The Shape in the Red Rock

In the Chokhor valley of Bumthang, in central Bhutan, a reddish cliff rises above the river, and three whitewashed temples stand against its foot. Together they are called Kurjey Lhakhang. Kur means body and jey means imprint, the trace something leaves behind.

Inside, the tradition says, is the cave where Guru Rinpoche sat in meditation until the rock kept the shape of his body. The story of the Tiger's Nest touches on it briefly. Here it is told more slowly, with the threads that different tellings add, and a gentle word about where they part ways.

A king in the Iron Castle

Long ago, the story goes, Bumthang had a king remembered as Sindhu Raja. Other tellings call him Sendha Gyalpo or Sendha Gyab. One written version, a short text the historian Michael Aris linked to the circle of the treasure revealer Pema Lingpa, makes him a prince from India.

In that version he loses a war, flees north with eighty followers, and takes over a great fortress called Chakhar, the Iron Castle. An older written account, which Aris traced to a twelfth-century text, knows nothing of India. Its king, called Se'darkha, is simply a ruler of Bumthang.

Aris thought the Indian prince grew into the story over the centuries. He doubted the events happened as told, but found in them memories of very old Himalayan customs. Either way, this is a story the people of Bumthang have kept close for a very long time.

Grief and a stolen life

The best-known telling begins with a war against a king to the south, remembered as Naoche, "Big Nose." Before the fighting, Sindhu Raja prayed to the local guardian spirits to protect his son, Taklha Mebar. The son was killed all the same.

Wild with grief, the king turned on the spirits who had failed him. In the oral telling he had their shrines pulled down. In Aris's written version he stopped honouring his guardian deity and did things that offended them all.

The chief of these spirits was Shelging Karpo, a powerful local deity of Bumthang. He answered by seizing the king's sog, his life force, the vital energy that, in Himalayan understanding, holds body and mind together.

The king sickened. The written version says his flesh wasted away until only skin and bone were left. Healers, astrologers and local shamans all tried, and none could help.

A measure of gold dust

At last someone at court remembered a master living in a cave at Yangleshö in Nepal: Padmasambhava, Guru Rinpoche, the "Lotus-Born." The accounts agree that a messenger was sent to invite him with a measure of gold dust. The older text adds that the messenger was dressed in yellow, like a religious man.

Bhutanese tradition says Guru Rinpoche came up from the south through Nabji and Korphu, in today's Trongsa district, and on into Bumthang. One pilgrimage account dates his coming to the Iron Tiger year, 810. Like most dates in this story, it is best held lightly.

What the Guru asked

The sick king promised him anything he wished. Here the tellings differ in a way worth noticing.

In the older written account, Guru Rinpoche wants no offering at all, only that the king and his people give up harm and turn toward virtue. In the later written version and in the oral telling, he asks for the king's daughter as his helper in retreat. The later text says he saw on her the marks of a dakini, a woman of awakened wisdom.

Her name changes too. Most Bhutanese tellings call her Tashi Khyidren, and Rigpa Wiki counts her among Guru Rinpoche's five principal consorts, his closest spiritual companions. Aris's written version names the daughter Lhachig Bumden. One pilgrimage account gives the princess both names.

The cave of the red cliff

Guru Rinpoche went to a cave in the cliff called Drakmar Dorje Tsekpa, the "red rock of piled vajras." A vajra is a ritual sceptre that stands for what cannot be broken. There he sat in meditation, while the princess, the accounts say, fetched water and laid out the offerings.

How long did he sit? The older text says three days, the later one seven, and the pilgrimage account three months. All agree that when he rose, the shape of his body remained in the rock.

The vessel and the sun

Still Shelging Karpo would not come out. The pilgrimage account tells how Guru Rinpoche sent the princess with a golden vessel to a small crag. Water broke from the rock, and she caught it before it touched the ground. That spring, Kurjey Drupchu, is still honoured above the temples.

Meanwhile, the same account says, Guru Rinpoche appeared in his eight manifestations, the eight forms in which he is remembered, dancing in the field below. Every local spirit came to watch except Shelging Karpo.

Then, as the princess came back, the first ray of the sun struck her vessel. Light flashed onto the cliff, and the valley filled with rays and rainbows. Wikipedia's summary of the oral history tells it a little differently: the vessel is copper, and Guru Rinpoche himself turns its reflected sunlight toward the cave.

Curious at last, Shelging Karpo looked out of his hiding place in the form of a white snow lion. At that moment, the tellings say, Guru Rinpoche became a garuda, the great bird of Himalayan lore, and seized him. The garuda called out his own name: Guru Pema Jungne, the Lotus-Born.

The written versions have no lion and no garuda. In them the spirits simply appear before the Guru, bow, give back the king's life force, and are bound by oath. Below the cave today, a figure of a snow lion with a garuda above it recalls the oral telling.

A life returned

Shelging Karpo yielded. He gave back what he had taken and promised to protect the teachings from then on. The later written version says the life force came back sealed in a small box. When it was brought to the king, it rose like a trembling rainbow and was absorbed at the crown of his head. The pilgrimage account adds that he drank the water from the spring.

The king recovered, the tradition says, and gave himself to the Dharma, the Buddha's teaching. This is the tradition's account of one healing, told to show what it understands Guru Rinpoche's compassion to be. It is not a promise about any illness of ours, and it is no substitute for care.

To seal Shelging Karpo's promise, the story says, Guru Rinpoche planted his walking staff in the earth, and the great cypress behind the temples grew from it. The deity himself is still honoured at Kurjey, painted above a doorway as a pale rider on a white horse.

The oath stone

One thing remained: the war that had started it all. The later written version tells how Guru Rinpoche called both kings to the border, to a broad field of bare rock where no trees grew. There they made peace, laid their hands on a standing stone, and swore never to cross it in war.

The field became known as Nathang, the "place of oath," and the village there is now called Nabji, in the Mangde valley to the south. A temple there, said to have been built by Tashi Khyidren, keeps a stone pillar that pilgrims say bears the handprints of the Guru and both kings. Aris noted that oaths sworn over standing stones belong to the oldest layer of Himalayan custom.

The temples at Kurjey

Bhutanese accounts say the healed king built the first temple against the cave. The oldest temple standing today, the Guru Lhakhang, was built or rebuilt in 1652 by Minjur Tenpa, governor of Trongsa. A second, Sampa Lhundrup, was added in 1900 by Ugyen Wangchuck, later Bhutan's first king.

A third was built for the Queen Grandmother, Ashi Kesang Choden Wangchuck, on the advice of the master Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche; the same pilgrimage page dates it to both 1984 and 1990. The remains of Bhutan's first three kings rest at Kurjey.

Across the river stands Tamzhing, the temple Pema Lingpa founded in 1501. He knew this story well. Aris points to a vision in his writings of Shelging Karpo guarding a treasure hidden at Kurjey, the place where the Guru had won him over.

Behind the main image of the oldest temple, the cave is still there, with the shape the tradition says his body left in the stone.

A name to rest in

At dusk the valley goes quiet. A few people walk slowly along the long wall of small white chortens, and the cypress stands dark against the cliff.

For anyone who recites the Seven-Line Prayer, Kurjey is a story about a name. In the oral telling, the taming comes when the Guru speaks his own name, Pema Jungne, the Lotus-Born. That is the name in the prayer's fourth line, the Tibetan form of Padmasambhava. A grieving king, an offended spirit and a whole valley came to rest in it.