Timeless Rapture: Inspired Verse from the Shangpa Masters

358 Timeless Rapture
have the time at the moment to give you all the transmissions, but
you should go ahead with this plan and I will return as soon as
possible to give you the full transmission of the Shangpa cycle of
teachings.”
Although this story does not appear in Kongtrul’s autobiography, he
reports having met this lama for the first time in 1840 (at the age of twentyseven)
and was given just a few instructions on that occasion. He received
the full transmission of the Shangpa Instruction Lineage from Lama
Norbu in 1843. The first three-year, three-fortnight retreat at Tsadra
Rinchen Drak began in 1860; Kongtrul was forty-seven years old.
The Shangpa tradition had not had such a training center for hundreds
of years, if ever. Lineage holders before Kongtrul were accomplished masters,
but no record remains of them showing any interest in creating institutions
or programs; after the suppression of the Jonang monasteries, the
lineage had been homeless. (Lama Norbu, Kongtrul’s main Shangpa connection,
was a reincarnation of Mokchok Rinchen Tsöndru; his lama was
a reincarnation of Kyergang Chökyi Sengé. True to their roots, they spent
their lives gaining a high level of realization.) With Kongtrul, the Shangpa
lineage found a home, his own, at Tsadra Rinchen Drak. This center in
turn gave birth to another three-year retreat center, at Satsa Monastery;
after the reincarnate master of that institution completed a three-year
retreat under Jamgon Kongtrul’s guidance, he founded a similar retreat at
his own monastery. That retreat, like the retreat at Tsadra, still functions
today.
We might try to imagine Jamgon Kongtrul’s world at that time. He had
received the Shangpa transmission from an accomplished master and had
promised to revive the lineage by creating a retreat institution. In a land
where monastic communities could number in the thousands—how large
was the retreat center that Kongtrul built, how many Shangpa lamas would
he train in each retreat? The answer: four. Not four thousand, four hundred,
forty, or fourteen. Four. In all, eight persons lived in his small community:
a vajra master (Kongtrul’s teaching assistant), five retreatants (of
whom one did not meditate on the Shangpa doctrines but was responsible
for the protector temple), a cook, and a woodsman.
This, then, was Kongtrul’s grand vision for the continuation of the
Shangpa lineage: four lamas every three and a half years, at most.
Kongtrul’s lack of worldly ambition bears some serious reflection; his sim-