When Khenpo Pinsong heard Tulku Dapu talking like this, he realised there was no longer any reason to not open this amulet that had protected him for a lifetime. He carefully fished it out of his breast. It was a silver box inlaid with turquoise and red agate. He first placed the amulet as an offering on the table and made three long, reverent kowtows towards it. Then, Khenpo Pinsong carefully loosened the lid and lifted a thin layer of cotton paper from within the box. The odd thing was that this was not one of the colourful prayer flags which were commonly seen inside these amulets, but was actually a personal letter from the previous Tulku!
Khenpo Pinsong first gave the letter to Tulku Dapu to read, and he saw the look on the Tulku's face suddenly become solemn and soothed. Tulku Dapu then carefully placed the piece of paper back inside his breast. Khenpo was originally going to ask what was written inside the letter but he eventually refrained. There were a few things about which a person whose Buddhist practice was not complete did not have the right to enquire.
Dapu said in a solemn voice, "Now we still need to prove that when that shepherd child was born, there occurred the miracles that the previous Tulku Jianggong mentioned in this letter."
3
It was said that during the winter of seven years ago, in a poor, small village below Mount Lanazanba, a child was born squalling in a humble sheep pen. This village was so small that there were only three built houses, and the rest of the population lived in tents woven out of yak hair. These tent-dwelling shepherds followed the changing of the seasons and continuously migrated around grazing points. They often had no fixed abode, so wherever there was water and grass in abundance, they would move there to tend their sheep. People said that the day would have been a normal, but with the baby's arrival, there were unusual occurrences. Now when they thought back to it, it actually resembled something out of a legend.
The baby's father was named Jiayang. He was an honest man who followed nature, looking to the sky when he planted crops and looking to the grass when tending sheep. People said that his wife Zhuoma was as pretty as the gesang flowers on the plains. When she was just about to give birth, Jiayang carried her in his arms to a neighbour's sheep pen. There were three taboos when local Tibetans gave birth: you were not allowed to give birth in the tent, you were not allowed to give birth in a cattle pen and you were not allowed to give birth under a large tree or on the grassland, as they were scared that the child would be seen by the spirits in the sky. Children could only be born in a few places, for example in the sheep pen or in the mountain thickets. This was the rule. But Jiayang was very poor, so poor that the hair on his head was all in disarray and that there were lice on his body. He did not have even a hat-sized scrap of tent or a palm-sized stretch of pasture. He had to borrow somebody else's sheep pen for his child to be born in and even this was only a lamb pen.
People also said that when this child was born the following morning, it was as lightly as the falling of a snow goose feather. What was strange was that the child did not cry and instead closed his tender little red lips. The attending midwives were already amazed by this, but even stranger occurrences came one after another. Surrounding them was a vast expanse of snow and the drifts that accumulated on the other roofs were over two feet thick. However, there was only a little snow on the roof of the sheep pen in which the child was born. People said that when dirty clothes from the child's birth were washed at the edge of a nearby spring as was needed, the normally limpid, clear spring water actually turned white, the same colour as milk. There were also people who added that in the afternoon of that day, a rainbow stretched across the foot of the mountains and spread into the depths of the grassland. This was the first time that people had seen a rainbow in winter. Tibetans are a people that believe in miracles and that the world of the gods mixed with their own lives. If one day a person returning from shepherding said that they had seen King Gesar's[15] heavenly soldiers and generals patrolling the snowy mountains, then nobody would have been surprised.
The people of the village also told these stories to three merchants who had come to the village to ask for directions. These merchants were said to be strange, for once they arrived in the village, they didn't ask about this year's harvest of butter, and instead of using salt or money to purchase goods, they gave the people musk and antelope horn. They also made careful inquiries about the year and situation in which Jiayang's child was born. The more they questioned, the more nervous and excited their expressions became. The leading merchant was constantly taking off his hat, exposing his prematurely balding head. Steam rose from his head and large beads of sweat dripped down off the tip of his nose. When they could no longer find any new topic to discuss, they hastily mounted their horses and left as if they did not even have the time to drink a cup of tea.
In fact, they were high-level monks from the Qiari Temple who had come to make inquiries, having taken off their monk's habits and changed into ordinary clothes. Their leader was none other than Khenpo Pinsong. They hurried to the temple, and when they arrived, the Ninth Tulku Dapu was sitting on the ceremonial stage leading the monks in the ritual of reciting the sutra. Khenpo Pinsong prostrated himself in front of the Tulku and quietly told him of all he had seen and heard.
Tulku Dapu finished chanting the final verse and then slowly pulled the final words of the Eleventh Tulku Jianggong from his breast, saying, "You have a look at it."