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TUSHITA - PLACE OF JOY
 In the 1960s Trijang Rinpoche, the junior tutor
of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, lived for 7 years in what later became
Lama Yeshe’s room in Tushita’s main building (a small room
next to the main meditation hall which was reconstructed in the new
Gompa building).
At that time H.H. the Dalai Lama lived just a
couple of hundred meters down the mountain track (in what is today the
Mountaineering Institute). H.H. the Dalai Lama’s senior tutor Ling Rinpoche
lived in a cottage just above Tushita (in what is now Chopra Guest
House).
Many of the old, high lamas who had to escape Tibet around the same
time as H.H. the Dalai Lama, came to Tushita to teach and perform
initiations, all of them blessing Tushita with their very special
presence. Most of these Lamas have now passed on and stupas dedicated to some of them can be
found around Tushita (Lama Yeshe, Geshe Rabten, Geshe Jampa
Wongdu) and nearby (Trijang Rinpoche’s stupa is a beautiful,
quiet 20 minute walk from here).
 The new generation
reincarnations of a number of those great lamas were born in the
mid-1980s and are close in age, some of them still living near by
Tushita and occasionally visiting for ceremonies and other special
occasions. The present Ling Rinpoche, born in 1985, has said
“Tushita was very precious… It has become like a
pilgrimage place, with all the gurus and great lamas. When you go
there, there’s a special feeling - in the Lamas’ room and
in the whole area.”
A couple of years after Lama Yeshe passed away, his
reincarnation was recognized as a Spanish boy called Osel. Lama
Osel was enthroned at Tushita at the age of three. For
more information about Lama Yeshe and Lama Osel, and the topic of
reincarnation we highly recommend reading: “Reincarnation: The Boy Lama” by
Vicki Mackenzie.
Lama Yeshe’s
room at Tushita has been re-created as closely as possible to the way
it was when Lama Yeshe left it. When H.H. the Dalai Lama visited
Tushita in 1996, he went straight to this room and prostrated to the
seat of his former tutor, Trijang Rinpoche. Lama Zopa Rinpoche, our spiritual
director, asked Tushita to take great care of this room during the
renovation work of the main building, which started in 2007.
Accordingly, the room was incorporated into the plans for new
Gompa to exactly the same dimensions as the one in the old
building, and Lama Yeshe's furniture and belongings have been returned
to the same positions as before. Our long-term plan is to open it
as a public museum.
For more information about
Tushita see below.
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TUSHITA
THE PLACE OF JOY from Mandala
magazine Feb/March 2005.
 It’s
1972. An
old colonial-style house sits high on a ridge amid pine, oak, and
rhododendron
forests, beneath the beautiful snow-capped peaks of the Dhauladar
Range.
It is about to be acquired, along with four acres of land in the
foothills of
the Himalayas, near Dharamsala in northern India, by Lama Zopa Rinpoche
and
some of his students.
In
the 1960s it
had been the temporary residence of Trijang Rinpoche, the junior tutor
of His
Holiness the Dalai Lama. At that time, His Holiness lived just a couple
of
hundred meters down the mountain track, and his senior tutor, Ling
Rinpoche,
lived on the other side of the hill. Geshe Rabten’s residence
was also nearby.
In the surrounding mountains yogis were (and still are) living in caves.
The
property is
given the name Tushita, ‘the Place of Joy,’ the
pure land of Maitreya Buddha. As soon as initial repair work is done
and some accommodation
built, it becomes one of the first FPMT centers, a facility for
solitary and
group retreats. Anja Rydén delved into the
center’s archives and interviewed some people, and
here’s the Tushita story…
In
those days students came mainly from the famous November course at
Kopan Monastery near Kathmandu, Nepal. Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa
Rinpoche resided at Tushita for a few months every year, doing retreats.
Lama Yeshe’s first ordained male student was Jhampa Zangpo
(Shaneman) from Canada. They flew together from Kathmandu to Delhi in
October 1972 to negotiate the purchase of Noroojee Kotee, as the
property was then called. Jhampa Zangpo remembers an adventurous
episode on the way.
“Lama had collected US$5,000 toward the purchase price, and
it was my job to change the money to rupees,” he relates. In
Delhi’s chaotic Shankar Market, passersby were intrigued to
see a young Westerner in robes and a Tibetan lama sitting in a taxi
together exchanging two huge piles of notes with local moneychangers.
“I had close to 50,000 rupees to count in 100 rupee notes
(mainly donated by an Italian student, Piero Cerri), and they had 50
US$100 notes to count. Lama thought this was all quite grand and
laughed constantly as I sweated over making sure we were not
shortchanged,” says Jhampa. “As soon as the amounts
were accounted for, the driver told us to get out. I was not happy as
we were in an unknown area and I now had 50,000 rupees in my shoulder
bag. Lama said not to worry as we walked back to the hotel.”
They arrived safely in Dharamsala and together with Piero Cerri and
another Italian student, Claudio Cipullo, the purchase was negotiated.
Lama Yeshe could not stay long, and left Jhampa, Piero, and Claudio,
who were soon to ordain, with the daunting task of getting the place
into shape. “Westerners had destroyed much of the house,
burnt the furniture, and generally made a mess of things.
Lama left me with several thousand rupees and told us to do what we
could to make it more habitable,” Jhampa recalls.
They were joined in December 1972 by Peter Kedge, who became the next
director. He arrived from Kathmandu late one winter evening, climbed
the hill in thick snow, and was welcomed by Jhampa, who entered an
eight-month retreat soon after.
 Among
the first tasks was the building of a huge new stove to facilitate
cooking for retreaters. “The cook of those years was a
character and quite superstitious, so Peter had to arrange for a
special ritual to bless the stove,” relates Jhampa.
“A dough pastry in the shape of a scorpion was hung over the
stove, to appease the nagas and stove spirits. Supposedly, it made the
food safer for us to eat,” he adds.
Over the following year, Peter did hard but rewarding work with Indian
and Tibetan workers. They built retaining walls, replaced the slate
roof, installed water and toilets, and built retreat houses to
accommodate the growing number of Tibetan and Western meditators. They
also completed the renovations of the room where Trijang Rinpoche had
lived for Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who were very happy to
stay in such a blessed room during their visits.
“The director’s workload was quite onerous in those
days,” recalls Peter. “I remember shopping,
cooking, serving, cleaning, and managing the workers who arrived every
morning.” Finances were sorely strained and to get the
necessary work done he had to arrange several loans from the manager of
Ling Rinpoche.
“On one occasion, I completely ran out of money,”
says Peter. “Venerable Marcel was in a long retreat. I used
to pass his food through a small hatch into his room. I had borrowed
all his personal money that he had left in the office, after using up
all my own personal funds to keep the operation going,” he
adds. Peter used his last two rupees to take the bus down to the bank
in Dharamsala, “And I found that my good friend Harvey
Horrocks had sent me $150 from Australia! It was always a struggle, but
somehow, it always worked.”
Lama Yeshe’s visits were eagerly awaited by
Tushita’s staff and residents. “During one of
Lama’s visits, someone from the telegraph office came panting
up the hill,” recalls Peter. “Lama happened to be
outside and took the telegram and, without opening it, passed it over
to me and said, ‘Read this without emotion.’ I
opened it and read it to Lama, and it was the news that Zina had passed
away in the mountains in Nepal.” Zina Rachevsky had been Lama
Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s first Western student.
Peter marveled at the skills of the local people he worked with. A
number of the deodar pine and oak trees on Tushita’s property
had to be felled to make building material and firewood. “A
husband and wife team would come and saw a big tree into lengths, chop
the bark off and saw it longitudinally into sleepers.” A
small wiry man called Chunda Ram was an expert, remembers Peter.
“He could chop down a big oak tree and have the entire thing
split up into firewood within a few days. All I ever saw him eat were
the three small chapattis he brought with him wrapped in a piece of
cloth.”
Despite a prolonged bout of hepatitis, Peter Kedge says the year he
spent at Tushita was the happiest of his life. The air was pristine,
the view spectacular. He loved it in the winter when most people had
left, and it was very quiet and still. Although he didn’t
have much time to study or meditate, his mind was light and
exhilarated. After a year as director, he returned to Nepal and became
ordained.
Jimi Neal has been in and out of Tushita since 1975, starting as a
self-professed “‘neophyte Dharma
student,”‘ then a monk, a course leader, and later
a director. He remembers the first big teaching when Geshe Rabten
taught Atisha’s Lam Drön, Lamp for the Path to
Enlightenment, the source of all lam-rim texts. The following year,
1976, saw the first group Vajrasattva retreat. The director at that
time was Lobsang Nyima, one of three monks who escaped from Tibet with
Lama Yeshe in 1959.
“After that the late Stefano Piovella, my dear wild friend,
then a monk, and Geshe Tsering were co-directors of Tushita,”
recalls Jimi. The Western nun Thubten Wongmo, Tushita’s first
female director, had a large mural painted outside the main gompa,
which “made it a gompa.”
The first EEC (Enlightened Experience Celebration initiated by Lama
Yeshe) in 1982 was the greatest event ever held at Tushita, drawing
students from all over the world. His Holiness Zong Rinpoche taught the
Heruka Tantra, Chöd, and the Guhyasamaja Tantra. His Holiness
Ling Rinpoche gave Yamantaka initiation. There were 200 Sangha in the
gompa, and everybody else had to sit outside. The main purpose of the
celebration was to give an opportunity for everyone to meet but also
for the old lamas to pass their transmissions on before they passed
away. Other big lamas that Jimi Neal remembers teaching included
Serkong Rinpoche, Lati Rinpoche, Kirti Rinpoche, Gen Lamrimpa, Geshe
Yeshe Tobden, and Geshe Lobsang Gyatso.
 Over the years, a succession of great
masters have taught and meditated
in and around Tushita, creating a powerful spiritual atmosphere. A
stupa above the fire puja house is dedicated to Gen Jampa Wangdu, who
was Lama Yeshe’s best friend and who lived in lifetime
retreat nearby. Trijang Rinpoche’s cremation stupa can be
found up the road, and a stupa housing Lama Yeshe’s own
relics dominates Tushita’s garden. In 1996, His Holiness the
Dalai Lama honored the center with a personal visit. “He went
straight to Lama’s room and prostrated to his former tutor
Trijang Rinpoche’s seat,” says Jimi.
Since the 1990s, Tushita’s program has expanded to
accommodate the swelling numbers of tourists in Dharamsala who are keen
to learn about Tibetan Buddhism. Through monthly ten-day courses,
thousands of visitors from all over the world have met the Dharma here,
a service which Lama Zopa Rinpoche said recently is now
Tushita’s main purpose.
The focus at Tushita today is
the renovation of the main gompa. With leaking tin roofs and crumbling
walls, the whole building needs major work done. Under Lama Zopa
Rinpoche’s guidance, plans have been drawn up to renovate
rather than rebuild, in an effort to keep the center’s unique
spiritual heritage intact. An estimated 3 million rupees (US$67,000)
will need to be raised before the work can go ahead.
The present Ling Rinpoche, now
nineteen years old, said in an interview that Tushita is very precious:
“It has become like a pilgrimage place with all the gurus and
great lamas. When you go there, there’s a special feeling, in
Lama’s room and in the whole area. So it should be
preserved.”
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MAY ALL BEINGS BE HAPPY!
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