MEETINGS WITH THE 16th KARMAPA
Lama Ole Nydahl is remembering the great Meditation-master of Tibet
(Hamburg, Winter 1996)
Lama Ole and his wife Hannah were the first Western students of the 16th Karmapa Rangjung Rigpe Dorje.
The Karmapa is the spiritual head of the Karma Kagyü School of the Tibetan DiamondWay Buddhism.
The 16th Karmapa was born in Tibet in 1924, immigrated in 1959 to Sikkim, and died in Chicago in 1981.
Before the 17th Karmapa Thaye Dorje who is now in Delhi come to us here and enthuses us all and gives the transmission of the Lineage, it might be important to remember for a bit the great 16th, what he was, what he did, and what he could, for that will surely give us a feeling for what the new great Yogi-Mind will bring into this world.
I had the opportunity, as well as my sweet wife Hannah, to become in a way the son and daughter of the 16th Karmapa, and we came to him at a time when there were absolutely no other Westerners near him. And that put us in touch with and gave an insight into the culture – there is a certain closeness about the whole Tibetan thing which probably no one has had since then. When there were suddenly many more Westerners there. Then everything was trimmed for general use. And I would like to share with you a couple of the things that we experienced then, for it was really fantastic. Unusual, and really great.
The first time that we ever heard of the Karmapa was in ’67 when we were in Nepal in order to bring a little smoke-stuff back to some friends at home. A bit of laughing-weed, as we used to call it. At that time we went up to the Swayambu temple – it is a cone-shaped mountain outside Kathmandu – which is often referred to as the Monkey-temple. We were there with a quick-witted young lama by the name of Puntsog. And I remember it vividly, that we were all the way up on top and we gave him a little money, as we also do to make it possible for them to study further and live better, and so he took us all the way up to the top of the temple where no one else usually comes. And he said the name over and over, Karmapa, Karmapa, Karmapa – many, many times he said “Karmapa”, and afterwards he gave us one of these protection rosaries. A rosary which is made up of 108 beads, and they were for the protectors. And he gave us a round badge, to pin on with a needle, about this size (holds fingers to show app. 7 centimetres) with a picture of a visibly overweight gentleman with a black crown on his head and, and he kept saying “Karmapa, Karmapa”.
The first meeting with Karmapa was also quite unusual. We were not at all prepared and we had no idea that he would be there.
But something funny had been happening. All the way through Eastern Europe, the Muslim countries, which had then not gone completely crazy yet, and then further through India and up through Nepal in our old dented VW-bus I had in the back of my head been hearing ever so faintly but deep, deep within a small voice saying, “We’re coming now, we’re coming now, we’re coming now, we’re coming now”. I had been thinking, “Sure, coming, but where?”, “what’s this then, shut it off”, but it was there the whole time.
And as we rolled over the promontories we went of course straight to the New Road for that was where it was all happening. That was the entrance to the medieval Kathmandu. At that time there were no hotels etc., back in ’68 and ’69. They weren’t there then. And we went there and there stood all our friends. All the people with whom we during the first few visits had been smoking the nights away and with whom we had had so much fun, they were all there. But they were not tuned in to us at all. They just kept saying “Karmapa is here. Karmapa, Karmapa.” And then we said to each other that that was a bit funny. There is some kind of force field; there is something strange and unusual here. And actually he must have driven along the same New Road just a few minutes before us with his automobiles – in somewhat better condition than ours.
But there we were, without ever having met him, for the first time in 13 years at a time and place where we could meet him, where a meeting was possible. Mostly he lived in the so-called “Restricted Areas” and the “inner Lines”. The boundaries whereby the Indians kept all foreigners away from the Himalayas. And it wasn’t really Karmapa that we wanted to see. We wanted to see our first Lama. The one who was called Lopön Tsechu Rinpoche. He is a really great, great teacher, who is also now travelling in the West. It was him that we wanted to see. He was the one we had been thinking of. Through him we had experienced that healing and protection had entered the lives of our friends in Copenhagen. We were on the way to him with a couple of bars of chocolate and a couple of other things which we wanted to give to him as presents. And all the time while we were on our way to him people were saying, “He is with Karmapa”.
Karmapa was up in this temple, you know, so we went up there. And things were really happening there. We came in and all around the whole hill were the Tibetans in their very best Sunday clothes, al that they had salvaged, and they were all just staring up the three stairs. They were just staring up there, they ware complexly oblivious to all else. They were like if hit by lightning. Well, we went past them – we are somewhat faster, you know, - and ran up the stairs, and as we came to the top the square around the Stupa was totally packed with people. Completely and utterly filled up. And we were looking and the sun was standing s that it was shining into our eyes, but we could still see and we felt perhaps even more, that in this quarter, behind this big gate, with iron fence along the sides, that in there was this man, who was called Karmapa and whose badge we had worn or perhaps not worn so much but at least kept with us. And there was something else, we could hear some sounds – and we now know that an initiation was in progress – and afterwards they played for a long time on a kind of obo-like instruments. Then someone brought a kind of hat-box out in front. And as he brought this hat-box to the front – a multicoloured age-old Chinese silk-thing – then Karmapa opened the lid and opened the four braids, took out the crown and held it in front of him. And the next cloth which was wrapped around it, a thing with many dots, he also unfolded. And then he took out the crown, and one could really see how he sort of looked up as if he had to place this crown on his head in a really special way. He then sort of tilted it forward and put it on like that. And then after he had put it on he had to hold on to it with his right hand. A bit like in the old medieval mysterious sort of way: with two fingers here and two fingers here, and the thumb like this. His hand held it something like this. (Ole shows the position).
And this crown is something special. On the sides are like golden clouds, in the middle it looks like a Thor-lightning bolt decked with jewels, and in the middle is a crossed double-dorje. Above it a sun- and moon-sign and then one comes to a ruby which in the highest way symbolises the pure land or the state of highest bliss. So, the crown is about this wide, about like this, and he put it on and started to meditate. He turned this mala, a meditation rosary, and his eyes became completely clear. You know, completely big and wide, wide, wide. He was really somewhere else. It was a completely different state of being. There was nothing human, nothing personal. He was almost like ---- he had been cast in bronze or something. And the crown was suddenly there, then it wasn’t there, then it was there, and again it wasn’t there. And the people in front of us, everything, it was shifting all the time. He did this once or twice and every time doing a full round with the rosary, the mantras, the prayers. And when he had finished, people from both sides jumped up and slammed the iron gates shut and secured it with locks. And then the Tibetans stampeded. They all wanted to get to him. They ware completely gone and just wanted to get a blessing. There was this narrow door – they all wanted to get through, and I created some really good merit. Being a strong well-fed European in good condition I was able to hold the people back. He small and the elderly we let in first. Hannah and I then came in as the very latest after a thousand people had gone through. We could really feel him. In actual fact the way to him was only 3 or 4 metres, but in my mind it seemed like at least 20 metres. Like the movement through the birth canal. A massive thing. Suddenly there he was. We cam there in between the others, our heads touched his, and Hannah and I had the same experience. We looked up, and we saw his head become as big as the whole room, like the whole sky, gigantic. He shone like a whole bunch of suns shining at the same time. He completely blew us away. We had no idea where we were and staggered and swayed, and monks tied things around our necks and gave us something to eat and drink.
We then came out again, and outside in the sunshine we stood at the gates trying to see him as long as possible. We stayed till evening and were hailed by this Bhutanese doctor, who gave us something. It was some of Karmapa’s hair wrapped up, which I stuck in the pocket of my military shirt. It then started to burn and that was a quite strange since it was only hair. I then shifted it around from one pocket to the other not knowing what to do with the thing or where to put it.
Back in our Nepalese lodgings I pulled off the shirt and it hurt like a knife in the guts. That really gave me stuff to think about and during the night I had some really strong dreams. The next morning we again went to Karmapa. He called us inside and started doing various things. He had us repeat names of colours in Tibetan etc. in order to somehow come in contact with us on as many levels as possible. Quite a lot of richness came into it. We gave him a super strong horse-shoe magnet which gave him a lot of fun and a good 100 mg LSD-trip. LSD was our “holy medicine”. He thanked us, and later told us that he had not taken it. He was responsible for very many people – so he could not do that. He had accepted it, though, so that we wouldn’t take it.
WITH KARMAPA IN ASIA
The first visit with Karmapa was super exciting. We ran up the back of the monastery and like before wanted to see Lopön Tsechu Rinpoche. We are kind of old fashioned hearts, and when we have given our hearts to someone first, we are not very quick to give it to another. Rinpoche was still our number one man – we wanted to speak with him. Karmapa was rather something abstract, something really big, somehow somewhere else. But Lopön Tsechu Rinpoche as the very first thing said, “You come with me to Karmapa – right now!” Karmapa was sitting there and he blessed us and gave us all kinds of things. His hands simply stayed on our heads. Others also came, but he didn’t want us to leave the room. He pointed to a spot to one side where we could sit and meditate close to him while all the important people, Nepalese and such came and went. We were accepted from the beginning.
At this point we had no idea that a “horse deal” had been struck between Lopön Tsechu Rinpoche and Karmapa. We didn’t find that out until later. Lopön Tsechu Rinpoche didn’t tell us until the great initiation of the big Stupa in Karma Gön near Malaga, Spain, that Karmapa had asked him who we were and he had answered, “They are my students” (which he usually never says), and he had said to Rinpoche, “Give them to me! You give them to me. I will be able to use them very well in the future.”
On the way down there was a big lion mouth in which one could stick one’s hand. If one were an honest man one would still have 5 fingers on the hand, but if one wasn’t then one wouldn’t. Karmapa took my hand and stuck it straight into the lion’s mouth and I passed! We then went on to Bodnath. It was quite crazy there. There were so many people there it was a really close crowd and they were all about to fall over. When one sees this, one must understand a little of the why. In Tibet the great Lamas only blessed maybe 100-200 people and then moved on. Not until they had left Tibet as refugees had they experienced the highest Lamas staying on and continuing the blessing so that all could get it. The Tibetans simply weren’t used to it. The whole thing grew rather wild. I was in good graining condition and found a huge bamboo rod with which I could keep the crowd at bay. I don’t know how I got the power. With ordinary physical laws it could not be explained.
The next day my sandals were completely ruined. Doubled in size! My feet were completely scratched and bruised from the often self-repaired footwear from which the nails often stood out, and I don’t know how many hundred people had been standing on my feet as I was holding them back. I felt as if they (the feet) had been run over by a freight train.
But it was really great. Already by the next meeting with Karmapa he had said, “Khampa”. “Khampa”, he had said, “you are one of my warriors”. Shortly thereafter he started to call me MahaKala. You are one of my protectors. And MahaKala is a one of the main protectors of our Lineage.
Karmapa always expected me to do things. He sent me to where people had to be held back, showed me how I should look put for him and where I should protect him. Something completely wild which I had repressed until recently was what some Western yogis and old friends, who still live and survive in Nepal, had told me, “there are three ways to Swayambhu, a big one with a banister, and two smaller ones without. Once we were on our way down the back way – the steepest – with Karmapa, because he didn’t want to be held up by a thousand people, in order to get to his jeep in a hurry. And as we were making our way down these narrow and steep stairs, he suddenly with all his at least one hundred kilos weight threw himself up onto my back. Really. Totally unprepared. If I hadn’t been able to hold it there, we would both have rolled down at least 100 metres. He had jumped onto my back in wild yogi-joy and I was able to hold him and I carried him down the stairs all the way. It was at least 100 kilos, unprotected and with no railing. How he ever came up with this idea I don’t know. To this day I don’t.
We then followed him around everywhere, also to Nagi Gompa, where Hannah by the way got really sick. It is a monastery at the far end of the Kathmandu valley near the “Chinese Shoe Factory” and all those places. One must all the way up the mountain, and the sand is so light that one shovels half the mountain down in order to get up there. So much stuff slides and rolls down, but we made it to the top and there he was, already sitting. Fist we noticed that very many ladies were coming up the mountain in order to get a blessing from Karmapa. And we thought, “Ah, a free blessing. We want it too.” For every time we came out there it was all slushy mud [German word "Datsch” = a kind of thin dough/batter] and we came out and it was everywhere.
So, we were there, and Karmapa saw us and laughed himself flat. Laughed himself flat out. The young ladies who came were made to be nuns by him. They filed past, hair was cut off, and then they moved on. He had then sat between us and asked us, “Where do you come from?”
And I tried to explain to him how it was before. Karmapa just looked at us, patted my back a couple of times and said, “I am also tough. I am a Khampa.” I had been talking about the Vikings and the North-Europeans. I didn’t think at all and patted him on the back also, and he just looked at me and rolled around with laughter again. Something like this had never happened to him before in his life. I thought, “Oh, wow, what have I done now – this was certainly outside the normal pattern of events.
After approximately six weeks, in the winter of ’69, he called us to him and said to us, “Now you come with me to Sikkim”. With our Western, North-European justice-minds we now thought, “Karmapa has many students, Lopön Tsechu Rinpoche has only us (we thought, but of course he also had many students, but we thought, ‘He has only us’!), so we said to Karmapa, “No we are going to stay here with him. You have enough, he should have us”. And of course we thought that that was the great prize, but in fact it was only the great problem, at that time.
And then he said, “OK, stay with him first and then later you can come to me if you want”. Karmapa said, “You should understand how important he is. If I am a Buddha then he is Kungao, which is Ananda, my most beloved student. And it really was like that, Lopön Tsechu Rinpoche was so close to his heart.
After Karmapa had left from Kathmandu we started a year or ¾ of a year where we really ran around like headless chickens. We really wanted to stay with Lopön Tsechu Rinpoche, but at this time he was often away in Bhutan and we didn’t have any very good translators. And although I had worked at the American school in Kathmandu and it paid enough to pay for hash to smoke and we had very many friends around us, we weren’t really satisfied. Karmapa had gotten under our skin. Although it had seemed so easy to let him go, the hole that was there with something missing grew ever larger. We were both pushed and pulled. Pulled because we were thinking more and more of Karmapa, and pushed because of difficulties from above with a Nepalese whom I had pulled out of his chair and shaken him because of bad behaviour. And suddenly he had some power and didn’t want us to stay there anymore. Everything told us, “Go more East, Go to Sikkim”.
So we left and n the last evening there we smoked so much that we didn’t know what was up or down, and then we went by train and bus in the direction of Sikkim in the Eastern Himalayas. To the small country which lies between Nepal and Bhutan.
So we arrived and got our visas, which was quite difficult at the time, and then we went to Karmapa. It was just cleansing. It has never rained as much as this. It was shortly before the full moon in September 1970, it had been raining like crazy and totally drenched we went, and also drove for a short distance, the 11 miles to Karmapa. Arriving in the middle of the night we wanted to see Karmapa then and there, but they told us that he was already sleeping.
The next morning we then went to see him and we had exactly the same feeling as we did the very first time. For the first time during the Crown ceremony we had the feeling that he was looking out through quite many people and he had seen us and so called us to him. I tell you, the connection was there right away.
He called us over, blessed us again, wanted to know a few things, how we lived and such, and we said, “All that you can give us, lease give it to us. Please, all you’ve got. We want to work for you – carry on your work... And he said, “Good”. And the next day we received something called “Genyen”. They are kind of different promises that you won’t kill, steal, lie, abuse others sexually, or make yourself stupid with various chemicals. That’s what he gave us the next day, the day of the full moon.
The first time in Rumtek we managed to stay a couple of weeks. The Indians became increasingly grumpy and didn’t want us to stay on. Karmapa did what he could, but didn’t control everything, and maybe he thought we needed a cleansing/purification. So we left and a couple few days later we tried to go with them into Bhutan. But the road had been washed away and Karmapa’s convoy had gone another way. So we stood there alone and had to go to Bhutan on our own. And then we hung around for a while, but Karmapa didn’t want us there any more. He probably thought that now the euphoria had lasted longer than it should, now a bit of purification was in order, and as we left Bhutan there was only one way to go – to Darjeeling to Kalu Rinpoche, where also our money, various items, and our mail had arrived from Europe.
So we went to Kalu Rinpoche and started with the basic school (Ngöndro). During this time we then went to Rumtek to Karmapa for a week or ten days every 4 – 6 weeks. In this way he really accepted us as his students. And he said more and more, “Your job is to bring the Teachings (the Dharma) to the West” – and he arranged for a full transmission. Again and again he said, “Protect the people. Take care of them and give them help so that the Dharma can grow in them”. And this protecting, taking care of, has in fact become my task. Officially Karmapa told me this in 1980 in England as he flew away and I had sat next to him. I sort of vibrated the whole time, almost shaking. That was my connection with his power-circle. I vibrated slightly all the time and was fully alert and ready every moment. Karmapa pointed to me with great emphasis and said, “That one, he is MahaKala. That’s him.” And it was for me as if the sky had opened up. As if I suddenly could see what was, and what was, was me of course.
KARMAPA – BODY AND MIND
It is hard to understand just how such an enlightened one functions when one has never seen one. A person such as Karmapa who has internalized space and joy, and who has completely internalized the fact that everything that happens, the total freedom, the huge surplus, is a very powerful force. What a man. Even today when I talk about it I can only express part of it. His power field was incredible. Karmapa came in, and immediately people were pressed against the walls; simply by the force field that he emitted. And he laughed! And when he laughed one could hear it five blocks away. Like a big drum. A massive thing. No inhibitions, no blocking. But when he went into meditation, when he entered the state of bliss, his face was completely transformed. At an initiation which he gave to a young woman – to a female Buddha form (called Liberatrice), he suddenly looked like the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. He had all abilities; everything was there and exploded in the moment. He could really do everything! He had hands like mine – strong ones – that could really grip, and shovel, and hold on to things. And at the same time he had very fine fingers – artistic – very, very fine fingertips, with which he could make the most delicate things. Often for instance he had received some beads for his Malas and also had a Swiss Army knife with a file in it. So he took these balls in his hand – of amber or whatever – and if he thought them too big he would make them completely round with just this knife. No machines, just by feeling them. He did it with just his fingers feeling them.
He always also - which may not be too pleasant for the Westerners – had a small spittoon at his side. He never swallowed, but always spit into this container, and from that they made Medicine and many other things. Everything from him was utilised. He was a blessing-machine, a blessing factory. Everything about him was healing, everything was used. When he entered there was always massive laughter, huge fun, and tremendous surplus. Everything was there. That was Karmapa.
Karmapa means Action Man – he, who puts the power of the Buddhas into the world. He, who gets the job done. He, who has realised it and lets it happen. And he really was. He was incredible. An Energy Bomb. As tall as I – almost 1.80 metres tall – and broad, built like a barrel not like a Y, built voluminously, but then he didn’t have to chase after women, of course. He was strong like a giant, hugely strong. Simply in complete control in everything. Wherever he was one could feel it. It vibrated, it was living – it was incredible.
I have seen all the great teachers. The Dalai Lama – he embraces me and calls me his old friend – Dudjom Rinpoche, Beru Kyhentse, Dilgo Kyhentse most importantly, all these teachers I have known and was very close to them. But such a power, such a joy and vibration in the room as with Karmapa, that …, I have never seen anywhere else. He genuinely was the King of Joy. You could see how he was the nexus for all the various energies. When one observed him and came closer to him one saw that everything began moving. In his face everything was constantly moving very finely. Different muscles tensed and relaxed and everything around him appeared as a mandala – as a force field.
People have taken different positions – quite natural. There was always a circle with these people here and those people there. In his power field everything is simply self-creating, appearing out of its own power. And in the middle, completely resting within himself, not depending on anything, there he stood with his power, blessing everything, working everything, and turning everything, so that it became beneficial. Or he turned it so that it has helped beings. He was fantastic. And this face, that was always in motion – those muscles. The concentration, the big eyes which could grow really, really huge. One looked inside and saw only space as he did it with Hannah and me. Where he looked straight into our eyes and everything was gone – just space, space, and more space. And a kind of knowledge afterwards, that everything is meaningful and that everything will happen at the right time.
Karmapa worked with us very intensively in a very special way. Often unconsciously – what they call "Terma" in Tibetan, i.e. “hidden treasures”. He told us various stuff, again and again, and shortly after, when we came outside again, we had forgotten everything. And we thought, “What was that – not a single word remembered?”! Then, ½ year, five years, ten years later the message got through and we remembered what he had told us then. He had put so many impressions in our memory banks that later surfaced and which govern us to this day. And now that the 17th Karmapa is still growing up in Delhi, the programs of the 16th Karmapa are still directing us.
The fantastic things which people tell about yogis have all fit on him. He hardly slept, but sat in his chair, relaxed, came out of it again and said, “Ah the people there are doing this and that and those people there are doing such and such”. Simply knew, because he made no distinction between himself and that which was everywhere. Intuitively or automatically he just knew everything. The knowledge came from his own mind, from nowhere else. We could have equipped him with a tape-recorded and I am sure it would have turned out the same.
He often talked about his previous lives, but they were mostly in the East, hardly any in the West. Once, when we were sitting on the upper terrace of the monastery looking towards the Gangtok Valley and the Natula pass leading to Tibet, he said that the people would now run very, very slowly. In his third incarnation the people had come with “lungum”. They are giant jumps by mastering the inner respiration. They had in hardly any time come from Kalimpong, which is a couple of hours away by car. And the people had arrived by giant leaps, had gathered here and had meditated with him and then went away again. That’s what he told us.
He often also said that this reincarnation was a bit wayward, but the next would be very good. He always also said that the next incarnation would be very mild. We asked him why, for the mildness was not what we found exciting about him. Anyone can be mild. But the power and energy in him that was the exciting thing for us. And Karmapa answered that at that time people would be much more neurotic, and when people are neurotic one can only be mild. That’s how he explained it.
ENCOUNTERS WITH KARMAPA
The reason we are talking so much about the 16th Karmapa is because he was so unique. The 1st Karmapa was the first consciously reborn Lama in 1110 – the first consciously reborn Lama of Tibet. A student of the fourth incarnation was the teacher of the 1st Dalai Lama. 13 times he has written instructions from Life to Life which means that before his death he wrote down where he would let himself be reborn in the next life. In the other four cases he immediately after his birth announced, “I am the Karmapa”. So also in the case of the 17th Karmapa, whose name is Thaye Dorje and lives in Delhi. The Karmapas have as their special distinction a black crown, which is always present over their heads as a kind of light-energy field. A Chinese emperor who was a student of Karmapa has mad him a replica from “Taming Chen”, i.e. from the wisdom-hairs of many thousands of women who had been meditating very well. When Karmapa uses this crown he holds it above his head and then goes into quite deep states of meditation. Through seeing this crown the memory-banks of the people present open up, and through the power of his meditation he is also able to make connections between his mind and theirs, and can remove countless causes for future sufferings, and instil many causes for happiness, reason, and development of beings.
But one time we almost lost them. It was in 1976 as Karmapa’s students, my lovely wife Hannah, and I were driving with Karmapa in a couple of jeeps from Sikkim, through the Indian lowlands, and again up to Nepal, a road from East to West in the Himalaya Mountains. On the way down something happened to me, what one certainly does not want to happen. With the thick monk Sherab and the crown in front of his belly on the way down the mountain the last brake of the jeep gave out. The clutch was already on the blink, the handbrake also and now the foot brake. I was driving faster and faster down the serpentine road all the time looking for something against which to land or stop the jeep. All the time I was thinking that if we were to fly off the mountain now, we would be reborn as moles for the next 500 years. And we couldn’t under any circumstances let that happen. Luckily, between great mounds of rubble, I spotted some piles of gravel and was able to drive the jeep into them and only the front end of the jeep was damaged. I was also able to hold on to Lodrö Sherab so that the crown wasn’t squashed. This was one of the most thrilling times in my time there. I really had the crown in my hands then. Afterwards Karmapa laughed and said, “The brake was bad – the blessing was good.”
And she must have been there with us, our white protection shield, for she especially protects on travels. As Karmapa came to Europe for the first time it was a true happening. Most of all, whereas we now have slowly moved into the middle of society, without becoming bourgeois or boring, at that time it was it was really quite exciting. We were a real bunch of hippies who were waiting for him together with our old friends from the sixties whom we had left for a while as Hannah and I were learning in the Himalayas. Everything was gaudy. Then, with several old VW-busses we drove up to Oslo, Norway, where Karmapa was to arrive for the first time. It was pure madness. Karmapa blessed us right away and for a time we again didn’t see things quite in focus. Finally he drove with us; I drove hem in ice and snow through Oslo and to the highest ski jump in the world. Karmapa had lots of fun sliding back and forth in the front seat. But the other somewhat more rigid monks in the back were not at all satisfied. We then came to “Holmekollen” (the probably highest ski jump in the world at the time) and checked into a hotel where Karmapa gave a ceremony – an initiation. He built up a huge power-field of his 2nd incarnation karma Pakshi. And then something funny happened. He threw mustard seeds which later turned into small black pellets which are said to have a special healing power.
Afterwards Hannah and I went to Karmapa and he started to tell about his history. That was wild. It was like a saga from the Old Norse times. All the same strong people, all the same strong characters, all the same wild people who were always clashing into these “Either – Or” confrontations. We had of course thought that it was all holy and that they had all run happily around in the meadows, but of course that is not at all how it was. He told me about his strong brothers – how they had persevered. The strongest of them had been able to, when riding through a gate on a horse, wrap his legs around the horse and pull himself and the horse off the ground. Karmapa laughed and said, “All these big strong men are gone and I am the only one who still has any hair left”, and he showed us that he still had some hairs on the top of his head.
Karmapa told many things about the “in”-talk of the Tibetans at the time. About who were spying for whom, who were with the Chinese, and who had tried to steal students from other Lamas. We got a real piece of living history.
We went on from Oslo to Stockholm, through of snow and ice in the middle of winter. And it was exciting. At that time we had got a bigger bus and were sitting on one side. Karmapa and his guys were there and the people who wanted to talk with him came and went all the time. We had a moving communication centre. Everybody came and asked their questions.
Also many people from Scandinavia came and took part. Stockholm was fun too, but the Swedes were even stiffer than the Norwegians. The Swedes were all sitting in the big culture house waiting, and he wouldn’t stop eating. After a while he said to me, “Ole, you go in and take care of it and talk to the people”.” And I went in and was so absorbed in trying to talk to the Swedes with my halting Swedish that I didn’t realise that they actually had microphones there. I therefore shouted quite loudly at all these people. And not until Karmapa came in½ hour later and I had thawed them out a bit and explained what Buddhism and Karmapa were about and what would be happening, there were suddenly microphones and everything there. He had probably felt that people had come to see something cultural for a while and the leave nodding their heads wisely. So, I had to go in first and shake them up a bit with my convictions and my feeling for the matter, and afterwards the gap was bridged and the people were really touched. And that is what Karmapa does. He lays his heart on the table and gives full access to his limitless states of consciousness. And there you first need a little warmth; you must first be a little moved. There the long Tibetan trumpets (the long oboes) are not enough. There something more must be present for the people to feel moved and know what another person has experienced.
Copenhagen was unusual. It was not usual for 2000 people to come together to see a man from the warm countries whom they didn’t know at all and about whom they had heard nothing. It was a tremendous atmosphere. As Karmapa held his black crown everything in the hall was like crystal. That was a very great experience.
Hamburg was also good. Karmapa liked Germany very, very much although it was always strange weather when we were there; although it only rained and the weather and the visibility were always bad. But Karmapa kept saying, ”What a beautiful country and the people can really do something. Here beats the heart of Europe – here is the power source.” He really liked Germany. He always said that people should find their own style, should fashion Buddhism for their country, their lives. To pull such a foreign culture over peoples’ heads cannot be right. Buddhism will not live then.
Then we went further south to the places we had already started. There was Duisburg in the Ruhr district – now there are five other places which are the main pillars – he gave initiations and blessings there and then we went on to Königstein near Frankfurt and then into Frankfurt. He had already seen that Germany, the German-Slavic Europe would become more important. That was quite clear. And already two years later he sent me to Poland. And as we were driving into Frankfurt he asked me, “What is your name”? And I answered, “Ocean of Wisdom”, and then Karmapa said, “That will be the name of the first centre in the East-block and you must keep working eastwards to Japan. And I said “Thank You”. That was his vision. From the Rhine to Vladivostok he had seen a huge spiritual area with very, very good possibilities for development.
The great thing about Karmapa was that he was a real “hands-on” man. He touched people – got close to them. If people came with beards he tugged at their beards, if they were just standing there he would part them on the belly if they were a little too round. In fact he really was “hands on” – quite close to people, was completely real for the people. No pretence at all.
Once we were together as the Ponto was killed. [I have no idea what he is talking about here. I have a feeling that he is actually talking about the road/weather conditions] I tried in various ways to drive him to Switzerland, but everywhere in Germany it was closed up. On our search for border-crossings we went into the Beer-houses many times, and Karmapa walked right into these Swabian, Bavarian farmers, who were smoking and drinking. And they were always touched by him. They had never before seen such a yellow, broad man dressed in robes and all, but they came over and received blessings, I translated a bit here and there and he was really there. Not an elevated aloof someone with ritualistic gesturing and then off again, but came completely close up to people and touched them for real. Such was his power. He genuinely liked people. To him people weren’t just background personnel who should stand around nicely and regularly show signs of “farmer’s remorse”. For him they were real connections, real contacts.
He was completely fantastic. It was extraordinary with him – a constant joy. One could leave him among the people, he was never wooden, was always present.
Everything that happened with Karmapa was special. Ever so often one suddenly saw him from a new angle one had never seen before. It happened to me a lot, for I was together with him alone many times, and when I drove him long distances through Europe – only us or at the most one more in the car – one could really feel him. Although it rained almost the whole time we drove through Germany, he loved Germany enormously and said how wonderful it is here. Up near Roseburg, between the old Zone-border and Lübeck he once said, “I have been here before in an earlier reincarnation. No one asked about who he had been then, but he said it quite clearly.
So we went on in the direction of Switzerland, for Karmapa had to do something the next day in Zurich among the Tibetan sisters who were living there. On our way in Swabia, I nodded off for a few seconds – the third night without sleep – and as I was approaching a Y-fork in the road, Karmapa gave me some brown powder from his hand to sniff and said, “Sniff that into you”. I sniffed in and it was raw snuff tobacco, it was pure nicotine. It gripped my brain like two icy hands and I drove in the wrong direction into the wrong Highway exit with four screaming tires. I had taken the wrong lane and I stopped and tried to see if my head was still there – if all parts were still attached to me. And he laughed himself silly. Completely lost in laughter.
This kind of thing he did again and again when things got too stiff around him, or if people fell asleep, or if nothing was happening. Then he rushed through the environment like a whirlwind overturning everything, and everybody stood there asking themselves what had happened. He really knew how to do that. Always alert. A real Yogi-mind. Always fresh – always exciting – always something going on.
It was also exciting how Karmapa handled things. At his death he took all disturbing emotions upon himself and reversed them. And already in Copenhagen in 1974 he did that as a foretaste, when he visited us there. He came into this beautiful room at the university that we had decorated. Immediately he broke out in a high fever and grew a big boil on his thigh and everybody standing around him taking care of him was very worried. A doctor was summoned at once and the boil, which had developed in such a short time, was cut open. Then he went inside and sat down and in a moment had turned the disturbing energies around. Later we asked him what had happened, for we thought that this was just an ordinary house. But here the executioner of Denmark had lived in 1800-something, and there had also been a factory where they had been making gloves out of rabbit fur. And all this he had absorbed in a moment. As he came into the room he asked what is wrong, what had happened? And all the sicknesses had appeared immediately, he had used them up, taken them away, then sat down and meditated and given big initiations. There even is a film where I am receiving a blessing and sort of fly through the neighbourhood. And mostly I don’t do that so easily.
Copenhagen was also a special experience in other ways. We had a basement room for which we didn’t have to pay anything, which of course pleased us hippies a lot, but Karmapa said that it wasn’t enough. We were somewhat slow on the uptake for three days after Karmapa had left there was a big water pipe breakage and everything was flooded. All the wastewater from the big building on top of the basement emptied out into the basement. So we went on the road and drove to a street in the expensive part of North-East Copenhagen, in an embassy area where we had been twice already with Karmapa and which he had really liked, and there we bought a house. By his next visit he then stayed in the new house, stayed for three weeks and gave really many initiations and transmissions. At that time already he told us that we would get the neighbouring house also. And that did become possible a couple of years ago.
Here in the North we also have an exciting retreat centre, called Rödby, on the beeline between Germany and Scandinavia. AS we got there with Karmapa it was an old run-down farm – not really a centre yet. We bought it quite cheap for only 30.000 DM with lots of land around. That really pleased him. He looked at everything everywhere and gave by himself a black crown ceremony and an initiation on Milarepa, the most important Yogis of our transmission lineage, and he said that here 1000 Buddhas would either appear, or develop, or visit the place. On this point the translator wasn’t clear enough. But that we have a huge jewel where Karmapa’s power field will always be present is quite clear.
Most unusual also was Karmapa’s relations with animals. First of all the birds. During his time re received hundreds of birds as presents and when these birds died the same thing always happened. They became completely rigid, the beak turned upwards, and the sat like in meditation – like frozen. Karmapa then said, “Yes, they are meditating right now and that is important, don’t disturb them. And at such and such time they will fall over and become a small bundle of feathers like other birds and then you can bury it.”
Also his dogs were special. He had been given several as presents and they were sort of an extension of his power field. As soon as he put the crown on his head and went in to deep meditation they immediately jumped in the air as if electro shocked. They were jumping like crazy, and when it was all over, everything was easy, everything was smooth, and the dogs were again sitting quietly. It was like that every time. The complete extension of him. And often when we were driving through some town – I often had him by my side as driver and protector at the same time – he suddenly said, “Stoop here” There was always a parking spot and he took us by the hand leading us and ½ a street further was the biggest bird-shop in the town. How he knew that no one could say, for he couldn’t read the street signs and it was certainly the first time he had been to this town. He went inside, looked at the birds, and listened to them, and the he said, “This one is talking nonsense, but that one is really clever.” He stuck his hand inside the cage, the bird flew onto his hand, and he took it with him. And he always in the Asian way haggled with the sellers, and I thought, ‘well, ok, the Asians may do that, I won’t ‘.
But it was fantastic. He did it again and again. Knew exactly where the bird store was. Went in, the bird went to him, he took it with him and blessed it, and at night, when he had finished with the people, he blew warm air on the bird. When we looked and asked what he was doing, he said, “I am teaching them meditation”. Apparently their meditation was good, for later, when they died, they went rigid, stuck their beaks upwards, and stayed like that until after a while they keeled over.
KARMAPA DIES
Karmapa’s death was an earthquake in Buddhism. Something for which one couldn’t have prepared; something really shattering. Something which still has repercussions.
He died much too soon, only 58 years of age, and already 3 to four years before his death he had had an operation in India for cancer in the stomach. In 1980 he came to us and with all our friends we went to meet him as he landed in London. He flew on to America, and we followed him later and were with him there. In addition to the other ailments came another couple of heavy things like an inflammation of half his face and a lot of other stuff. It was very clear that as the time came for him to leave his body he quite consciously absorbed all the sicknesses that he could in order to remove them from his power field and thereby protect us, his students, from them. It was quite obvious. Like a giant sponge he walked through the whole area of sicknesses and problems and took these things upon himself, and I am sure that that is what is still protecting us to this day.
The last time Hannah and I saw him was in Colorado, in Boulder, where he was housed by an organisation which conflicted very much with his wishes all the time. But he could not drop them because of old ties in Tibet. His sickness was breaking out and once in a while a doctor came to see how he was doing. Karmapa spoke to us and said, “You will be getting the job now of watching over my young eagle which now will fly into the wide world. And that were his four lineage holders Sharma- , Situ-, Gyaltsab-, and Jamgön Kongtrul Rinpoche. These four, Karmapa said, should be first and foremost looked after by Hannah, and I was to build as many centres as possible and also see to it that these teachers were able to transmit their wisdom in the West. He told us just before we left him he told us exactly when we were to cope to his death party. He said, “Come next year on the first day of the 11th month” and he was quite sure about it and we could bring all our friends. We were not willing to understand what it was and were very upset. We knew that something strange was happening, but we didn’t really go into what he was actually saying. We just said, ”Yes, we will come at that time and will bring our friends with us.” In order to be sure that we understood it right Hanna asked him, “Tibetan or English Calendar”, for they are unaligned by a couple of months, and he said, “English Calendar”. So we left, went down the stairs and were quite upset I side and thought, “What is this?” We felt that we couldn’t allow [for] Karmapa to be really seriously sick. We always only saw this energy bomb of joy, and heard this huge voice, and felt this enormous blessing. Actually he must have been sick for a long time. Had diabetes and all sorts of things, but I couldn’t see it because it didn’t fit for me – it didn’t fit in my picture. My picture was this huge hero who blesses the world and not someone who was ill. I couldn’t fir it into any of my boxes.
On the way down the stairs I was already in denial and repression as he called us up to him again and said, “Please don’t be like Akong and try to keep the lineage together as much as you can”. That was our last visit to him.
In the 1½ years between our visit in Boulder and the journey to Sikkim all kinds of rumours about Karmapa circulated all over the place. Everybody had a different story. We didn’t really see him as a human being but only felt this power field – this blessing – and couldn’t really understand that our teacher was about to die and leave this world. We didn’t discover it until we went with 108 friends and came to Bodhgaya. Then the message suddenly got through to us, now he dies. This is it. The doctors had given up on him when he was in Hong Kong and had sent him on to America where they would try to see what they could do for him in an alternative hospital. Full of cancer, completely sick, all organs gone, he had taken on quite a lot of pain and diseases. In the highest of spirits of course, always joking and making fun. That’s how he came to America.
The story which happened there I didn’t experience myself, for I was with my 108 friends in Sikkim. Hannah and I then comforted the Tibetans there, who were very much in shock, and tried to be as helpful as possible. According to the statements of the doctors whop were there, he was completely unusual. He had only worried about them, about others. He didn’t think of himself for one moment and had allowed them to give him all the strongest painkiller medicine available and had showed them that his body was completely uninfluenced by them. They could do anything with him – he simple stayed as he wanted to. On the evening of November 5th people went in to his room, he was sitting in meditation with all the tubes and just as the doctors came in all the machines shut themselves off. They were used to him making all sorts of jokes and teasers with them and at first thought that he was making another joke, and as they were thinking this, the machines turned on again for another five minutes and then stopped again. And this time it really was over. They then wanted to take him away, but some teachers who were there asked if he really was dead like a ... and apparently he wasn’t. For two of the death signs were missing. First of all his body had in no way stiffened – no rigor mortis – and secondly his body, particularly his heart centre, remained warm. As he after four days was still sitting in his bed and was still warm, because the rigor mortis had not set in, they flew him halfway around the world to us in Sikkim. He arrived and because I was his first Western student I was asked to assist in carrying him into the monastery and afterwards up into the big hall. Up here I could tell him goodbye and see you later. Danes are not good at this sort of thing and haven’t so many dramas in their veins. SO the only thing I could think of doing was to press my forehead against his leg and thanking him so much for everything. Five days after his death his body was still warm and he was still supple – like living tissue.
He was then brought into a hall full of microbes and stuff, you know full of people from everywhere, and he sat there un-embalmed for 40 days. During this time his body shrank to this small size – I mean a man as large as I am shrank to this small size. [presumably Ole is holding up a hand or fingers to show the size – translator’s remark]. I know that, because there was a pane of glass in the box where he was sitting, and I went and looked. Most people would not want to look at a gentleman after forty days in a warm room, but I thought I had to tell this story. So, I went over and took a good look, and the body was really so small, the head had shrunk to ¾ size and the body was the size of an infant, like a very small child.
He was then taken out on December 20th 1981 and was cremated. Obviously a greave mistake, for when one lets oneself shrink in this manner it is because one wants to be preserved. One wants to be mummified and remain as a blessing for the place. But Kalu Rinpoche wanted him to be cremated and he was the senior Lama in charge. In connection with this many unusual things happened. Gigantic eagles circled around, there were two rainbows around the sun which is usually never seen in those parts, and his heart rolled out of the oven through one of the open hatches and rolled in the direction of Tibet and landed at the feet of Lopön Tsechu Rinpoche.
We were standing on the other side of the Stupa; the upper place there was fully jammed. So it landed there and Lopön Tsechu Rinpoche picked it up and brought it inside. And already here was shown the first signs of the divisions and troubles which later would come into the lineage. Which was very bad for the East and very good fro the West. It catapulted us from medieval Tibet and 400 years forward into our times. That was the best thing that could have happened to us; otherwise we would have been a sect or a belief or something else. But because of this division which happened after Karmapa’s death, the lineage was really shaken awake and he Western Buddhism is today as mature as it is. In this way we have grown and developed. What at first looked like a huge loss and shortly after as a great rejection and fragmentation, in the end turned out to give the best basis for the work in the West. The East was also partly shaken awake and was forced to know more and to believe less, to come more to terms with the things, and not to need to have everything ready-made.
In fact, what came after Karmapa’s death was maybe the greatest teaching of all and it was very, very powerful.
(Ole at slideshow)
This is a picture where I have just heard… a moment later Hannah came out of the tent in the background, crying and completely beside herself, for that’s when we heard that Karmapa was dying.
They hadn’t able to do anything for him in Hong Kong and had transferred him.
(That’s me with the pick there) and a moment after that, I heard that it was really serious with Karmapa – (my sandal skidded there – I got a bad bruise on my back, but that went away again) – and it was like a bombshell. We were 100 people there and I think everyone had tears in their eyes. 80% of them had never seen Karmapa, but the power field was so – everybody was lost.
KARMAPAS LEGACY
How do I know that I am doing what Karmapa wanted, and how do I think I am doing it?
Karmapa had moulded and imprinted himself very much on Hannah and me and had told us quite clearly what he wanted. He had never wished or asked for anything which didn’t correspond to our culture or critical way of thinking. He quite plainly said, “You have the area east of the Rhine, there you should do your work. The Germans are your people”. He also sent me to Poland and he said, ”Make centres all the way to Japan”. All that he said then, I have totally fulfilled. He always wanted me to report to him the latest political developments in the world, always wanted to know what was happening right now. Which countries were doing what, and what the developments were on all levels. He gave me a completely free hand to govern the things that were within my field .
Karmapa was not only in this life very important to Buddhism. Since around 1110 he was absolutely one of the most important figures in the transferring of Buddhism on the Mahayana- and DiamondWay-levels of the Far East, where he also continuously from 1200 to 1890 was the spiritual guide, the Guru, of the Emperor of China.
So, he had been working over this whole area. As China became communist in 1949 and Tibet was conquered in 1951, Karmapa was sitting ca. 70 km North East of Lhasa and had to get all his people out and to Bhutan. He had foreseen the whole assault on and occupation of his country and had brought some of the old teachers down there who had now already built some strongholds. So that when he, the Dalai Lama, or other teachers came this way, everything was ready for them already. That was in 1959. Karmapa had invitations to come to Ladakh – which is here [pointing at map?] – to Nepal – which is here [pointing at map?] – and he had invitations to go to Sikkim and Bhutan. From very, very good reasons he had chosen Sikkim. In 1969 we met the Karmapa very briefly in Kathmandu as he arrived there himself. And in 1976 Hannah and I had the great opportunity to drive a couple of his old dented jeeps this way over here [pointing at map?] – where we had the accident with the failing brakes I told you about before – on the way into the Kathmandu valley, around here [pointing at map?].
Shortly before, we were standing here. We had stopped, Karmapa got out and I had an experience like if the real old Tibet – the real old world – for perhaps 10 minutes was standing there, fully alive. From there we had the whole view of the K-2, the Mustang Mountains, and the Mount Everest all the way to Kanchenjunga. Karmapa was standing there, we were right beside him, and he said, “There is Sagamatso, Nobse, Lobse…”, and all the other names that the Tibetans use, and he said, “There lives Demchog, the Buddha of Highest Bliss, there she is living she is called Tseringma, there they are living, they came to Milarepa, this energy was made active there…” and so on. It was crazy, he was standing there showing us everything and it was as if he had put the whole history into our hands. It was crazy. I tell you, in this moment time stood completely still. (Then on the way down the brakes failed. That was a small purification. That is how it happened.) He was standing there completely unshakeable. It was completely clear that he had explained the 8-thousands… like that. And he had seen them all, the Buddhas. He wasn’t just telling tales. He said, ‘that one there’, because he could actually see him. There we really felt how the power fields are built up.
I find it so wonderful that we are able to bring all these energies to the West. Now, when the spiritual basis of the East is increasingly disappearing and disintegrating and their cultures dissolve into materialism and nationalism, it is great that now here I our end of the world, where all these childhood diseases have been overcome, so many independent, exciting people are thinking, “Karma-Kagyü Buddhism, DiamondWay, that is what I want to do.”
I am very glad. This is the big thing in my life that this is happening here. That hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people come here, and learn, and meditate, and want to set the Yogi mind – not the restricted and believing mind, but the free open Yogi mind – free in the world. That is the Joy of my Life, and when the 17th Karmapa comes to us very shortly, Thaye Dorje from Delhi, then that will also be a great joy.
Thank you very much.
translated by Lodrö Sangpo Joergen Larsen
Karmapa Chenno