Ngala Rig’dzin Dorje
Lama of the European and Scandinavian Sanghas
Here Ngala Rig’dzin Dorje is wearing the robes of an Aro lineage Lama. The to-nga (waistcoat) is predominantly red. As advised by Kyungchen Aro Lingma, it is the authentic red of the fire element rather than the ‘brown-red’ or dusky maroon which predominated in Tibet from the use of the most commonly available vegetable pigment. There would seem to have been an element of prophecy in this insistence of Khyungchen Aro Lingma on brilliant hues of red; because only in the future and in very distant parts of the world would such dye-stuffs become available. Vajrayana yogis and yoginis regard themselves very much as the children of Padmasambhava and Yeshé Tsogyel, and they commemorate this, where possible, in the colours of their robes. Red is the colour of the fire element, of which the symbol is the lotus; and Padmasambhava, the Lotus-born, is the Buddha associated with the fire element. Padmasambhava is also known as ‘the Buddha of the human realm’, because typical human existence is strongly animated by desire, which is driven by fire element neurosis and liberated into compassionate activity.
In other respects the to-nga has the same design as one would find in the monastic Vajrayana robes. The crossed lapels represent ‘the fangs of Yama’, the jaws of the Lord of Death, which are always at one’s throat, a reminder of the urgent necessity of practice. But in the Aro gTér lineage, patches of white replace the monastic yellow. The white patches of the ton-nga are brocade, which is the style of the vajra master. A Lama would not normally wear robes with that connotation in the presence of his or her own vajra master, unless specifically invited to do so.
Some ngak’phang practitioners do use the colour yellow in their robes, for example in the Drigung Kagyüd school; but in the Nyingma school it is commonly eschewed. Yellow was the colour of the robes of the monastic sangha of Buddha Shakyamuni. The Buddha told his first monks, who were from the highly fastidious Brahmin caste, to patch together their own robes from corpse-wrappings, then to wash them in a river that was thick with silt, leaving them a clay-yellow colour. So the colour yellow is associated with the path of renunciation: sila, conduct according to the monastic code. The Indian pandita Atisha devised a hybrid style of Vajrayana practice especially for the Tibetan people: Tantric inside but renunciate outside. This accounts for the patches of yellow retained in the Tibetan monastic robes.
In terms of the tsa-lung system, the psychic channels, red is the colour of the solar channel, which is female, and white the colour of the male lunar channel. By using the colours red and white, both Padmasambhava and Yeshé Tsogyel are commemorated. Padmasambhava’s ‘pink’ complexion represents his complete realisation, in the sense of the mixing of the white male and red female essences in the completion phase (dzog-rim) of anu-yoga. Yeshé Tsogyel’s mainly white complexion is infused with clouds of red, as one would find on the underside of a conch-shell; with the same psycho-physical significance. So this use of red and white comprehensively honours the Tantric principle of gender, each gender containing the other.
Blue is the colour of the central channel, and the lining of the to-nga is blue. The extensive sleeve-caps are called ‘elephant-ears’; because, like an elephant, a Buddhist practitioner needs a good memory, in order to retain the vast extent of the teachings. The elephant-ears are edged with piping in the three colours, which are twisted at the corner of the ears so that the order of the colours becomes reversed; in the same way that the tsa-lung systems of male and female practitioners are mirror-images of each other. Male and female practitioners can thus wear identical robes, in which their gender symmetry is preserved.