By Caroline Frank
All photos courtesy of Cindy Caros and David Fey

Pilgrimage practice is one of the most powerful ways to explore the path of awakening because it requires us to access ways of knowing and being that extend far beyond our conceptualized ideas about what the path is and how to travel it. To go on pilgrimage, especially to a place like Bhutan, is to enter into a deep space/time continuum in which we can directly access and experience the energies of liberation as these have become embedded in places, objects, and environments. The way we access these spaces encourages us to lean into the “more that we are” and to use that form of being to awaken from the inside out. Pilgrimage practice permeates every layer of our being and unfolds gradually and beautifully long after we have returned from the place of pilgrimage. It is a truly profound transformative practice of body, speech, and mind.  

~ Lama Liz Monson, on her calling to pilgrimage.

At the end of August this past summer, Natural Dharma Fellowship sangha members—Cindy Caros, Carolyn Parrott, Peggy Green, and Tom Tighe—traveled to Nepal to begin a pilgrimage to some of the most consecrated places in Bhutan. This journey was organized by the Tergar Institute, founded by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche to support scholar-yogis and yoginis in the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages of Vajrayana Buddhism. A couple of days before the group left for Bhutan, the pilgrims met up with trip leaders Lama Liz Monson and her partner, NDF sangha member Chris Hall; Karma Shenden, a Bhutanese monk and teacher at Tergar; and fellow pilgrims, four Western students studying at Tergar Osel Ling Monastery. On a hill overlooking Katmandu, they attended an empowerment given by Mingyur Rinpoche. The empowerment, which could be taken either as a blessing or as a permission to practice, was that of the wrathful manifestation of Guru Rinpoche, known as Dorje Trolo. It was the perfect energetic send-off for the group, as they would soon be visiting the sacred site of Taktsang, the cliff monastery where Guru Rinpoche manifested himself in that form.  “Without Empowerment there is no accomplishment; You cannot get oil from pressing sand,” wrote Nyingma teacher Patrul Rinpoche on the potency of this sort of empowering transmission.

On August 30th, the group landed in Bhutan on Paro’s short airstrip encapsulated by towering mountains. On the flight eastward, they passed through the Himalayas with awesome Mount Everest a stone’s throw from their plane windows. For the next ten days and nights in Bhutan, they were warmly welcomed in numerous monasteries and brightly painted guest houses across more than 300 kilometers. Carolyn Parrott points out that Bhutan is the most mountainous country in the world, yet the pilgrims traveled safely in a Toyota Coaster all-wheel-drive van with their trusted driver, Sanjay, who became an integral part of the pilgrimage. He transported them over 12,000-foot mountain passes and through valleys of tropical vegetation, monkeys and retired cows. Peggy Green fondly recollects, “In Bhutan cows are not killed when they are finished giving milk but let loose to wander and feed themselves in the grassy hills and valleys. All animals are sacred in Bhutan.”

Buddhism came to Bhutan in the early 8th century when Guru Rinpoche Padmasambhava, patron saint of Vajrayana, arrived from Tibet. Today Buddhism is designated the “state religion” of Bhutan with over three-quarters of the population practicing in this tradition. The group quickly discovered that Bhutan, in its religious practices and traditional culture, as well as in its undeveloped landscape and preserved architecture, is now the closest a pilgrim will find to what Tibet was like before the Chinese invasion in 1959, and the subsequent “Han-ification” and “modernization” of that country.

On their first full day in Bhutan the pilgrims took the legendary hike up the cliffside from Paro to the country’s most sacred site, Paro Takstang, commonly called “Tiger’s Nest.”  Here are the caves where Padmasambhava first practiced and taught Vajrayana in Bhutan, together with his foremost student and consort, Yeshe Tsogyal. As the story goes, Guru Rinpoche was flown to Taktsang from a sacred place in central Bhutan known as Aja Ney on the back of a pregnant tigress – Yeshe Tsogyal – hence the site’s iconic name. In the 11th century, Milarepa along with a succeeding train of Tibetan saints, came to meditate in these caves. Temple structures were built here and across Bhutan. At this time, the Drupka Kagyu sect fled Tibet to take root in Bhutan, and many more stunning temples and monasteries were built, nestled peacefully in the Bhutanese landscape. The monastery complex that surrounds and incorporates Padmasambhava’s cave today, however, was constructed in the 17th century.   

The famed Tiger’s Nest was one of the only sites on the pilgrimage that is also featured in tourist tours. Tom remarked that all the YouTube videos he and his wife Peggy watched before heading to Bhutan, however, did not prepare them for the impact of the warm kindness of the people, the country’s natural beauty, and the spiritual energy they experienced everywhere throughout the trip. He likened their experiences to a darshan, a Sanskrit word for the “auspicious sight” of the divine.  The spiritual energy that all the pilgrims described experiencing on the trip was palpable, and in their words, “transformative.” Still weeks after the pilgrimage, Cindy uses the words “transformation” and “karmic connection” to describe her journey, which she is still processing. She explains,  “At night, I see and feel the landscapes of Bhutan pass through my mind. It was energetically so rich.” 

All NDF pilgrims remarked not only on the natural beauty of Bhutan, but also on its architectural beauty. Cindy recalls the vivid paintings and murals everywhere on ancient sacred sites. Their conservation and restoration are carefully regulated by an appreciative government. Tom was awestruck by the carvings and colorful painting found on even ordinary buildings. “All houses have some level of artistic details,” he notes.  Even the outlying villages, where the pilgrims stayed often, had their own small, decorated stupas and temples.

Other highlights of the journey included a visit to the home and monastery complex where the great Tibetan Dzogchen master Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche (d. 1991) lived for 35 years as a poet, scholar, teacher, and terton (a treasure revealer). Lama Liz considers Khyentse Rinpoche her root teacher, and his portrait can be seen at Wonderwell.  She loves to point out to retreatants the pure love seen in his gaze. 

Tergar pilgrim David Fey, who made a slide show of the trip for all the participants, notes, “On the morning of day six we were honored to have tea and receive the ‘father’ Dzogchen Kunzang Gongdue Ngondro transmission from Gangtey Tulku Rinpoche.” Ngondro is a specific set of actions that serve as preliminaries to Vajrayana meditative practices. The pilgrims were warmly welcomed and offered tea at most of the monasteries they visited. Occasionally, they were offered entire meals of locally grown produce and delicacies.

Moving eastward the group stopped at the 16th-century Trongsa Dzong, the largest fortress in Bhutan, which stands on a spur overlooking the gorge of the Mangdi Chuu River.  This central location in Bhutan provided a strategic location for Bhutanese rulers.  A temple dedicated to Maitreya, the Lord of Love, was added to the fort in the 18th century, and today the complex houses about 200 monks. The quiet beauty of its natural setting and the loving bodhisattva presiding over the fort gesture to the innate power of Buddha nature in the very face of conflict and warfare. 

Arriving in the misty Bhumthang Valley in the final days of the pilgrimage, the group drove up to Longchenpa’s Gela Lhakhang where they practiced using some of the Nyingma Dzogchen master’s writings on the Nature of Mind and heard many local folk tales about the temple and its surroundings.  In 1359, Longchenpa was exiled to Bhutan due to political instability in Tibet. In Bhutan, he trekked through the mountain valleys giving teachings and establishing small hermitages. This was also the valley where Pema Lingpa, a well-known terton (treasure revealer), was born in the 15th century. He is considered an emanation of Padmasambhava and is renowned for his status as one of the five, great Terton Kings. Today, the energy of this saint remains palpably present in several sites and monasteries in Bhumthang Valley.  

On their final day, the pilgrims visited the holy site Membartsho, known locally as the “Burning Lake.” It was here that Pema Lingpa first offered a public demonstration of his gift as a terton to doubtful villagers. He dove into the pool with a lit butter candle, and after some time while onlookers feared that he had drowned, he surfaced with a statue, a treasure chest, and the flaming candle still burning. Nuns from the nearby Pema Shedrup Choki Gatsheling Shedra Nunnery got word that the pilgrims were coming to Membartsho, and they began burning dried juniper for a ceremony called Lhasang (divine purification). This is an invocation, a smoke offering to protective deities. Cindy reminisced,“we were sitting in the smoke, receiving these blessings, with monks chanting and the nuns offering song.”

The pilgrims returned home with full hearts. Cindy muses, “I am still feeling all the blessings. They will unfold for the rest of our lives, and beyond.”  Gangteng Tulku Rinpoche, whose home monastery they visited on their fifth day, told Tom, “Your karma has brought you here, you belong here!” Peggy adds that it is hard to describe the energy that she experienced, “It is as if the cobalt blue sky, the rainbows, the clouds were lifting us up off the ground. There was a lightness about my experience I never felt before.” Carolyn says, “My practice was buoyed by seeing various Bhutanese people, as well as the Tibetan Buddhist population of Kathmandu, involved en masse in daily practice, such as doing kora and attending to many, many prayer wheels. One of my most vivid memories is taking a walk in Jakar, Bhutan, where a quarter mile or so from our hotel, I watched an elderly man moving a gigantic prayer wheel, maybe two feet in diameter and six feet tall, housed in a gazebo-type structure, as part of his morning practice.” A kora is a meditative practice of circumambulating, often around a stupa or temple, and is symbolic of a pilgrimage.  For this group of NDF pilgrims, the trip itself was a kora that allowed them to feel into “the more that we are.”