Tomo Geshe Rinpoche was indisputably one of the most distinctive, brilliant and important Lamas of the twentieth century. He officially belonged to the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism and was the third highest ranking monk of that school, the first and second ranks belonging to H.H. The Dalai Lama and H.H. The Panchen Lama, respectively. I say that he officially belonged to Geluk because, like the Dalai Lama, his perspective, knowledge and activities transcended the limitations of sectarianism. As is well known, Buddhism teaches that the consciousness of a being survives death and reanimates another body after a certain period of time. It is believed that ordinary beings are not able to control that process at all, and that once rebirth has occurred, conscious knowledge of the previous lives is blocked. In Tibetan Buddhism there is however a special tradition of highly developed masters taking rebirth deliberately into a circumstance that would afford them the opportunity to basically pick up where they left off. Tomo Geshe Rinpoche belonged to this unique class of masters.
The first Tomo Geshe (1866-1936) was one of the most renowned masters of Tibetan Buddhism. The image to the right is a photo of his mummified body. In 1937 he took rebirth into the Kazi aristocracy of the kingdom of Sikkim, on the southern border of Tibet. His father, Enche Kazi, was personally responsible for enabling many famous westerners' access to Tibet and its vast mysteries. A short list of these westerners includes, Anagarika Govinda, Alexandra David-Neel, Marco Pallis and Giuseppi Tucci, all of whom helped open the door of Tibetan wisdom for the first time to the western world.The amazing and miraculous stories about Tomo Geshe would easily warrant an entire book. When he was still an infant he told his father that his monks would soon be coming to get him, to take him back to Tibet. When this later actually happened, Tomo Geshe greeted each of the monks, calling them each by name. He even recognized his previous pack-mule and upon stroking its head, the animal began to shed tears. This second Tomo Geshe was extremely humble and, at the same time, never intimated by anyone. This fascinating trait was just as it had been with the first Tomo Geshe. Everywhere he went he incessantly offered help to anyone in need and was respected by everyone, regardless of religious or cultural affiliation. He was particularly famous for making and distributing medicinal pills called rilbu. These pills are a little hard to explain because their manufacture requires a combination of conventional medical knowledge and alchemy. Tomo Geshe would make these pills (sometimes including such substances as desiccated snow-lion's milk) and effect miraculous cures. Another incredible feature of Geshe Rinpoche's rilbu was that they were often self-replicating. He would have a dozen or so of them in a little pouch and after an entire day of administering them to the very ill, there would still be about a dozen or so of them left in the pouch. I entirely respect the attitudes of those who dismiss this out of hand. If I had not seen this with my own eyes, I would be one of you myself. It was in 1974, I believe, Tomo Geshe came to New York City and I had the opportunity not only to meet him, but I also spent a considerable amount of time with him. Another faction of the Sikkimese Kazi clan was living in New York at that time and through my association with them, I was asked to serve as Geshe Rinpoche's valet for a number of weeks. My Tibetan language skills were limited but not so bad in those days. Rinpoche also spoke English fairly well. When I first met him, he laughed out loud upon seeing me and declared, "My goodness, you're so tall". Later, at my apartment when we were alone together for the first time he said, "If there's anything at all you want to know, please ask, and if I can't remember, I'll do something to find the answer."
Not only did Tomo Geshe quickly and easily answer most of my questions, he also demonstrated what he had meant by "do something to find out". Geshe Rinpoche possessed remarkable divination abilities using various methods that included, manipulating his prayer-beads, dropping rice grains on a plate, looking at patterns of birds in flight and melong. The melong, which is Tibetan for mirror, is a small metal disc that is polished on one side so as to function somewhat as a mirror. It is not like what we generally consider to be a mirror in that the metal's ability to reflect an image is quite limited compared to highly reflective modern mirrors. In any case, it can function as a conventional mirror in a crude way. However, its real function (besides being an esoteric symbol of the mirror-like nature of the mind and the insubstantiality of all phenomena) is to concretely manifest images of information. In this function it is like the use of a crystal ball among the Romani. In the hands of a true master like Tomo Geshe Rinpoche, the melong can produce images that are just like watching a small television. I have seen this. Rinpoche once joked that if he had no vows he could be a millionaire just with his melong. Of course, beyond it being a very funny remark, it was also completely true and yet another testament to his complete disinterest in self-gain. Regarding the miracle of the self-replicating rilbu, here is how it happened. One morning I was informed that Rinpoche wanted to go to Freehold, New Jersey. I learned that there was a large community of Mongolians there who were particularly devoted to the Dalai Lama and to Tomo Geshe. Accordingly, we boarded a transit bus and made the trip there together. As we left New York City and traveled through some bustling, predominately African-American areas of New Jersey, Rinpoche clutched my arm tightly and asked me, "Are they fierce?" I couldn't tell if he was joking or not, as was often the case. When we arrived we were met with great ceremony and tremendous emotional outpouring. Rinpoche tirelessly ministered to thousands of devotees all day long. He also administered many rilbu -- many more than were in the pouch when we started out. I know this because, acting as his attendant, I was holding the pouch the entire day.
Interesting as all of this may be, there is in fact relevance to the previous post. Although Tomo Geshe Rinpoche himself was not at all trained in (or personally interested in) martial arts, he knew that I was. He was the one who actually brought the subject up. I had a million questions about Lion's Roar because at that time there was only very sketchy data available from very few Chinese sources. And I wasn't just interested in facts or history, I wanted to practice it. With his encyclopedic knowledge of Tibetan history, culture, spiritual practice and "highly classified" monastic specialties (and on one occasion, a melong version of a youtube clip), Tomo Geshe Rinpoche was able to give me an in-depth Lion's Roar education that would have been completely impossible under normal circumstances even for a Chinese person -- much less, a Bak Gui such as myself.
A brief word about sectarianism in general and in Buddhism particularly:
Tomo Geshe Rinpoche exemplified the ideal attitude regarding sectarian differences. He advocated the avoidance of two extremes. One is the extreme of ruining one's heritage by homogenizing all distinctions into mush. The other extreme is to paralyze the possibility of the evolution of knowledge by fixating on mere images of the past.
For those interested in more information about Tomo Geshe Rinpoche, I have included a couple of links:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/158567785X/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1585674656&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1D3QZ9CCYD2Q24P51D23
http://www.domogesherinpoche.org/
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