” It’s a little bit to the border almost Burma…”You go there and then meditate and don’t come out till you get realisation.”
So he went there and he meditated and practised for I don’t know how many years and then he got the realisation; and he got full realisation. And it is said that when he got that kind of realisation then as a kind of acknowledgement or appreciation of his great achievement, a hundred thousand dakinis came and made a cap with their hair and put it on his head. And that’s why the black hat, we call the Karmapa the Black Hat Lama, that’s coming from there that it is said that since that time all the Karmapas have a black hat made of…I don’t know whether all those one-hundred thousand dakinis are all Asians [laughter] but you know the black hat…
And then, later on – it’s only later on during the fifth Karmapa’s time – the fifth Karmapa was invited by the Emperor of China, that time I think it was the Ming Dynasty, because the Emperor’s mother passed away who was devoted to the Tibetan lamas, and then, the Karmapa went there and he performed lots of miracles and things like that; and then the Emperor was kind of surprised because he saw that the Karmapa was wearing two-hats, one upon another. One day he came and said, “Why are you wearing two-hats, one upon another?” And the Karmapa said, “No, it’s not like that. One hat is there all the time, I’m just wearing one for the other people, but they don’t see it so you must be seeing it, the original hat.” Then he [the Emperor] said, “Can I make a kind of a hat which looks like what I see and make an offering to you so that you can show what kind of hat you have on all the time? So he said, “OK, if you want.” So that’s why he made the hat, a little bit like this [pointing] but different, and that was offered to the Karmapa and that’s what we call the “Karmapa’s Black Hat” in the ceremonies – the black hat ceremony – when the Karmapa does the black hat ceremony, he puts on that hat which was made by the Chinese Emperor because he saw the original kind of hat on the Karmapa.
So therefore, then after, the Karmapa also, at a later age, I think, at a very later age when he was in his seventies, more than sixties, he went back to central Tibet and started to build the Tsupo monastery. Therefore he had three: he built three-small monasteries, two in Kham and one in Tsupo and that is how the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism started. Generally, the Gampopa’s students, from Gampopa’s students started, what we call, the four-sub schools of Kagyupa.
Then one of the three-men from Kham, the Palma Tohba, his students started the eight later sub-schools of kagyu. Sometimes in the prayers, it’s written; it’s translated as, four great and eight lesser, that’s the wrong translation. Chempo and Chungchung in Tibetan can mean greater and lesser or it can mean elder and younger. So the schools that came from the direct students of Gampopa became the four-senior or the elder sub-schools: and then the schools that came from Gampopa’s students – Palma Tohba’s students –were called the eight-later sub-schools of Kagyu.
So Karmapa became very important also because he was the first – I think most of you know – to start the tulku system in Tibet recognising the reincarnate or the rebirth of the lamas. This is, as you know, Buddhism believes that everybody is a rebirth of somebody, everybody is reborn again and again and again, that’s the general understanding of Buddhism. But, in Tibet the Karmapa started a new system where the rebirth of a great lama was recognised and said, “This is the rebirth of that lama.” T
The first time the Karmapa wrote a letter before he died and gave it to his main student, I think Dungen Rinchen, and said, “I will come back and this is where I will be born so that’s where I will be found, the second Karmapa.” And in this way, this is something a little bit different for the karmapas than the other tulkus. The karmapas mostly recognised their own tulkus. Like a past karmapa usually leaves a letter and then, through that letter, the next karmapa is found. Until this time, the seventeenth Karmapa also was found with a letter left by the sixteenth Karmapa with Situ Rinpoche. He didn’t tell him that this was the letter; he just gave him a kind of protection amulet.
Everybody was searching for this letter all over the place and was asking everybody, “Do you have any letters? Do you have a letters? Anything the Karmapa gave you?” So for many years they didn’t find anything. Then one day, Situpa thought, “This was given to me by the Karmapa, maybe this is something.” He always thought it was just a protection. And then he opened it and he found an envelop there, a sealed envelope and on the top of the envelope it was written in red pen that “You must open this on horse year.” It was written like that. And then he opened and then he read the letter, a very clear letter, you have seen this letter. So that was kind of the system which happened from that time onwards and the karmapas were kind of special, but he was the first tulku and since then many…the Dalai Lama and many other lamas and Tibet became full of tulkus [laughter]. Every monastery, almost, had a tulku; some had more that one tulku so that’s like that.
There’s one special kind of thing which happened with karmapas. This older karmapa was a very highly revered lama, head of a school for a long lineage, for nine-hundred years of existence and sixteen or seventeen-karmapas, and had lots of devotees not only among the karma kagyu people but all over Tibet. But he never had any kind of political title; he never took any kind of temporary power or political assignment or role or anything. He always remained a spiritual teacher. And most parts of the karmapa’s lineage, even were not staying in the monasteries, I think it started around the fourth karmapa until very late till about tenth or even later. It was a camp and the camp was always moving throughout Tibet. So therefore, the karmapa’s kind of a main headquarters, you can say if you like, was called the karma gar, gar meaning the camp, the karmapa’s gar. Even now, when karmapa writes a letter or something, from karma gar it’s the camp. And I think because of that, maybe, because he travelled all over Tibet, not one place even though all over Tibet there is lots of – what can you say? – devotion and reverence to the karmapa, there’s an open letter of the karmapa where he says that the high karmapa has no particular school, every Buddhism is my school. So, if there’s any conflict, if you make any conflict between the schools, you are not my follower. So he wrote a letter like that.
©Ringu Tulku Rinpoche
This is a transcript of a video talk given for the Bodhicharya Online Shedra by Ringu Tulku Rinpoche. The transcript has only been lightly edited and is meant to be used within the Online Shedra study context.
