A Terchen Pema Lingpa Day

It was somewhere in 2017 when I heard about the turquoise heart presented and talked at the mountain echoes by Mr. Pawo Choning Dorji. Terchen Pema Lingpa was a name I heard long time back in school and everyone knows he was such great treasure discoverer. Mr Pawo wrote to the then Prime Minister of Bhutan requesting for a day in a year to celebrate the great Bhutanese hero. A day dedicate only to Tertoen Pema Lingpa. Finally the cabinet has approved to name a day for this great Bhutanese hero starting next year whereby the third day of the first lunar month will be celebrated as a National Pema Lingpa Day in Bhutan. Isn’t it a great news for us?

“Pema Lingpa was the first Bhutanese figure and perhaps only the one, who effectively reversed the flow of religious offerings from Bhutan to Tibet” Dr. Karma Phuntsho from ‘The History of Bhutan’

Born in 1450 in Bumthang, this great treasure discoverer went on to have his first treasure extraction in 1476 at the riverine below the cliff of Naringdra on a full moon night. After this incident, the public speculation began whereby Pema Lingpa jumped into a lake with a burning butter lamp and returned back with a Buddha statue and a sealed skull with the butter lamp still burning. And this place, to this day holds as a most scared and a must visit place in Bumthang by the name Mebar Tsho or the Burning Lake.

Pema Lingpa then went on to have several treasure extractions via his divine destination and itinerary set up by the Guru Padmasambhava. He wasn’t a tertoen but a terchen: King of treasure discoverers. And there was only five terchens, destined to extensively reveal treasures of Guru Rinpoche. He is rightly described as the Bhutanese saint and cultural hero and it feels amazing to know that his importance are still felt in various parts of Tibet, Nepal and India (Arunachal Pradesh, Ladakh and Spiti). In Tibet, he had a huge followers, patrons and students. It seems unbelievable when the history has it that at two of his religious sessions in and around Tibet, huge number (as huge as 9000) of people turned up for the Terchen Pema Lingpa’s blessing that he was placed on a throne and raised above the ground whereby the public had to walk under his throne to receive the blessing.

No doubt that Pema Lingpa too had rivals and contenders those days. Lama Namkha Samdrub of Nyemo in Tibet happens to have an interesting encounter with our Pema Lingpa. The former was said to have made malicious gossips about Pema Lingpa in various parts of Tibet. Pema Lingpa had received various baseless challenges from Lam Namkha. On a final face, Pema Lingpa challenged Lam Namkha back for an ordeal by fire, where both of them had to leap into the burning fire and the one who survived was to be the winner. Unable to face such a challenge, Lama Namkha was said to have fled to Tibet the next day.

Neither it is not going to be enough to write nor I be the right person to talk about this great Terchen of Bhutan. This is the few words that are emerging from my heart. To be frank even a day in a year falls short against his great doings in our country. Still I am very much rejoiced of the great news of his day from next year. Another reason I am so glad about a day for our Terchen Pema Lingpa is that, it came after my less than a week ago recent trip to Ganteng Sangna Choeling Monastery in Phobjikha that was built by the grandson of Terchen Pema Lingpa. The history has it that the Terchen visited Phobjikha where he predicted and foretold that his descendants would build a monastery on the hilltop where the Pema Lingpa tradition would thrive into the future. Gyalse Pema Thrinley built the Ganteng Goenpa in 1613 and became the first Gangteng Trulku.  The monastery houses various ancient and age-old nangtens with rich historical background. Being there physically, I couldn’t describe how blessed I was and really proud that Bhutan too had such a religious hero.

It was Pema Lingpa who had the divine dreams of various mask dances from Guru Rinpoche which are mostly performed in various tshechus in Bhutan today.

There is another great reason why we have to celebrate Pema Lingpa day in Bhutan. We all know that our beloved Kings from the Wangchuk Dynasty are the descendants of the great Terchen Pema Lingpa. Our kings belong to the Dungkar Choje, a subsidiary clan of Khouchung Choje founded by Kunga Wangpo, one of the sons of Pema Lingpa.

There are times when we question ourselves on our patriotism and this happens to one such incident. We never realized to celebrate our own home-grown hero. Thank you Mr. Pawo for taking such a huge initiative and opening our eyes.

My misconception

I was in tenth standard and one fine morning, our principal made an announcement in the assembly about the police from Paro Police station making a visit to our school to sensitize the youth. We all were seated in the hall that afternoon and five police officers made their way towards the stage. All the officers looked amazingly smart, tall, brave and confident in their dark blue uniform, well-polished black boots, fastened belts, shining stars on the shoulders and their nameplates on the chest. An officer who looked bit aged stepped forward and took the main seat which indicated that he was the SP (Superintendent of Police). It was little bad of most of us to not know the SP of our own town. Our school principal immediately addressed the gathering welcoming the officers to our school. After our principal wind up his role on the stage, SP put on the mike and made a long smile to all of us. He greeted all the faculty and students of my school and introduced himself as Tshering Dorji. He then introduced four OCs (Officer-in-Charge) who came along with him. He started telling us what police is and what work police do. He even shared the hardships of being a policeman citing lots of examples they had encountered.

It was a new knowledge for me because till then my thinking and perception about police was completely wrong. I was a typical citizen who cursed police man on various occasion not knowing that what they are doing is for the country and its people. I was very young then, may be 6-7 years when I saw someone whom my mother told me that she was a wife a of policeman and my direct thought was that she cannot do anything bad to her husband because if she did, he will jail her immediately. That was my thinking at that age. And as I grew older, I understood that I was wrong and it won’t happen like that. But I never had that positive note which the policeman actually deserves. I was around 12 years probably when I went with my family to get the blessings from the Guru Rinpoche’s thongdrel on the last day of annual Paro Tshechu. We had to stand in line as thousands gathered for the blessing and I was holding my father’s hands standing in the queue while my mother and sister were standing behind us. We had waited in the line for sometime in the cold but a group of people broke in suddenly and disturbed our line. A policeman came directly to supervise and they thought our family was the one who broke the line and they threw us out from the line immediately. My father got very furious and exchanged some harsh words with the police but my mother was smart enough to pull him back. We didn’t get the blessing that day and I hated police so much then.

That day in the school, SP Tshering Dorji cleared lots of my doubts about how a policeman works, how the police department functions and how are the citizens and country protected by them. I was happy to attend that sensitization program. It is not easy for them to work 24 hours a day; run after criminals, search for evidences, check on every vehicle on the street, rescue victims… They too have a family and it’s damn unfair to let their family suffer only because they have to serve the country. They are truly the heroes who are getting paid for risking their lives in danger all the time. They are spending sleepless nights hunting for criminals and rule breakers so that we can sleep peacefully. We fill ourselves with joy every time a new celebration comes up but it’s just the opposite case for them. Anytime they are called, they have to make their presence without failure. The other four OCs sensitized us on various types of crimes and their categorization of the punishment. It was indeed a very new knowledge I got that day. The work policeman does is something which deserves honor and dignity.