The Lama & My Mother

This is a personal Lama Dawa story but I believe it is fit for sharing, as it beautifully illustrates the deeper levels at which a true master, in full command of Buddhist tantric skillful means, can work for the benefit of beings.   Focus of the story is the relationship between my teacher and my mother.  Yes, indeed, there was a connection between these two if there ever was one – although in this life they never met in person.  They only met through Saraswati and Tara, through space and time, and through my bond to her as her son and to the Lama as his dharma friend.  For my mother, it eventually turned out to become a liberating experience, and in this case I mean liberating in the traditional and literal Buddhist sense of the word.

It started in late November or early December 1999, as I vividly recall.  I had just arrived in Kathmandu from India to stay in Nepal until early May 2000.  I was really looking forward to it, too.  I would be with my Lama for three months, and afterwards I would be attending the full cycle of Ka-Ma empowerments and textual transmissions to be given at a monastery in Pullahari. 

At that time my mother was living in Germany.  Naturally I called her a few days after arriving in Boudha and settling down in a guesthouse.  Unfortunately, the news I was to hear was anything but good.  It also came out of the blue as I hadn’t talked to my mother in a few weeks while traveling in North India before coming to Nepal, and therefore was not up-to-date.  I remember it was on a Friday afternoon when I made the call.  She was absolutely calm when she told me what was going on in her life, “Son I went to a routine check up and they found cancer in the other breast.  They already did a biopsy.  I am scheduled for surgery for this coming Tuesday.  Don’t worry.  I’ll be fine.”  My mother had had a 15-year history of cancer, and had already undergone two operations.  But at that moment in 1999, she didn’t even ask me to come to be at her side, as I had been on the two previous occasions in 1985 and 1995.  But, of course, I would have to go, I knew.  My mom was 85 years old, and I was her only living close relative.  So, of course, I would fly off to Europe ASAP, which for obvious reasons I also did not like to do very much either.  After all, I had just arrived to be with my lama and then to receive some rare transmissions.

From the public telephone I went straight to Lama’s house and broke the news to him.  His only comment was, “We have to check in the mirror”, referring to the Saraswati mirror divination of which he is a great master.  He proceeded to do so right away, asking if there was anything that could be done for my mom.  One of the answers was that a Medicine Buddha offering puja would have to be conducted 85 times on her behalf, plus a sutra would have to be read, also according to her age, and he gave me the telephone number of the yogi down the road who would be able to do all of this on short notice.  And then there was something else that was required but he did not explicitly mention what it might be.  He only said that he would have to take care of this matter himself, no one else could.  The bottom line was, that according to Saraswati’s specific instructions whatever rituals were to be conducted would have to be completed by Sunday evening.  Which is what happened.

I called my mother again on the following Monday afternoon at the hospital in Kempten

where I believed she would have settled already the day prior to the scheduled surgery.  I got the hospital switchboard and asked for Mrs. Dehne’s room.  The receptionist at the other end paused, obviously in order to find the room number, but then said, “No, Mrs. Dehne is not here; she came early in the morning for a last round of tests and was sent home two hours ago.”  I was baffled, and immediately called my mom.  “Yes, dear”, she said, “they sent me home.  They sounded very surprised because they couldn’t find the cancer any more.  While doing their last pre-operation tests they discovered that it had disappeared.  That’s why they sent me home.  I’m fine.  You don’t need to come.”

Recounting the story to Lama he didn’t comment. 

The next time I visited Lama in Kathmandu was late January to March 2001.  Many things happened during that time, including another mirror divination for my mom.  I had visited her over Christmas 2000 and stayed until her birthday on January 18, but she looked and acted depressed, not her usual optimistic self.  The divination was about that.  Saraswati gave the following answer, “This woman is lonely.  She needs a companion.  And Tara will be an excellent companion for her.”  - It is true, my mother had turned a little lonely because two of her old friends had died the year before, and there were not many left, which happens to many people that age.  Their friends die.  So according to Saraswati, Tara could take their place.  Lama explained the puja would have to start in the night, to be completed at sunrise, at which time Tara would have to be requested to go and join my mom.  Lama, again, was quite adamant that he would have to take care of the matter himself.  No other Lama could be commissioned for the job.  After everything was done, the only comment he made the following day was that at some point I would have to take my mom to India to live with me.  He didn’t elaborate further, and didn’t breech the subject again in the course of the 2001 visit.  To myself I thought, “My mom will never move to India, she likes her Germany too much to leave it in old age.”

In some context, the subject came up again in the course of the next visit to Kathmandu, February to April 2002.  Lama drove home the point to me that, “Your mother has to be in your house in India when she dies. It is your duty to make sure of that.”  Then he said that he would send me a picture of Padmasambhava from his place in the US later in the year and that I would have to frame it and put it up in her room. I replied, “My mom will throw the picture in the dustbin.”  His answer to that, “No, she won’t because she won’t even notice it.  It will be there as a blessing to guide her in the right direction.”  The picture from the US finally arrived some time in early 2003 when I was visiting Germany, and as told, I framed it and put it up on a cabinet next to her TV.  It stayed there and, as Lama had foreseen, my mother never even took note of it.

Lama Dawa didn’t come to Kathmandu in 2003 because he was in the process of receiving his US green card.  The next time I saw him was in early 2004.  By that time I had invited my mom to India to live with me beginning some time in the fall of 2004, and had been completely taken by surprise when she had agreed, “Yes, I’d be happy to.”  So that was decided.  Lama didn’t talk much about my mother during the short visit in 2004.  The only additional comment that he made was that she would die very soon after her moving to India.

Come May 2004, I had to fly to Germany on short notice because my mother had turned senile and couldn’t take care of herself any longer, at least not for the time being.  She had turned 90 in January that same year.   When I arrived, she was in a bad shape, old age Alzheimers, was the diagnosis.  Thankfully, the episodes of disorientation didn’t last very long, an hour here and there.  I found a very good chranio-sacral therapist, and these treatments seemed to do wonders.   By late August, my mom was back on her feet, fee of any episodes of delusion or disorientation.  I had to return to India for some business in September and promised to pick her up shortly after that and that we would fly to India together by November 2004.

Well, it was December 4, 2004 when she finally made it to Goa  Lama had sent two amulets for her protection during the flight and had told me to not worry, “As long as she wears those amulets, there will be no outbreaks of delusion in transition from Germany to India.”  And so it happened.

I had thought that my mom would be emotional when she closed the door to her apartment one last time behind her, but I was wrong.  She instead expressed that she was now very eager to get to India.  Life is really full of surprises.  All the friends of hers that she had left in Kempten, as well as her Red Cross caretakers had spoken out against her moving.  She had remained firm, “When the time comes and I have to go, I want to die in my son’s house.  I don’t want to die in a nursing home.” This really was her bottom line, and she would not allow anyone to sway her.

This is then exactly how it happened.  She had been very happy, sitting in her wheelchair on the veranda of my (rented!) house in Siridao in Goa, directly on the ocean overlooking a small, protected bay.  She was not totally lucid all the time, only some of the times.  Dr. Shikha was already there, as she had started working with us on a Spa project, and helped my mom as much as she could.   My mom was really taken by this young Indian doctor.  Which surprised me even more is, how mellow my mom was towards everyone India around her – she who had been somewhat of a white supremacist almost all of her life! Amazing.  But now she only pointed out and was grateful about “How kindly and considerately everyone treated her”.

Then, in the night of December 27th to 28th, 2004 my mother died in her son’s house in her sleep, as she had wished, three weeks before her 91^st birthday.  I found her in the morning.

I was alone.  December 28^th was also the day of the formal opening of our Spa in Anjuna 25 kilomters north and everyone else had stayed the night there. 

For two hours I just sat in the spot on the veranda where she used to sit – informally meditating, looking into small sloshing ripples of water in the bay that had given so much peace to my mom in the last weeks of her life. 

Finally, I got up and called Lama, who was in Kathmandu already.  He himself picked up the phone, and before I could utter a word, he said, “Mommy gone, huh…”.  I answered, “Yes, she must have died in her sleep at between 4 and 7.”  I assumed so because many natural passings happen in these hours. Lama replied, “No, she went at 1:17 AM.”  He was very precise. “How do you know?”  “Because she screamed out in pain for me and I went to help her.”  This was sort of dumbfounding.  He continued, “She went to a pure land, totally out of samsara, very lucky this one, your mom.  And you did also good.  You did your duty.  Now, she is free.”  After that I told him how her last days had unfolded, and then in the end he said, “You have to collect some of her remains after the cremation.  We have to scatter some of her bones on a hill overlooking the valley, here in Kathmandu where there are many prayer flags.”  Which is what came to pass as well.

As an epilog, it took until 5PM the same day on December 28^th to arrange for all the paper work before the corpse would be accepted to the morgue.  During all this time, no rigor mortis occurred and my mom’s face had an aura of complete beatitude, with a very lovely smile that stayed until she was cremated on January 30^th. Nobody who saw could quite believe it.

The Lama from afar had indeed worked miracles over the past five years.  Even though my mom didn’t have a ‘single Buddhist bone’ in her and all her life had been totally against ‘my running with these Asian types’, she had the good fortune and the good karma of being liberated through the skillful means of a genuine master.