Chapter One

Who Are We?

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When I first came to the United States, I hesitated to talk about reincarnation because I thought people wouldn't like it or be able to understand it. I was afraid they'd think it was some kind of fairy tale or plain religious brainwashing. But when I finally did talk about it, to my surprise, people nodded their heads in agreement, as though they accepted and liked the idea. I began to wonder what made them like it. Why did they accept it so easily when someone like me, who was supposed to be a reincarnated lama and had spent a whole life trying to comprehend it, still had a hard time accepting it? Why did a group of Americans sitting down to listen to a stranger from Tibet talking about reincarnation find it so simple and easy to accept?

    That was a big question for me. I thought about it and talked to a number of people. I realized they were drawn to reincarnation because it's "mystical." Maybe they thought that through reincarnation they'd be able to go back to being the same people they were with a full knowledge of their previous lives. I suspect that's why many accepted it without knowing what it was. An attachment to the idea that one might continue to exist made it easy to accept, at least in word, if not in understanding.

    So what's the catch? As I understand it, there's a big surprise. The surprise is that the continuity of an individual is very, very subtle. Memories are usually later. The individual's life does not continue as such. Reincarnation can be an uncontrolled, crazy whirlwind in which we are blown about like autumn leaves not knowing where we're going to be dropped.

    One of Buddha's chief disciples, a monk called Mahakatyayana, was walking through a forest with a group of students. They came upon a lake where a man, a woman, and their baby were eating a fish they had just caught. Their dog was barking and begging for food.

    On catching sight of them, Mahakatyayana stopped and burst out laughing. Everyone wanted to know why. He explained, "In a former life, the baby the mother now holds to her breast was a man her husband murdered for having assaulted her. The fish they are eating was the baby's grandfather and the dog begging for a piece of that fish was his grandfather's wife."

Continuations

We wonder who we are, where we come from, where we are going, and how we get there. These are not new questions. Twenty-five hundred years ago, Buddha was asked where and when we began and whether or not there would be an end to our taking rebirth. Buddha's answer was silence, because the beginning cannot be pinpointed.

    There is no new consciousness born, and no consciousness is ever destroyed. All consciousness resurfaces somehow. That's why we continue to go from life to life, all of us, the same beings, from the limitless beginning of time. That's the basis of the Buddhist notion that every sentient being has been your mother. This may be a controversial statement, and I can't prove it scientifically. In fact, it's as difficult to prove as reincarnation. But that's the basic premise of reincarnation: No new consciousness is born; everyone is endlessly circling around from birth to death, birth to death.

    Every consciousness that already exists will always exist. And every consciousness has the potential to become fully enlightened, to have total freedom from negative emotions as well as their imprints--to be faultless in qualities and knowledge.

Consciousness changes its physical identity all the time. For the most part, identifying who is who is a little difficult because the changes between one life and the next are drastic.

    That everybody is a reincarnation was Buddha's realization. In my culture, pre-communist Tibet, we developed a system for recognizing certain beings, known as incarnate lamas, who keep coming back for a specific purpose. They are called tulkus --"tul" means manifestation and "ku" means form. Tulkus are supposed to be special in that they are free of negative emotions and can help others to be free.

    The system of tulkus, or recognized reincarnations, began with the first Karmapa, about five centuries after the introduction of Buddhism in Tibet. Up through the sixteenth reincarnation of the Karmapa, who died in the early 1980s, each reincarnation left letters announcing who the next reincarnation would be. Soon, reincarnations of the Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama, and thousands of others were identified. And, in some cases, multiple reincarnations of the same tulku were discovered. At the enlightened level, the possibility of manifestation is unlimited.

    To highly developed lamas, past and future lives are as ordinary as yesterday and tomorrow. They sometimes talk among themselves about a future life as if they were making plans for the next day. I was told the story of a famous lama with a big nose who had Parkinson's disease. One day, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama noticed the man was shaking very violently, so he said to him, "I am not going to tell you the usual things, to have a long life, and continue to help all beings, but when I see a young boy who tells me, `I am the one with the big nose,' I'll be happy to recognize him as your reincarnation." The lama went home very relieved to have had that conversation, and within a short time, he died.

    There are different ways by which tulkus are recognized. One is based on self-identification, a tulku revealing his or her identity even at a very early age. As soon as the second Dalai Lama was born in the sixteenth century, he opened his big round eyes, turned them in the direction of Tashi Lunpo, the monastery of the first Dalai Lama, and started praying. He recited mantras as soon as he could talk, and when he was about three and his mother scolded him, he sang a song to her saying, "I will not stay here: I have a much better house with many more rooms in Tashi Lunpo." His mother was curious: "Where do you come from?" she asked. He told her, "When I died, as they tied my body with ropes to take me to the place where sky burials are performed, I saw the six-armed protector Mahakala wearing metal shoes and his mask of fierceness. I went with him and this is where he led me." He named the man who had tied his old body. Later, when he was seven, he recognized the old man who had been his attendant at the monastery and bestowed on him the blessing of Zambala, who is the god of wealth. The old man started crying.

    A common system of recognizing incarnations, by which even His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama was recognized, is to see if the candidate can recognize some of his or her predecessor's personal belongings, such as a rosary or a pair of glasses. Then the time of birth is another indication, both because there might have been oracles indicating when that would be and because the event itself might have been distinguished by some supernatural sign witnessed by several people, such as a rainbow appearing above the parents' house, or a spring flower born in the dead of winter. In one case, a raven perched on top of a prayer flag guarding the baby day and night for two years. Prophetic dreams and visions were very common, especially if more than one person could confirm having received the same message and if the choice was then confirmed by a respected clairvoyant lama. I know this may sound fantastic to Westerners, but for Tibetans it was and still is as normal as a weather forecast.

    Some reincarnations of earlier masters receive no official recognition although a lot of people know who they are. Tashi Namgyal, an abbot whose reincarnation I was confirmed to be, was one such. But before that happened, I had a bumpy ride, thinking I might be the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama one minute and of someone else the next. Many search parties came to our house to see if I was the boy they were looking for. For the Panchen Lama interview, a huge party arrived at our house with twenty to thirty horses. I was only three, and I remember it looked like a big crowd to me. I liked the idea that I might be recognized as a very high-ranking lama such as the Panchen Lama, because that would have entitled me to a throne at least as big and high as my father's, who was not only an incarnate lama but born into the family of the thirteenth Dalai Lama. The fact that he was such a respected lama was what landed me on several lists.

    When Tashi Namgyal died, the people of his institutions and his attendants gave away practically all of his wealth and belongings because they did not expect him to be reincarnated or recognized. They had just one little carpet and a small chest left by the time they were told to start looking for the reincarnation. They dragged their feet and hoped the matter would go away. My father lost no opportunity to say he didn't think I was an incarnate lama at all, though he also said I might in some way be connected to the Buddha of Light. He had serious doubts about the entire tulku system; he thought it was too vulnerable to political maneuverings and that it might have outlived its purpose.

    One very respected Rimpoche said the reincarnation of Tashi Namgyal was likely to be the son of a prominent lama in Lhasa, and that pretty much pointed to me. My father did everything he could to block the process, even going so far as to say that he would give me up only if I were given a high ranking; he hoped that the government would reject the request without even taking it into consideration. But the man entrusted with finding the reincarnation of my predecessor became the regent of Tibet, and he took his task very seriously. To my father's great surprise, the ranking was granted, and I was confirmed at the age of four.

    I was sent to live with my first teacher at a nearby retreat area, then I entered Drepung monastery at the age of five. At my welcoming ritual at the monastery, where I was to be educated, my teacher said, "I hope you complete your monastic studies as quickly as possible and remain in Lhasa to give teachings to hundreds of thousands of people." That I really was the reincarnation of an abbot named Tashi Namgyal was totally accepted. If it hadn't been totally accepted, they would have told me to be a good boy and not dreamed of asking a small child like me to teach thousands of people. The request made me see my responsibility to others very clearly, as well as what was expected of me. It created a solid guideline, a plan for my life.

    I stayed at Drepung until I was nineteen, when I escaped from Tibet to India, where I remained a monk for a few more years.

When I was in my twenties and having a teenage rebellion, the doubt I had been entertaining since adolescence about reincarnation surfaced more strongly than ever. I read the biographies of the different incarnate lamas. Many of them contained recollections of their previous lives. But, when I tried to remember anything regarding my previous lives and circumstances, conditions and friends, my vivid, reliable recollections equaled zero. Then I wondered, What am I? A fool?

    While living in Delhi during the 1960s and '70s, I suffered tremendously. When a friend of my family who was married to a man of royal descent from Ladakh died in Delhi, her father asked me to do a transference of consciousness for her. I hadn't done one for a long time and I did not have any of the necessary materials for the ritual, such as the mixture you put on the crown of the person's head. Besides, I had my doubts as to whether these rituals worked.

    I went to the house at six in the evening. I sat alone with the woman's body and recited a long prayer very slowly, with all my concentration. When I got to the verses for transferring the consciousness, I gathered my thoughts on that very carefully and applied them to what I was doing. One of this woman's gurus was Bakula Rimpoche, who was a member of parliament in India at that time. The very next day, he told me that the deceased woman had come to "visit" him at about seven P.M., the exact time that I had transferred her consciousness to be united with the mind of enlightenment.

    That confused me further, but it also weakened my doubts. It indicated to me that something was working, though I still didn't have perfect confirmation. Of course, I was not the only one there--other lamas were present--but I was alone with the body, and the timing seemed to indicate that what I was doing had some effect. I remember discussing my doubts with my teachers Ling and Trijang Rimpoche. They listened very kindly.

My understanding of reincarnation came gradually through a long process of learning from the great Buddhist teachers. Learning from the great Buddhist texts. Learning through debate, through meditation and practice. After all that, I can now say I have some kind of firm and unshakable belief in reincarnation.

    It comes from a deeper consciousness that lies at the heart level, a kind of pervasive understanding. Not a voice, but a comprehension coming from inside rather than outside. That's why I believe in reincarnation--not only because Buddha said one should.

    Some friends tell me that this is just Tibetan conditioning, but the same could be said for the Western lack of belief in reincarnation. In Tibet, we saw or heard of small children resuming conversations with adults right where they had been left off in previous lifetimes, performing religious rituals they couldn't possibly know, or insisting they lived in houses in distant cities they had never been to, with people they had never met in their current lives. If I didn't believe in reincarnation, of course all this would present obvious contradictions.

Causes and Conditions

My conviction also comes from examining cause and condition, cause and effect. When we look at reality, we can see that things don't happen at random. There is always a reason, always a cause, and always a set of conditions. There are causes and conditions for birth, for death, for sickness or health, for happiness, and for joy. There are causes and conditions for my having been raised as an incarnate lama in old Tibet, for being forced to leave my country and eventually coming to America. The Buddha looked in to causes and conditions for the source of all our difficulties and he found it. But he made an interesting distinction between cause and condition. When somebody died suddenly, as in the collapse of a bridge, and the Buddha was asked why that person died, he gave two separate answers. There was an original cause and then there were conditions. The original cause was that the man who had died had been inflicting the same sort of harm to others at some time, whether he had been aware of it or not. The second answer was that certain conditions had made the bridge collapse--a strong current, a broken beam, or a pillar that had been swept away. He called this the condition. From a spiritual point of view, when you look at why people suffer, you will see two different reasons, the original cause and condition.

    In our daily life, we encounter undesirable and unwanted circumstances, lots of them, all the time, even when we're not doing anything to provoke them. We have accidents. Whether in the spiritual or material world, we all struggle with that, and try to find a reason why these things are happening to us. We search for an answer with all possible means. We have autopsies done to explain somebody's death. Or if a plane crashes, we try to find out what went wrong, spending a great deal of time and money looking for the black box. We are fascinated by conditions. The original cause is not so much taken into consideration maybe because science has not yet accepted it or given an explanation for it.

    In Tibet, we perhaps looked too much at original cause--steeped as we were in a spiritual perspective--and not enough at conditions. Tibetans may have been so busy worrying about their future life as to have set the stage for the Communist Chinese taking over Tibet. The Communists, who may not have been thinking about original causes at all, came marching in.

    As an American-Tibetan, I have had a unique opportunity in that I have seen both cultures. The disadvantage of spending all of one's time and resources on analyzing conditions is that you will never get to the original cause, the source of the problem. You may get a temporary answer for how an accident happened, but as long as the original cause is not discovered, you will never be able to totally prevent it from happening again.

    Without the original cause, even if conditions are right, things do not materialize. Even soil that is perfectly moist and well-fertilized will not grow flowers without seeds, just as a seed without the proper conditions will not grow flowers. As pragmatic people looking at conditions, we have building codes and safety codes--lots of things to protect us from mishaps. All of this is done in an effort to prevent suffering, and there's no question that we should continue to try to prevent any suffering that is within our means to prevent. But there is a deeper investigation that searches for the original cause of suffering, the original cause of being reborn, getting sick, aging, and dying in life after life, without choice.

    Psychology looks for the causes of suffering, but the only material accessible to it is what happens in the course of one life--the conditions. In an attempt to get to the bottom of a problem, we search adolescence, childhood, and sometimes even try to go back into the mother's womb. This can be very helpful, restoring peace of mind, a sense of security, and self-confidence, yet it might not reach to the deepest layer of cause, and at times it may even create further problems.

    Looking back twenty or thirty years, or even as few as ten or fifteen, it's hard to remember exactly what we experienced. It's hard to remember what happened yesterday or even in the last hour. The effort to remember results in a lot of guesswork. A vague memory of fear can turn into an object to be investigated. So a bearded father or uncle becomes the focal point for an investigation into the origin of fear. One begins to wonder, "What did he do? Why am I afraid? Did he beat me up? Did he abuse me sexually?" Fragments of memory come to the surface and we may think we have obtained a breakthrough. But there is no way to confirm whether something happened or not. Some people were abused; others weren't. That creates additional suffering for the family in general and particularly between "the bearded man" and the person suffering.

    So should we not investigate our problems at all? That's not the answer. Definitely it's good to investigate. Only make the investigation more thorough. Getting to the bottom of things means going beyond what might have happened in childhood. It is necessary to find the original cause.

We put a lot of effort and struggle into accomplishing our goals, but we fulfill only half of them. If we accomplish even as much as that, we consider ourselves lucky. In reality, the fact that we cannot do even half of what we want to do is a sign of our lack of freedom.

    Not only are we not free to achieve our goals, we are also not free from sickness, old age, and death. That is the truth of suffering, which Buddha saw. What causes suffering? Our negative emotional habits create suffering and blocks to freedom. Freedom may be ours but we have not created the necessary conditions to be able to take advantage of it. When Buddha said he had found a way out of suffering, we can take that as his having discovered a way to freedom. What kind of freedom? The freedom to shape our life and lives.

    Traditional teachers tell us that each and every one of us has committed every kind of good and bad action in this life or another. Bad actions lead to more suffering and to a lack of freedom, and that's why it's so important for us to correct our negative habits. Good actions lead to freedom and a good life. That is why it's so urgent that we develop ethics, since we are already expert at making mischief. They also tell us we're in this fortunate life because of our great deeds and the fact that we've been patient, generous, and ethical in previous lives. That is a very good reason for us to develop those qualities.

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I'm not here to try to convince you about reincarnation. That's my culture, my system--not yours. I would simply like to ask you to entertain the idea for a moment, to give it the benefit of the doubt and see how it changes your perspective on your life and your death. You may not get a complete confirmation that there is reincarnation, but you won't be able to rule it out, either. No one has been able to prove that it does not take place.

    If you give reincarnation the benefit of the doubt, the question of who we are and where we come from becomes: "What happened between our previous life and this one? Or during our previous lives?" The moment we think like that, our perspective changes.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Good Life, Good Death by Rimpoche Nawang Gehlek with Gini Alhadeff and Mark Magill. Copyright © 2001 by Nawang Gehlek. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.