The 36th God
Gyalsang’s Story,
The Journey of a Sherpa
Tibetan Buddhist
I’d like to share with you [an] amazing but true account. . . . [To begin, let me say something about my family.] Father is from the Tamang group, so when he displeased his family by marrying Dolma, a Helambu Sherpa, his family gave him a home where only one other house had been built. It was on the least desirable land around, a hillside near a temple where ghosts and demons were said to live. It wasn’t surprising that Father usually held out his big, curved Gurkha knife in fear as he entered the house, and like others in the area, he drank a lot of millet and wheat whiskey. After seven years, I was born.
In 1983, when I was 10, Mother and I went out daily to graze the jomos [female cattle and yak hybrids] and protect them from the wolves and snow leopards. One partly cloudy day in May of that year we were out with the herd, Mother in front and the stragglers and I bringing up the rear. At midday I lay down in the grass to doze a few minutes. I felt I woke up, but I could neither see nor hear because it seemed that two black shadow-men kept surging back and forth in front of my face. Mother said she heard me shout and came running. She couldn’t shake me to consciousness, and splashing me with cold water didn’t help. She called others who were also grazing animals nearby, but in the evening she had to carry me back to the shelter, still unconscious. It was too dark to go for a witch doctor, so Mother and Father slept, one on each side of me, on the shelter floor.
During the night the shadow-men spoke to me in Sherpa. “Don’t worry, we want to use you. We want to show you the Buddhist Way. Your parents are very afraid, so tomorrow they will want to call a witch doctor. Tell them not to call such a person. Tomorrow you will be better, but from now on you must sleep alone.” Having said that, the shadow men left and it was morning.
The following night the shadow-men returned, wanting to take me somewhere. It took some time and was as if I had left this world. Then we were in a dark, unnatural place where no other living thing seemed to exist. The shadow-men retreated and there in front of me I dimly saw a Buddha image. A voice spoke, “From today, I want to use you. I’ll teach you about my ways.”
The shadow-men emerged from behind and took me back through the dark place to [my] world. They said, “From today you are not to mix with others. Stay alone with your parents. Whenever your father and mother enter the shelter they must first cover themselves with incense.” After that, every night for three years, I slept with a butter lamp by my head. While I slept I had to go to the place to learn the Buddhist teaching. My father was amazed as I reported all I learned: it corresponded precisely with what he learned from the Khamba Lamas years ago. As directed, we bought the religious dress, drums, and bells. Father was further amazed that though I’d never been taught [a difficult ritual], I could play the instruments [for it]. [It wasn’t long before some of the people of their village of Syabru became convinced that Gyalsang was the incarnation of the primary spirit of the village.]
After some time of receiving teaching and witnessing such wonders, the shadow-men took me to the Buddha image, but this time a plate was attached at the knees. Letters were etched on it, and a voice explained the meaning. I couldn’t even read Nepalese or write in straight lines. Nevertheless, everyday I wrote clearly and neatly in a notebook the message from the Buddha’s “screen.” [He also wrote in another language, which to this day no one has been able to identify.] I could always read what I had written and from these writings; I could also tell Mother and Father amazing things, such as their present thoughts and their past sins. [Insights simply came to his mind, and he communicated what he was feeling or hearing in his heart as he read from the strange script.] I also gave them instructions concerning how they could atone for those sins: they had to buy strings of 108 seed beads and go through them by saying the traditional Buddhist chant. At one point we were given 10 days to go to Kathmandu in order to buy Buddhist idols. Every Saturday we had to perform a special ceremony. As time passed we had to carry out more and more rituals.
I was given a list of 35 gods’ names. Each night all of us had to prostrate ourselves three times for each of the gods, saying the god’s name as we bowed. The Dalai Lama was number 35, the lowest in rank among the gods. Then one day my notebook said, “After the Dalai Lama, bow down to Yesu.” I didn’t know that Yesu is Sherpa for Jesus. In fact, I had never heard of Yesu . . . before.
Every Saturday we opened my notebook for teaching and week by week, month by month, the name Yesu rose higher in rank. With the name of Yesu came teaching about this unknown God. We learned of Adam and Eve, and the first sin, and about Yesu—the Son of God—and His crucifixion and resurrection, and much more. We were also told that God will come to judge the world.
It was now 1985. Two months later Mingmar [Gyalsang’s brother] wanted to quit his job at the cheese factory in order to reopen our house as a lodge. He asked me to look in my notebook for guidance in this matter. I bowed down three times and began to read. “If Mingmar wants to open a lodge that is fine, but don’t sell alcohol. When the lodge is opened, followers of Yesu will meet you.” Mingmar happily opened the lodge, and six months later the disciples of Yesu came. . . .
Actually, Jon and Dan had been praying earnestly for the Helambu Sherpa people for two years. (It had also been about two years since the name “Yesu” first entered my visions.) . . .
[When the followers of Yesu arrived at the lodge, they entered into conversation with Mingmar. Jon told him] about God, creation, sin, and finally about Jesus—His life, death, and resurrection, which had made the Way for us to God.
“The things you’ve told me and the things my brother has told me differ not even in one area!” Mingmar exclaimed.
“Where is your brother?” asked Jon, “Can we meet him?”
“He seems to have gone crazy,” was the reply. “I can take you to where he lives in the jungle, about a three-hour walk up the mountain from here.”
Just two weeks after this [they] came to us. Recently the name of Yesu had moved up to second in rank on the list of gods we were to bow down to. It had been exactly three years from my first vision. . . .
Barnabas began by telling how Yesu was born, loved, was crucified and three days later, rose again. . . . Most of the evening I sat quietly, intent to hear every word, but finally I was so excited that I jumped up and got my notebooks. Flipping through the pages, I found and read some sections corresponding to what we had heard. (During a later visit from Jon and a Nepalese co-worker, I read from one of my notebooks the complete accounts of how sin entered the world in the Garden of Eden, and of Yesu’s life, death, and resurrection. Jon, amazed, said I had confused Pilate’s name with Caesar’s in the part about the trial, but everything else was just as recorded in the Bible, God’s message to the world!)
That night the shadow-men came as usual and escorted me to the Buddha image. A voice came, “Today my kingdom is finished in you and you no longer need to serve me. One comes after me who is greater than I. You must do what the men say and follow Yesu.” I had no power to question. The dark men took me back. It was my last vision. Morning came and I felt as if a heaviness was gone.
A voice came, “Today my kingdom is finished in you and you no longer need to serve me. One comes after me who is greater than I. You must do what the men say and follow Yesu.”
Jon told us that God doesn’t want us to bow down to the idols—as we’d been doing. Barnabas explained more about why Yesu had to die in our place, how He fulfilled all of the requirements of righteousness, ritual, and law. He also clarified that believing in Yesu means entrusting ourselves to Him. . . . They also showed what new life in Christ is like. Though no one suggested I do it, I yanked the charms and beads from my neck and I told Yesu I would follow Him. Mother had been out milking the jomos, so Jon and Barnabas gave her the Good News too. She also wanted to follow in faith and by herself she prayed a beautiful prayer: “From now on You are my Lord. I don’t know much, but you are my Lord.”
Leaving the Buddhist way, the way of our ancestors, was a struggle at first, especially for Father. After Jon and Barnabas had left, I saw him light some coals and incense in a pot, bow down three times, then sob uncontrollably. I hated to hear him cry and went to him, telling him the words I’d heard from the Buddha image in my last vision, two nights earlier. He calmed, and when peaceful again, agreed to stop the rituals.
[This is] how God lovingly reached down to me, my family, and our Sherpa people in perhaps the only way we would have listened.
Writing from Gyalsang’s notebook
Used with permission from “The Name Above All,” Immanuel’s Foundational Teachings (Newsletter from Immanuel’s Church, 16819 New Hamshire Ave., Silver Springs MD 20905) Spring 2001, 4–5. Additional information included from Beyond Imagination by Dick Eastman (Grand Rapids, MI.:Chosen Books, 1997), 121–28. Originally arranged in this form by Dennis Jensen, 2001.
