Book signing: The beginning of the FPMT

We did the seventh and eighth Kopan courses in the old gompa, the Chenrezig gompa where the initiation was. There’s quite a bit of space, so we did many courses there. They put a sheet of some cheap cloth on the top and covered this part of the hill. Below there was some bamboo, woven by the villagers, which we put around. Then, there were many paintings done by the young monks.

There used to be art classes for many years but we didn’t have a professional art teacher. There was a New Zealand girl called Maureen who was the teacher. They did art for maybe an hour and then she let all the children sit on the steps of the old gompa, outside the door, and she led the dedication with prayers like Jang chub sem chog rinpoche, dedicating the merits and so forth. She did that for quite a number of years. Then Jampa Chokyi, the Spanish nun, also taught for a bit but it was mainly Maureen. They were not professional artists but the boys needed somebody to look after them. They painted mountains and houses and anything they wanted to.

Over many years, a lot of paintings that decorated the course, from the back room, were done by our young monks. All their paintings were stuck around. There was a door there that led to where the king’s house was—the Chenrezig gompa didn’t exist at that time. The old house was built in the British style by the king. Between there and the gompa there was a temporary sheet and then a back door at this side, and then, all the way around, they stuck the young boys’ paintings. It was like that, so many times.

Is Karin here? I can’t see enough without glasses. The first course she did was the seventh, right? And we did it behind the old gompa? How many courses did we do there? Many courses. Anyway, what was I talking about?

The Panchen Lama and Marcel. I was talking about the Panchen Lama but why did it come to Kopan? What course did Marcel start with?

Student: Maybe the fifth.

Rinpoche: The fifth? I see. So, that was the first course which we did outside, behind the old gompa, where there was ground between the hills. We left for Australia and I think Marcel led the course a few times and the retreat after the course. I think that was the first time there was a lamrim retreat after a course, and he was the first person to lead one. He’s very good at teaching and at leading retreats, very concentrated and very serious. Anyway, that’s what it was like.

He helped at the monastery, in the school, and then Lama asked him to start a business in Kathmandu, which he did, but from time to time he still led courses here and in the West. He still does from time to time in Holland and other places. He has totally dedicated his life to Lama Yeshe and to us, completely with body, speech and mind. He is one of the members of the FPMT organization who has been like gold. For so many years he has offered service to Lama Yeshe and helped Nalanda, where we are very fortunate to have a monastery for Western monks.

It seems very difficult to have a monastery for Western monks. Somehow, I didn’t really hear of a real Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the West. When His Holiness the Karmapa came to the West, because he’s a highly attained being, there’s not even one second when his mind is not in the Dharma. That’s how he wrote, because I saw some book, I’m not sure what it was. That’s how he wrote, because every second his mind is in Dharma. Of course, he has achieved very high realizations in the sutra and tantra. He’s a great, incomparable lama, such as those high lamas of Tibet. I forgot again why I mentioned the Karmapa.

Student: Marcel was organizing the Maitreya land.

Rinpoche: Yes, you are right. His Holiness the Karmapa went to the United States, I don’t know whether it was the first time or not. There are many Kagyü centers and many other Kagyü lamas, but the very first person who made His Holiness the Karmapa known in the West was this English lady who became a nun in the end, Freda Bedi. Her daughter used to go to the same university as Rajiv Gandhi, Indira Gandhi’s son, the one who became prime minister after her. They became very close friends.

When the Communist Chinese took over Tibet, many monks from Lhasa and the other parts escaped to Misamari, a most unbelievably hot place. Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister, asked Freda Bedi to look after the monks at Misamari. Because of her connection with Sri Lanka she became a Theravadin nun. The monks who wanted to continue with their study went to Buxa, where for eight years I lived and had the opportunity to hear the teachings on philosophy from Geshe Rabten Rinpoche, my first teacher; secondly from Gen Yeshe and then thirdly from Lama Yeshe. Both of them were Geshe Rabten’s disciples and from them I received the basic philosophical teachings, dura, the very beginning subject, something like ABCD.

That’s the place where Gandhi-ji and Prime Minister Nehru were imprisoned when India was under British rule. So many people were killed there. Because it had been a prison and the monks needed a very quiet, very isolated place he thought it might be suitable. The prison had been empty for quite some time, since India got independence from the British, so the monks who wanted to study went there. India was making many roads near Tibet for protection, and many monks went to make the roads.

I’m sure Freda Bedi must have had very strong karma from a past life because she came to know the monks very well and she became very close to them. She came to Buxa twice to see all the incarnate lamas and then she started a school to teach English to the young lamas from the four Tibetan traditions: Kagyü, Nyingma, Sakya and Gelug.

It first started in Delhi and I was there but I got TB, so I spent a lot of time in hospital. At that time I had so much desire to learn English. First I got smallpox, as did Lama Trungpa, who started the monastery in Scotland [Samye Ling], and his relative, Akong Tulku. Akong Tulku’s brother, another Lama Yeshe, has a huge amount of land to do retreat in Scotland. At that time he wasn’t a monk when he was at school and we both got smallpox, so we had to leave the school and they put us in a hospital very, very far away. After we were there for fifteen days, first my smallpox got better and then he got better. Then we went back to school and, when we were checked, they found out I had tuberculosis.

There was a Sakya-pa lama, Thupten Tulku, staying in the hospital who maybe also had TB. I thought I could learn English from him. Trungpa Rinpoche has passed away but Akong Rinpoche is still there now. His brother also got TB, so we had to be in the same hospital, but he was with the elderly people while I was with teenagers. Anyway, I was alone.

We went to see the highest doctor in the hospital. It seemed the Sakya lama who had been translating was leaving, so then I cried in front of the chief doctor and he gave me a banana and candies. I was then given a choice whether to stay in a single room or with other boys. I took the room with the boys. After you go inside, the first part has four beds for girls and in the middle is an aisle that leads to the toilet. After some time, there was a place for the boys. There were three boys and there was an empty bed, so I chose one. I was crying so much my pillow became all wet. When it was time to sleep the nurse came to check my blanket then left and later returned, sometimes checking, going back and forth like this. I didn’t speak for three days.

You had to change your clothes and wear the hospital clothes, the Punjabi pants. I took a book and went outside to stretch my legs. There was a gate with a lot of cars passing through, so I stretched my legs there. The Indian boys who were in the same room came and told me, “Lama, don’t cry. Don’t cry.” I didn’t speak, I didn’t reply for three days. Then I think my mind became peaceful after that.

The school sent an examination, but I didn’t do the exam. Then, they invited me to see Prime Minister Nehru. At that time he was very old and he was lying down on his bed; his body had become a kind of blue color. All the lamas were around him and he was brought outside. At that time his daughter Indira Gandhi was outside. There was a table with something you don’t see these days; it had pictures of Nehru’s trip to the United States in a machine that you turned to see them. [Student: A view finder?]         

Indira Gandhi gave each of us one of these, about Nehru’s life. I then went back to Buxa to study with another young lama from Sera Je Monastery. A Tibetan policeman who had joined the Indian police, called Tenzin something, picked us up and took us to Buxa.

While I was there studying for a few years, Freda Bedi asked again and again for me to come to her school. She had started the first school in Delhi and then a school in Dalhousie and then, the last one, near Dharamsala. It was very, very cold in the wintertime, so the school was only for six months in the summer, not the whole year. I went there, not for the last year but the one before, for six months but the school didn’t help me much because, being in the second or third class, all the teachers were Westerners, English, there was no Tibetan, and I didn’t have enough language to understand what they were saying or to understand the books. It was a complete waste of time.

The classes were one hour in the morning, something like that, but it was a complete waste of time because I hadn’t reached that language level and none of the other lamas in the class could really translate. There was nobody who really understood what the teachers were saying. There was one lama, Thupten Rinpoche from Sera Je, who was very easy-going. He led a very relaxed life, not putting effort into studying and memorizing. While I was trying to learn to read and not succeeding at all, when there were exams he always passed, even though he was so relaxed and didn’t really study. Anyway, I received from one lama a Tibetan book that explained English and only that helped me to learn English; I received nothing from the class.

Anyway, this is just a side talk. Afterwards, there were many lamas from the Kagyü tradition who started centers in the West and that was what made the Karmapa famous in the West. They came from the schools started by Freda Bedi. She went all over, even to Africa. I don’t know whether she went to Afghanistan or the Muslim places, but she even went to Africa to talk about His Holiness the Karmapa’s life story, to let people to know about the Karmapa. That was the origin. His Holiness the Karmapa went to America and by seeing him people got so inspired. I think maybe a hundred people became monks during his first tour but the next year, when he returned to the United States, they had all disrobed. Maybe there was only one left or not. That’s because no monastery had been established where they could stay together and learn.

Therefore, I think we are very fortunate in the FPMT to have a monastery for Western men called Nalanda in France. The place is very, very, very beautiful; it’s a really nice place. The nuns started a nunnery; not all the nuns came but for a while there was a nunnery. Thubten Chödron, who now has a center called Sravasti Abbey, started it. She was the sort of the guide; she was sort of in charge of the nuns there. The center where it was in France had the name of a deity, Vajrayogini, so it was called Dorje Palmo. She was in charge but somehow it didn’t really come together. The nuns didn’t come and somehow there were a lot of problems. It didn’t really happen like with the monks.

At the moment, the largest number of nuns we have is at Chenrezig Institute, in Queensland, Australia. What’s the name of that particular area where it is? [Student: Sunshine Coast] Sunshine Coast.

Here’s Peter. If you want to know his name, it’s Peter Wildoats. I have a very bad mind, so I sometimes call him Peter Wildnuts! Maybe last time I called him Peter Wildnuts. I think maybe I have created a lot of karma to be born as a nut. It’s possible! Anyway, Peter lived at Chenrezig Institute for many years. There are caves down below there that belong to the Aboriginals, so he lived in those caves and also in Solu Khumbu. When he goes to the Himalayan Mountains, to Solu Khumbu, there’s a very hidden place called Mount Lung Sampa. He lived in those caves for five months, trying to do retreat. Anyway, Peter does very good meditation.

There are about twenty-one nuns at Chenrezig now, working at the center or in different parts. That’s the largest number, at Chenrezig Institute in Queensland, Australia. Then we have some nuns in Spain and different countries. There are also some in Taiwan from different countries such as the United States. So far, it hasn’t happened for the nuns the way it has happened for the monks in Nalanda monastery. Somehow, they haven’t been able to come together in just one place, in a nunnery.

In Italy, there are both monks and nuns staying at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa. They all stay at the center so there’s no separate nunnery or monastery. But they have heaps of land close to the center and they plan to build a Tibetan Buddhist monastery there. They started the project maybe two years ago. At one time, because there were a lot of nuns in Italy somebody helped with some land and they were going to restart Dorje Palmo that had been started in France, but in the end I think maybe there wasn’t the inspiration and it didn’t happen again. Now, it seems a second monastery is going to be built on the mountain. So, there are two plans for the land, where one part of it will be for the monks and one part will be for a nunnery. That’s the idea for that land.

Anyway, it’s very rare. I haven’t really heard of any other real monasteries even for the monks, but we are very fortunate because we have Nalanda. It has been very good there. They had Geshe Jampa Tegchok. Now, he’s the ex-abbot of Sera Je which has several thousand monks. Generally, there are four thousand monks at Sera Je but not everyone is there—they are in different parts of the world or in different parts of India. I think maybe there are about three thousand monks to whom we have offered all three meals—breakfast, lunch and dinner—for many years.

The original monks came from Buxa. They were the main monks to go from Buxa to south India. Many monks came from Tibet and from the Tibetan settlements in India, but they have mostly been from Tibet up to now. The teacher would have one plate of food which he would have to share with his disciples and if there were four or five or six disciples, there wasn’t be enough food to go around. Nobody got enough food. There was never, never, never enough food. One plate of food was shared with several or many different disciples. Therefore, quite a number went back to Tibet because they couldn’t get enough food in the monastery. The situation was very sad.

We wanted to send Lama Ösel Rinpoche to Sera to learn philosophy. Lama Ösel is the incarnation of Lama Yeshe, who is kinder than the three times’ buddhas. The abbot was a teacher of the Kopan monks who went there to study. He is one of the main teachers who gave our monks here a very good understanding of Dharma. Some of them have been teaching here now for many years. His name is Geshe Losang. He also became abbot, now ex-abbot. Geshe Sopa Rinpoche from Tibet, a well-known teacher, an outstanding teacher, became a professor in the Wisconsin Madison University. He retired quite a number of years ago, I think, maybe seven years or more than that. He’s just finished building a very beautiful monastery with Tibetan art. He still does courses every year on Sundays and at other times if there’s a geshe then there are teachings. Geshe Losang was the main person who made sure the Kopan monks had a good education, learning the extensive subjects of Buddhist philosophy. Now he doesn’t teach, but before he taught for many years. Of course, some of the boys had other teachers as well.

Anyway, we have been offering food now for many years—maybe fifteen years, maybe less—and that helps so much. Now, they don’t have to go away because there’s enough food. The money to offer food mainly comes from Taiwan and now in recent years from Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia.

What I did say about the Karmapa? [Student: He came to the West.] That’s right. People got so inspired because of his realizations, what he has achieved. As I mentioned before, there’s not even one second when his mind is not Dharma. There’s not even one second when the actions of his body, speech and mind are not virtue. This is not talking about high realizations but having renunciation of this life. If you have that realization every action you do becomes virtue—eating, walking, sitting, sleeping, whatever. His Holiness the Karmapa is, of course, very high realized, having completed the path to enlightenment. However, because there were no monasteries, despite people being so inspired, when he returned the next year, all but one had disrobed. Therefore I think the FPMT is very fortunate to have that monastery, Nalanda, a place where monks can live and study together.

Nalanda had Geshe Jampa Tegchok, the ex-abbot of Sera Je, as their teacher. Not only has he been the abbot of Nalanda and Sera Je, he is also a well-known teacher in the Tibetan monasteries, for all these many thousands of monks. He was at Nalanda teaching the monks for nine or ten years, or twelve years, something like that. Now he’s teaching at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa because Geshe Jampa Gyatso, who had been teaching there, passed away. Geshe Jampa Gyatso was in the same class as Lama Yeshe. He was very learned and knew many, many scriptures, and many different texts even about one subject. He was a very good teacher. Even if he got upset about something, his face just changed a little and then that was it; it stopped. He taught there for many years. Before, there were many monks but then quite a few gradually disrobed. Now, there are maybe more Sangha there again, I think.

Geshe Jampa Tegchok was the abbot of Nalanda and then he became the teacher at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa, teaching the seven-year Masters Program. Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa does the Basic Program in two years whereas all the other centers do it in five years because they are mostly in the city and people can only come at night and they come from different places. In Italy everybody is there at the center and so they can do it in two years. Geshe-la teaches the Masters Program and is now teaching Madhyamika, which is not only on emptiness but also on the bhumis and the whole Mahayana path. He’s very good at teaching emptiness; it seems he’s kind of special. I heard he developed his knowledge when he learned the Madhyamaka subject in Tibet.

The previous teacher, Geshe Jampa Gyatso, was also very learned and was in the same class as Lama Yeshe; in fact he was the leader of Lama Yeshe’s class. Everybody had a connection with him, everybody felt close to him. He was like a father for all the students of the many centers in Italy. For all those people near Geshe Jampa Gyatso, he was not only a Dharma teacher but also like a father. Whenever they had problems, they went to see him to get a solution. It was a great loss when he passed away two years ago. Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa was very lucky when Geshe Jampa Tegchog accepted to be their teacher. Now I hear they are receiving incredible teachings from him. Anyway, this is just a side talk!

I think it’s very difficult without a monastery because you don’t have the conditions. Keeping the vows for a long time is very difficult, especially living in the West. If you are returning to the West, it really challenges your mind. Practicing Dharma there is a challenge, because all around you are the best advertisements for the objects for the delusions. There is the best advertising, especially for the objects of attachment. It’s all around you, it’s unbelievable. If you think you can go back to the West to overcome your delusions, instead you might find they overcome you. If you are totally determined to overcome them, with that kind of determination, with that kind of strength, maybe you can keep your vows a little longer.

If you don’t do that, if you don’t have that preparation and the determination that you’re going to really be victorious, like a champion in a sporting competition; if you allow your mind to become weak for just a minute, then the delusions will take over and your vows will be gone. But you can keep them if you try to be a champion, like the soccer stars. Now, I see on TV, there are even more competitions coming up.

Here, it’s the same thing. The competition is in your mind, in your heart, in your Dharma practice, and you can plan to conquer those objects of delusion. If you always plan like that, of course, nothing can disturb you; nothing can interfere with your Dharma practice, because you have continuous practice of Dharma whether you’re in the city or whether you’re outside the city. But particularly in the West, all around you, the objects of attachment are advertised in the best way. The West is a very interesting place to practice Dharma, really. If you win there, you can win anywhere. When you go there you can watch your mind and see how it reacts. It becomes very interesting.

Can you imagine all those hundreds of monks who took ordination from His Holiness the Karmapa? Then, the next time he returned, I heard that everyone had disrobed. You can understand that it’s because they didn’t have a monastery. Therefore, Nalanda has been extremely beneficial. Of course, after many, many years of ordination, depending on how the monastery goes, quite a number of the old monks have disrobed, but now there are many more monks there.

The Panchen Lama

What happened was this. After the Panchen Lama passed away, the Chinese Communists chose the boy by themselves. In the temple they put a few names in a container, making the slip of paper with the name of the boy they wanted as the Panchen Lama long and the slips of all the other candidates short and then they let a lama choose, telling him to take the long one. The Tibetan people aren’t stupid enough to believe that proof. Normally, as I mentioned, high lamas check with the deity or with their clairvoyance. They go to bed and then they check with their subtle mind. If the one who checks is not a valid lama, if he doesn’t have those qualities, you cannot have a good prediction, an exact prediction. Sometimes mistakes happen, but usually it’s done by very high lamas who have clairvoyance or who can do the examination through the subtle mind, who check through dreams or divinations, and so it’s very exact. Even if the boy hasn’t predicted the past life, you can still trust the lamas.

Then, the other way of checking is Palden Lhamo, the Tibetan government’s and His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s protector. There’s quite a big lake you can go to and you don’t even have to say the question out loud, you just think the question and then constantly watch over the lake. There can be many people there, each with their own individual question, and each will see in the lake the answer to their question. This lake that makes predictions is really Tibet’s TV! For example, when they were checking where His Holiness the Thirteenth Dalai Lama had reincarnated, the lake showed the green roof of the house and the mother and child. It also showed letters in the sky, on the lake. That’s a very special thing. It’s impossible to make a mistake. It’s the protector itself who predicts.

There is also the Twenty-one Taras lake, which is a very deep blue, and around the mountain there are many different protectors’ lakes, such as Mahakala’s lake. That mountain has no green, nothing. Wherever that protector is situated on the mountain, there’s a lake of that protector. This is a totally different mountain, kind of dark, where nothing grows. The monks said that at night flames go from there in the different directions. Sera Je Monastery’s protector is called Yangsang [Skt: Hayagriva] and is red in color. The mountain where the spirit or consciousness of the protector abides is kind of red, because the protector is red. It doesn’t have a lake but there are many lakes around, where predictions can be made. Some lakes are very violent.

I have one teacher, a Mongolian lama, Geshe Sengye, who became the abbot of both Sera colleges. After Mao Zedong died, they gave some freedom to the monasteries, so he became the abbot of both colleges, Sera Mey and Sera Je. Because he was a great practitioner of the most secret deity, Hayagriva, when he went to this lake, the protector, Yangsang, was not violent at all, so Geshe Sengye did a puja there. But when common people go there, the protector becomes very violent, very fearful. When two Tibetan men went there they saw a yak on top of the lake running toward them. They were so frightened they ran away. They ran and ran and ran and one of them broke his leg. This is an example.

In Tibet there are many holy places like that. So it totally doesn’t make any sense what the Communist Chinese government did, publicly choosing which boy was the Panchen Lama by writing names on a list themselves and making a lama choose the long slip of paper.

When I saw the boy on a video in recent years, I don’t know, I can’t say, but there was no way I could discover the mind. I didn’t get the feeling he was the reincarnation and I think he himself expressed that he’s not the Panchen Lama. That picture of the small baby you saw, the other one with the bigger face, that is the real one, the one recognized by His Holiness the Dalai Lama with his omniscience.

The previous Panchen Lama is my guru, the huge one, the one who passed away in Tibet. On our pilgrimage we returned through Shigatse where there is the Panchen Lama’s monastery, Tashi Lhunpo, so we went to see the Panchen Lama. There was a meditator monk with us who wanted to receive teachings. I asked the Panchen Lama to give some advice, some teachings on the prayer to be born in Shambhala, the Kalachakra deity’s pure land. If you’re born there you can practice tantra and achieve enlightenment there, so it has that special advantage whereas if you’re born in a pure land like Amitabha’s pure land it’s impossible to be reborn in the lower realms. I’m not sure, maybe it’s not quite like that. But the benefit is that the tantra teachings exist there, so you can practice and achieve enlightenment there. Because that’s the quick way to achieve enlightenment, you recite the Shambhala prayer if you want to be born there. The meditator asked to receive the oral transmission of that prayer, so I made the request.

I hadn’t received teachings before from the Panchen Lama. When he came here to Kopan, he gave a long-life initiation but only Geshe Lama Konchog and a few others went. At Tashi Lhunpo I myself wasn’t sure whether I should take teachings and so make the guru-disciple connection with the Panchen Rinpoche because later politically, if His Holiness and the Panchen Rinpoche became opposed and something happened, you kind of suffer or get confused. So I thought I might get into that problem. As I started the mandala offering to request the Panchen Lama to give the oral transmission of the Shambhala prayer and advice, I was thinking whether I should make the guru-disciple connection or not. Then, the thought came in my mind, “Panchen Rinpoche and His Holiness the Dalai Lama—if I look at them as one being, not as separate beings but as one being in different forms, then there is no problem.” While I was chanting the mandala, I was thinking like this. Just before the mandala finished, this conclusion happened and then I took the oral transmission and advice. So, he is my guru.

When [the previous] Panchen Rinpoche passed away, I was in Australia and I had dream. In my dream, his holy body was very tall and very strong. I don’t remember whether he was wearing robes or a red dress, but I was wearing robes although I didn’t have a zen. We were in the street and he was holding my hand. That was the time Panchen Rinpoche must have passed away, so he was showing a sign. Panchen Rinpoche is recognized as Amitabha Buddha. His Holiness is Chenrezig and Panchen Rinpoche is Amitabha Buddha. This is how people see the story and recognize it and pray like that.

The story that Panchen Rinpoche gives is sort of like a guide-book or guide. You carry it and, if you follow that and you have the karma, then you can reach Shambhala. If you don’t have the karma, then maybe you go round and round and round the mountains!

We tried to go to Lapchi in Tibet, but it was very cold and icy. Some of the Sherpas went on the ice but they said it was not good to go there. There’s a special mountain quite close by that you can circumambulate called Sipri that is Heruka’s holy body, holy speech and holy mind, all three. In the past the mountain had one hundred monasteries but now they have been completely destroyed and only a few have been revived. Lama Atisha was there. A monk did research on that for two years and wrote a book about the story of each hermitage and the life stories of the many different lamas. Many of them achieved the rainbow body there, so it’s a very good place for attainments. He asked me to help revive all those hermitages on Sipri so I promised to do that. His idea was that there are many thousands of monks at Sera Je and when they finish their studies they could go there to actually experience the path to enlightenment. Other people could also go there. That was his idea of how to use the place. There could be a small temple and a few statues and a few rooms, something like that.

I said I would do it but first maybe build a Maitreya Buddha statue there. There was a Maitreya Buddha statue there before. There was a rock which causes anybody who touched it, animals or people, to die immediately. It had some poison. A lama advised to build a two-story Maitreya Buddha statue on top of the rock so it would no longer be dangerous. The statue that was there was completely destroyed during the revolution. So, the idea was to first build the Maitreya Buddha statue, but it took quite some time. Even after a year it wasn’t happening quickly. So, they would build the temple and I would build the statue. But what happened was, we didn’t do it quickly enough. Then, the Chinese found out that the leader of the area who was going to help us was receiving money from outside Tibet. We hadn’t sent the money, but the Chinese put him in prison. That is what I heard last time. That is sad. Nothing happened, but he was put in prison.

Sipri is a very special holy place, with Heruka’s holy body, holy speech and holy mind, all three. The whole mountain is totally different from other mountains. A road goes around and then on this side, where the mountain is, every stone has a special figure, a conch shell or an auspicious sign. I have a stone where I have put the Buddha’s relic, like a grain. It is not the actual grain but shaped like that. Every stone is interesting; there are all kinds of figures like that.

I’m hoping to make a pilgrimage there one day. I think many local Tibetan people go around the mountain, taking seven days. The animals carry all the food and the people chant mantras while going around the mountain, in order to purify negative karma and collect merit.

I’ve heard that if you circumambulate Mount Kailash fifteen or eighteen times, something like that, then it’s totally done. It’s like going to do a retreat to recite a number of mantras; it depends if it’s a retreat to finish a certain number of mantras, a nearing retreat or a great nearing retreat. I mean there are retreats until you get a sign or until you get the experience. Recently I heard maybe from Dharamsala that if you circumambulate Mount Kailash maybe fifteen or eighteen times that’s totally done. There’s also the Vajrayogini lake where, if you wash your body there, when you die you get reborn in Vajrayogini’s pure land and then you’ll definitely get enlightened there. It’s a most amazing thing.

[Rinpoche signs books]