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

The biographies of Rechungpa 218
behind no physical remnants whatsoever. Similarly, in the case of Rechungpa he does not
leaves his hair or nails behind, only his clothes.
It could be argued, from a non-religious point of view, that this cannot be a genuine or
truthful account of Rechungpa’s death by Sumpa, because deities do not appear in the sky
and corpses do not disappear, however holy the person. However, even from that
perspective, one has to admit that visions do occur as subjective experiences, and in
Götsang Repa, Sumpa’s account is a description solely of his own experiences. However,
when Lhatsun Rinchen Namgyal summarises this passage, the list of people that Sumpa
calls is transformed into a list of people who also witness those apparitions in the sky,
thus objectifying the visionary experience. 93 Lhatsun Rinchen Namgyal presumably
assumed that if they had been called they would have seen what Sumpa saw.
There is also a possible explanation other than dematerialisation for the missing
corpse. The biography records that on more than one occasion Rechungpa’s pupils found
his cave empty, and searched the mountains for days for their aged guru before locating
him alone in a cave. 94 He had, he explained, simply tired of human company, wished to
spend his days alone and had sneaked away without leaving any indication of where he
had gone. Though he had failed to escape on those previous occasions, it could be argued
that he at last succeeded, for by making his pupils assume he had died, he prevented them
from searching for him, which would indeed have allowed him to spend his remaining
days in solitude, as he wished, perhaps even with another set of clothes. Though this may
be a distasteful explanation from the religious point of view, it is the inevitable result of
applying Occam’s razor to this ancient knot. Lhatsun Rinchen Namgyal’s description of
the discovery of Rechungpa’s disappearance has again a curious variant from Götsang
Repa’s. He states that a pigeon-sized hole was found in the cave’s roof, through which
Rechungpa was presumed to have departed, and that Rechungpa’s clothes had also gone
from the room. 95 This could be taken as another misleading summary, with Lhatsun
writing ‘There were no clothes on the bed’ (gzim mal na na bza’min pa) for Sumpa’s
‘there was nothing other than his cushion and clothes’ (na bza’dang bzhugs gdan ma
gtogs mi ‘dug). It seems odd that Rechungpa would need to take his clothes along with
him into a transcendent, inconceivable state.
Rechungpa as divine incarnation
All surviving texts that pre-date Lhatsun Rinchen Namgyal and Götsang Repa are silent
on the subject of Rechungpa’s divine status and of his previous lives. However, both
these authors give the subject much attention.
The terms trulpa (sprul-pa), which is in Sanskrit and tulku (sprul-sku), which
is are basically synonymous as respectively ‘emanation’ and ‘emanationbody’.
However, in current Tibetan usage, the former designates the manifestation of a
buddha or bodhisattva, while the latter signifies the rebirth of a recently deceased master,
who may not necessarily be considered to have attained enlightenment. In fact there is an
informal distinction made between high, medium and low tulkus. Succession by
incarnation originated within the Karma Kagyu in the thirteenth century, but has since
become widespread, numbering thousands by this century. Let alone having no canonical
basis, there is not even a textual tradition for the Tibetan tulku system, and a large