An extraordinary modern-day Milarepa
The life and death of Geshe Lama Konchog

... When Losang Puntsog was six, his parents decided to send him to nearby Drepung, one of the three great Gelug monasteries in Lhasa. But already the young boy was displaying a quality that would be central to his life: he knew exactly what he wanted and would pursue it with single-minded determination. He declared that he wanted to attend Sera Monastery instead. As he had an uncle there, his parents relented.

His uncle, however, was a dob-dob – one of a group of monks found at most the Gelug monasteries who were basically self-appointed policemen – who actively discouraged the young boy's wish to study and practice and would beat him regularly.

But nothing could deter Losang Puntsog. In the monasteries, it was forbidden to take tantric initiations until one had completed the study of the five major treatises. However, at the age of nine he joined a group of lamas and monks to take the Vajra Yogini initiation from his root guru Trijang Rinpoche, the junior tutor to His Holiness the Dalai Lama...

...Throughout his years at Sera, beginning when he was a child, Lama Konchog would disappear for months at a time, traveling to various places around Tibet to take into his astonishing mind a whole range of skills, rarely found all in one person. "He was expert in so many fields," says Tenzin Zopa. "Apart from the sutra and tantra teachings of all the four traditions of Tibet, he also accomplish Cham dancing, rituals, sand mandalas, astrology, making divinations, architecture according to the Vinaya – his knowledge was astonishing."

For Geshe Jampa Tseten, it is clear now that his "crazy" schoolmate was not an ordinary being. "He was a holy being, a great meditator, since he was a small child..."

... According to Lama Lhundrup, the abbot of Kopan Monastery, the route that Geshe Lama Konchog followed out of Tibet [after the uprising against the Chinese in 1959] was revealed in [a] dream. The route took him to the village of Tsum, just over the border into Nepal, and to the cave of Tibet's beloved yogi and saint, Milarepa. The cave is known as Cave of the Doves. It is said that dakas and dakinis transformed into doves here to listen to Milarepa's teaching. It was here, also, that Milarepa was offered robes by his sister...

... [Later] he made his way to the Cave of the Doves, high in the mountainous jungle, where only tigers and other wild animals, as well as deer, lived. According to his own account to Tenzin Zopa, Geshe Lama Konchog trained himself during the first few months "to have an empty stomach. I lived on nettles, and gradually was able to practice 'wind chulen' " – a method whereby the meditator can "take the essence" (chulen) from nature. The usual method practiced by yogis is to take the essences from rocks and flowers, then mixing them into pills. But Lama Konchog decided to do without all sustenance. He literally took the essence from the air, and was able to survive...

... Geshe Lama Konchog lived like this for at least seven years: full of utter determination to achieve realizations, compelled by great compassion, and delighting in his solitude, with only the tigers and deer for friends. Asked later how he felt about conditions in the West, he said, "It is all contaminated! The best food I ever had was in the cave. The best place I've ever lived in was the cave. The best friends I ever had were in the cave." The cave needed to be climbed into, and the deer "would support each other in order to get in. Sometimes they would sit all day and night. We'd stay peacefully together with no fear. For me, that was a pure land!"...

... Around 8:15 on the evening of October 15, Tenzin Zopa and others were with Geshe Lama Konchog. Remembers Tenzin Zopa, "Geshe-la said to us, 'Now the vision of the mirage has appeared' – the first of the eight internal signs of death – 'so please go and start the prayers.' We all left except my brother Thubten Lhundrup, who recited Geshe-la's daily prayers for him. At 8.50 his breathing stopped."

Prayers were performed in Geshe-la's house throughout the day and night during the seven days that he remained in meditation. On October 22, his holy body was carried in solemn procession to the site of the fire puja, which lasted for several hours amid auspicious signs of five types of rainbows and a drizzle of flowers from the sky. At the end, the specially constructed stupa containing the fire was sealed.

Kopan's lamas and three hundred monks and nearby Kachoe Ghakyil's three hundred nuns, as well as many devoted students from abroad, attended the Yamantaka fire puja, held at a site chosen by Lama Zopa Rinpoche.

At 4:30 a.m. on the third day after the fire puja, under the supervision of the young Cherok Lama, Lama Lhundrup, Thubten Lhundrup, Geshe Losang Jamyang, Amtsok, Drakpa and Tenzin Zopa, the stupa was broken open and the search for relics begun. An astonishing number of relics were found – signs of the greatness of this holy being. "So many relics were found that what was supposed to be a two-hour job turned into eight," Tenzin Zopa said. Hundreds of pearl-like relics, some black hair, the heart, tongue and an eye – commonly, such organs of high tantric parishioners don't burn – and many other relics were found. "Lama Lhundrup said it is as if Geshe-la's whole body was a precious jewel..."

Postscript: Six weeks after the relics were taken from the fire and laid in containers on the altar in Geshe Lama Konchog's house at Kopan, great changes were occurring to them, says Tenzin Zopa. "One set of two relics has multiplied to become thirty-seven relics, and another has multiplied into twenty-eight. The bones are constantly producing pearl-like and golden-type relics; and from the ashes relics are manifesting as well. On the tongue there is a clearly visible self-arising Tara image becoming more prominent every day. And the heart continues to decrease in size, at the same time producing red relics. One tooth is taking the form of a counter-clockwise conch shell."

According to Lama Lhundrup, the multiplying of relics – which are the holy body of the yogi – is an indication of the strength of Geshe Lama Konchog's realizations.

All stories, pictures, recordings relating to Geshe Lama Konchog can be sent to Ven. Tenzin Zopa at Kopan Monastery: PO Box 817, Kathmandu, Nepal. Email Kopan@ecomail.com.np

This article can be read in its entirety in Mandala