The Tibetan Rainbow Body & the ChristianResurrection
(The following article is a summary of a talkgiven byFr.Francis Tiso at Mercy Center and posted on the internet in"Stirrings.")
On Center Day March 26,Fr.Francis Tiso, associate pastor at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Mill Valley andTibetan Buddhist scholar, spoke on his research in Nepal and Tibet. His firstproject focused on the preservation of Himalayan religious art. Three yearslater he investigated the Tibetan phenomenon of the Rainbow Body for possiblecomparison with the Christian concept of resurrection.
In 1997 Fr. Francis catalogued thangka paintingsas well as statues and wall paintings in the remote and sparsely populatedTarap Valley of Dolpo in Northern Nepal. He said the Bonpo religion thereclaims to be descended from the earliest indigenous religion of the Himalayasof this area, but the iconography is similar to that of Tibetan Buddhism. Hespeculated that it may be an early form of Buddhism that absorbed olderpractices. Fr. Francis gained rare permission to study and photograph both theBonpo and Buddhist images there and to participate in rituals led by the lamas.In his research on style, he examined hundreds of playing-card-size paintingsdepicting isolated details of particular deities. A lama holds up thesepictures for disciples to study on initiation to help them mentally constructthe entire image later. This visualization is used to enter into relationshipwith the deity.
Last summer Fr. Francis traveled to the provinceof Kham in eastern Tibet to study the manifestation of the Rainbow Body. TheBenedictine monk BrotherDavid Steindl-Rast had wondered about possible similarities betweenthis experience and the resurrection of Jesus. Br. David learned from Tibetansabout a recent occurrence of the body of a Tibetan lama disappearing withinseven days of his death. Thanks to Br. David's intervention, Fr. Francisreceived a grant to investigate. Fr. Francis said the Catholic church hascollected a large body of documentation to verify miracles, charisms, andunusual bodily changes of the saints and has rigorously tested the evidence inthe "causes" of canonization. He set out to gather such reliable dataon paranormal Tibetan experiences by interviewing eyewitnesses of the death ofKhenpo A-chos.
Khenpo-A-chos died in the summer of 1998, withoutany signs of illness (old age). After extensive training in both the Nyingma and Gelug schoolsof Tibetan Buddhism, he was known for his inclusive teachings, even to thetoughest bandits.
For most of his monastic life, instead of living in the greatmonastery, he retreated to a tiny, remote hermitage to practice mantras andvisualizations.
Khenpo's nephew and closest disciple said that sometimes he sawthe Khenpo circumambulating the hermitage, even though he was locked inside.
One year before the Khenpo died, a rinpoche advised him to have a thangka paintedof Ganden, the paradise the rinpoche predicted the Khenpo would soon be goingto.
The Khenpo did so to remove the last traces of karmic aspiration, whichfreed him to attain the next life. When asked about his uncle's teachings, hisnephew said he was a humble man who spoke mostly about the importance ofcultivating compassion.
Aweek before the Khenpo died, a flat rainbow appeared over his house. Thosepresent at his death told Fr. Francis that they saw the wrinkles on his skin disappearand the skin become smooth and shiny like that of a young boy's. Anotherdisciple said the skin actually becameluminous.
Fr. Francis said this meant he was able to change his cellular structure andrelease light. Everyone presentnoticed a sweet fragrance, like perfume. Outside the hermitage they sawrainbows in the sky, which was filled with a very fine rain. In a few days they also heard music, as ifsomeone were singing outdoors, but they could not understand the words.
Alama the Khenpo's disciples consulted told them to cover the body with a yellowcloth and not touch it. The disciples could see through the cloth that the bodywas shrinking but saw no signs of decomposition and no insects, although theweather was warm. On the eighth day they looked in the box and the body hadcompletely disappeared, leaving only the cloth (his clothing had been removedwhen he died), which had no marks on it.
Many disciples reported dreams orvisions of the Khenpo after his death. They also said they had heard of themanifestation of the Rainbow Body happening to other lamas who studied Buddhismvery deeply. They believed it showed the lamas' high state of realization.
Fr.Francis said that the meaning of the Rainbow Body is beyond that of a yogicattainment. It is ultimately a manifestation of compassion, of a realbodhisattva's ability to show people that the path is worth taking, that thesacrifices are worth it, and that their endeavor has universal power to reachout beyond the confines of the body or time.
Fr. Francis was deeply affected by his meetingwith the fierce lama the disciples had consulted about theKhenpo's death. This lama told Fr. Francis he must study for many years beforehe could truly understand the Rainbow Body, saying, "You don't see the Rainbow Body with the eyes of the body but with theheart."
Thelama passed around pictures of himself in meditation that showed his bodyemitting light. In one picture his body split into three forms, all radiatinglight.
Fr. Francis encountered writings of early fathersof the Christian church and in the early Buddhistcanon that described humans as originally beings of light. He says thatthis and the Tibetan experiences suggestthat the doctrine of resurrection of the body might refer not to a fleshly buta luminous reality, an interpretation that agrees more with the descriptions inI and II Corinthians.
Hesaid that the Rainbow Body shows the possibilities inherent in the human body,which seems to be a distillation apparatus into which all the energies of theuniverse flow in the direction of enlightenment.
Fr. Francis was struck by the devotion of theTibetan lamas, who have figured out how to maintain their practices in the faceof Communist opposition. He hopes their example inspires Westerners, whocomplain about the distractions and temptations of the world getting in the wayof their spiritual practice.
Article taken from internet: Stirrings--2001.
1-Anothersource writing about this interview said this was H.H.Khenpo Achuck Rinpoche (Achiu Kambu) or H. H. Lama Achuk Jamyang LungdokGyaltsenwho has sometimes also been referred to as Lama A-chos.
Father Tiso now works as Associate Director forthe Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, United StatesConference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, DC. Their contact information is:3211 4th Street, N.E.; Washington DC 20017-1194; PHONE (202) 541-3022; andE-Mail: commdept@usccb.org
No comments:
Post a Comment