LITMIR.BIZ

      It is among Repa Karpo’s disciples that we find my ancestor, Lumey Dorje of the Tsangsar clan. Earlier, during an empowerment ceremony with a huge gathering, Repa Karpo spotted Lumey Dorje in the crowd and called out, “Hey, you! Do you want to follow me?”

      Lumey Dorje approached and replied, “Certainly. How kind of you to make it so easy for me—I don’t even have to make the request.” Then and there he became a disciple of Repa Karpo.

      Before long, Lumey Dorje attained a high level of realization. He also built a monastery called Nangso Chenmo to which Nangchen owes its name. It had 115 pillars, making it extraordinarily large. When it came time for the consecration, he pitched a small tent and began practicing the instructions he had received from his guru.

      During the ceremonies, some benefactors offered him droma, our traditional and auspicious but very rich dish of tiny sweet roots swimming in clarified butter. Lumey Dorje consumed one large pot after another, ten in all, and the word got around that the master had done something crazy and would die, or at least become seriously ill. But when everybody had gathered, he exuded all the butter through the pores of his body, leaving him even more radiant than before. Someone said, “That can’t be an ordinary human body!” Another remarked, “Look! His body doesn’t even cast a shadow! You can see right through it. He should be called Bodiless Vajra,” which is what Lumey Dorje means. This master was truly a sublime being—like a lion among men.

      When his guru Repa Karpo passed away, the funeral ceremony was a major event, a special occasion for his disciples to make lavish offerings to honor their guru’s physical form. Soon after, the great Chögyal Pakpa, a master of the Sakya lineage, traveled through the region on his way to China and visited the monastery at Nangso Chenmo.¹⁹ The followers of Repa Karpo told him, “We have been abandoned by our master, like a body without a head. You are a sublime being, the emperor’s guru and the ruler of Tibet, and we would like to offer the monastery and the Nangchen kingdom to you.”

      Chögyal Pakpa replied, “This would be inappropriate because the head wouldn’t fit the body. I am Sakya while you are Kagyu. It would be like putting a sheep’s head on the body of a goat. I would rather choose the best of Repa Karpo’s disciples. I have been entrusted with thirteen emblems of power to be given to thirteen people below me; the first of these I will offer to Repa Karpo’s main disciple, giving him the rank of lachen, grand master. So, choose the one among you who is the foremost disciple, and I will invest him with this title so that he can take charge of your kingdom.”

      One of the disciples replied, “My Dharma brothers are all equal; there is no difference. It would be hard for us to choose who is best.”

      “Isn’t there one who is just slightly better than the others?”

      “Well, there is Lumey Dorje, whose bodily form resembles a golden offering lamp, but he has gone to Central Tibet. The rest of us are all equals.”

      “I am also going to Central Tibet. Send someone to find him and tell him to meet me there.”

      The messengers found Lumey Dorje near Lhasa, residing at the seat of a close disciple of Marpa.²⁰ They escorted him to Chögyal Pakpa, who enthroned him, giving him a golden seal and an insignia of precious brocade that symbolized the rank of lachen, one of the thirteen imperial priests. Upon receiving these honors, Lumey Dorje said, “I have had no other aim in my heart than to be a renunciate meditator, least of all a Dharma king, but I will not oppose your command. However, you must appoint me an effective Dharma protector.”

      Chögyal Pakpa then entrusted him with the Four-Faced Guardian, a Dharma protector from the Sakya lineage, together with the accompanying empowerment and instructions. Chögyal Pakpa then said, “You can rest assured that this guardian will follow you everywhere like a shadow follows a body.”

      This was not to be his only protector. Later Lumey Dorje had a vision of the female guardian Dusölma. She asked him, “What do you need?”

      “I don’t need anything!” Lumey Dorje replied.

      “Nevertheless,” she said, “I will protect your Dharma lineage for thirteen generations as if I were present in flesh and blood.”

      Lumey Dorje had also received many empowerments and instructions from a great lama in the Kadam tradition and a disciple of the famed Indian master Atisha.²¹ When Atisha came up from Nepal to Tibet for the first time, a Dharma protector named Monkey-Faced Ganapati had followed him. At some point, Atisha entrusted this guardian to the lama, who later passed him on to Lumey Dorje, saying, “This protector is half-wisdom and half-mundane; often his activity is mischievous.”²² So when Lumey Dorje returned to Kham as a Dharma king, he had an invisible following of not just one but three Dharma protectors.