Lama Yeshe Passes
Lama Yeshe Passes
March 3, 1984. Twenty minutes before dawn on the first day of the Tibetan New Year, after months of manifesting illness, the heart of forty-nine year old Lama Thubten Yeshe stopped beating. All around the world phones rang, hushed voices delivered the news and devastated students deliberated about attending the cremation, planned at Vajrapani Institute in California
… In Germany, the annual winter retreat at Aryatara Institut was still running, with ten days to go. “Every night we had been chanting (in German) the Vajrasattva tsog offering Lama had composed in Bodhgaya,” said Sylvia Wetzel. “Jacie’s call here came on the morning of March 4, but the retreat saved me. I was translating Lama’s teachings at the time and listening to his voice every day. The following year I became a nun.”
Miffi McKimm, now spiritual program coordinator of Langri Tangpa Center, was asleep at the Brisbane City Center: “I dreamt Lama came into my bedroom, stood there in his robes and talked to me, serious and supportive. When we got the news I felt quite pragmatic and I’m sure the dream was to do with that. I worked out it was a few hours before Lama died. I did feel sad when I saw the sad, sad faces of Lama Zopa and Geshe Thinley, but I was sure Lama would never desert us.”
Adele Hulse: “Gillian [Gelbart, now Ven. Tsapel] rang me at home. That night we had a big puja at Tara Institute and I sat where no one could see my face. A couple of nights later I dreamt of Lama lying in his coffin, exactly like a photograph I later saw of him in his coffin. He was dead, just dead. Then one eye opened, looked at me and winked. Then Lama turned his head away from me and vomited. I learned later that dreaming of vomiting is supposed to represent purification. I remember at the time it was not at all distressing and the wink was just wonderful.”
Ven. Sangye Khadro was meditating at Dorje Pamo Monastery in France when there was a knock on her door: “It came as an unbelievable shock. It was the first time someone very close to me had died. Geshe Tengye led a puja during which I started crying then stopped, because I thought Lama wouldn’t like that. He’d want me to be strong for others. I also realized that while Lama was alive I could still be a child, but with him gone I had to grow up.”
All around the world the students, their families and people who kept a photo of Lama Yeshe just because they liked his face, bowed their heads in sorrow. As news of Lama’s death spread around the world, around 200 students made their way to Vajrapani Institute to attend the cremation of Lama Yeshe’s body. Amid the continual hum of prayers and pujas, a cremation stupa was quickly erected by several students with the supervision of Song Rinpoche. The stupa was set alight shortly later, followed by a three-hour puja marked by profound stillness and a sense of unexpressed grief, and left to burn for several days before it was reopened by Lama Zopa Rinpoche to examine for relics. After the relics were removed, Rinpoche thanked everyone in attendance, commenting, “I am completely satisfied. Everything has gone so perfectly, nothing inauspicious has happened …”
This article is an excerpt of the full article printed in Mandala
