Timeless Rapture: Inspired Verse from the Shangpa Masters

268 Timeless Rapture
These four groups became known in Tibetan shorthand as “Lumé’s, Ba’s,
Rak’s, and Dring’s groups.”
After the initial generation of founders, relations between these four
groups degenerated quickly, as Lozang Trinlé relates:
These four groups—Lumé, Ba, Rak, and Dring—gradually spread
to and developed in Lhasa. During the middle of the eleventh century
and at the beginning of the twelfth century, battles were
fought many times among these four groups. In the Fire Dog year
of the second sixty-year cycle, 1106 in the general calendar, a battle
was fought at Samyé between Lumé’s congregation, and Ba’s
and Rak’s congregations. As a result, most of the temples surrounding
Samyé’s main temple were burned; the “iron mountains”
and the perimeter walls were leveled. (Ibid., p. 534)
One of the Kalachakra translators who had traveled to India, Ra Dorjé
Drakpa, otherwise uninvolved in the dispute, hired five hundred workers,
who worked continually for two years to repair the damage, at an expense
of one hundred thousand measures of grain. This did not end the sad
events:
Further, in the Iron Dragon year of the third sixty-year cycle, 1160
in the general calendar, a long war between the four groups mentioned
above broke out at Lhasa, Yarlung, and Penpo. During this
time, parts of the main temple in Lhasa [later to be called the
Jokang], Ramoché [also in Lhasa], and Tradruk [temple in Yarlung]
were ravaged by fire and severely damaged. On that occasion, a
disciple of the Doctor from Dakpo [Gampopa], Dakgom Tsultrim
Nyingpo [1116–1169] negotiated a settlement between the warring
parties and repaired both the large and small temples in Lhasa.
(Ibid., p. 535)
These are not pleasant stories to repeat or to reflect upon, even now. Yet
we can imagine that these events and the tensions underlying them flavored
the atmosphere during the lives of Kyungpo Naljor and Rinchen
Tsöndru, particularly the latter, who never evinced any interest in empire
building.
These two masters met late in Kyungpo Naljor’s life; he sent the young