The Biographies of Rechungpa: The Evolution of a Tibetan ...

Marriage, pupils and the end of life 217
gYang-mgos) and he offers her to Rechungpa, who refuses her, saying that it is the nature
of women to have faults and that women capable of maintaining their commitments are
as rare as daytime stars. He adds that even women like Lhachik Dembu, who at least
confessed her transgressions, were difficult to find. Therefore Yowa Dawa Drak decides
to fall back on his alternative plan, which is to kill his wife before he dies, an action
which was legally permissible in parts of Tibet. 88 Without attempting to forbid this plan
and solely in order to prevent her death, Rechungpa takes her on as his consort. 89
Therefore within this society, as portrayed by Götsang Repa, even in the context of a
community of Tantric practitioners, women could have little control over whom they
were to be given to in a sexual relationship and even whether they were to be allowed to
live or not.
The death of Rechungpa
Rechungpa died at the age of 77 in 1161 (an iron-bird year). Lhatsun Rinchen Namgyal
and Götsang Repa both state that the death took place in 1171 (an iron-hare year). Gö
Shönnu Pal in The Blue Annals disagrees with the latter date which he attributes to the
distorting influence of the Siddharājñī and Amitāyus story, which necessitated the
lengthening of Rechungpa’s life-span to match its prophecy. Gö Shönnu Pal states that
according to Rechungpa’s own pupils he died in his seventy-eighth year. Presumably his
source was Sumpa’s The Essence of a Wonderful Jewel. Gö Shönnu Pal’s view is
supported by other material such as the life-story of Lingrepa (1128–88), which he
provides in The Blue Annals. In 1162, Lingrepa, then in his thirty-fifth year, goes to see
Rechungpa at Loro (Lo-ro) only to find that he had died the previous year, and so he
studies under Sumpa instead. 90 According to The Lhorong Dharma History, Lingrepa
went to Loro in his thirty-first year, which would be in 1158, already knowing that
Rechungpa had died. 91 This would place Rechungpa’s death at an earlier but unlikely
date.
In spite of the aberrant date, the main body of the first-person accounts by Sumpa and
Yang-gön Pal, which Götsang Repa reproduces, can be assumed to be unadulterated, as
they retain their first-person form grammatically. His death took place at the hermitage of
Tsekong (Tshe-skong) in the Loro area. Aware that death was close, he said that he would
not leave his body behind and would pervade all Buddha-realms. Therefore, whatever
direction his pupils directed their prayers, they would be fruitful.
At dusk, he told Sumpa to go and meditate, and not approach his cave until dawn,
whatever he hears. Sumpa returns to his cabin. At midnight he hears music and sees not
only lights but various parts of dancing and appearing and disappearing in
the sky. Amongst them, he sometimes saw Rechungpa and sometimes
He calls other pupils and at sunrise they go up to the cave to find only Rechungpa’s
clothes and cushion. 92
This is the basis for the phrase ‘who attained the rainbow-body’ in the title of Lhatsun
Rinchen Namgyal’s biography of Rechungpa. In the Dzogchen tradition, the
transmutation of the material nature of the body is said to result in its dissolution into
light at death, leaving only the inanimate parts of the body: hair and nails. Among
Milarepa and Rechungpa’s pupils, however, there are a number who, at the end of their
lives, are said to have physically departed for the perfect realms of the buddhas, leaving