11. Teacher

When the second possibility of leaving retreat arose, in 1985, I was completely certain that I didn’t want to go. What a change in me, from the days back in 1981 when I had leaped at Akong’s suggestion that I travel to Tibet with him to visit our parents.

Once again it was the possibility of seeing family that prompted Akong to write to me. He wanted me to return to Scotland to meet with our older brother, Palden, and our younger sister Zimey. He had been back to the Tibet Autonomous Region for the first time in 1983 and discovered that, since 1981, our parents had both died. This was a blow. The opportunity to see them again in this lifetime had gone. But he also found out that our brother and two sisters were still alive, and began to make the complicated arrangements for Palden Drakpa and Zimey to travel. Yangchen Lhamo declined the offer to come to England.

My first thought, as I scanned the letter, was that it would suit me much better if they came to the USA. But, as Akong explained, they were travelling on Chinese passports and at that time the US did not routinely admit Chinese passport-holders. If I wanted to see them, I would have to go back to Scotland.

I was really torn over this matter. I was forty-two years old and I had finally found my life’s purpose. I very much wanted to continue in retreat as I felt I was progressing on my path towards fuller realization. There was so much more to do. I did not consider that I was ready for the next stage in my life; in fact I could not yet see what that should be. On the other hand I was sad at the prospect of missing out on another family reunion, especially since the letter confirmed that I would not see my parents again. This might be my only chance to see my siblings, and the possibility to reconnect with my past tugged at my heart.

I spent days in meditation, seeking clarity. I then spoke with Khenpo Karthar. I told him that I was contemplating a trip to Scotland. If I went I would be there for just three weeks and then return to KTD to continue in retreat. I considered that my meditation practice was now solid enough to accommodate this short period away, but what did he think?

This time there were no threats to break my legs. Much to my relief he gave me his blessing, so I made arrangements to travel. I left my shrine, my meditation cushion and my bed all neat and tidy for my return. I envisaged that this would be no more than a brief pause, as if I had stepped out into the forest for a stroll.

I felt calm throughout the journey. I had wondered whether I would remember the ways of the world after years of having so little interaction with it, but, though the airports were noisy and hurried, my mind was well able to handle the onslaught of stimulation. I chatted and smiled with those I met in the queues and on the planes.

Once again I was greeted at Glasgow airport by Akong, who looked exactly as he had the last time I’d seen him, five years before. He was as healthy and robust as ever. If he was taken aback by my appearance, he didn’t show it. My curly black hair was long gone since it had been shaved off when I became a monk, and I was wearing a monastic’s deep red robes rather than the fancy fashions I’d always loved. This he had of course seen in the States. But I was now thin from years of vigorous practice and a sparse diet. Above all, I felt so different in my mind.

We drove to Samye Ling. I was astounded by what I found. The last time I’d been there, ten years previously, it had been just one building and a few huts. Now there was a huge and beautiful temple under construction behind Johnstone House and a new block of guest accommodation next door. A nearby property had been acquired and turned into a retreat centre where a group of Westerners – nine women and seven men – were one and a half years into a four-year retreat under the guidance of Lama Ganga, who had taught me the Six Yogas of Naropa practice.

Akong had told me about these changes but I was still amazed to see them for myself. I felt so moved by this flowering of faith in the Dharma, and very proud of Akong. He had motivated a team of fundraisers and volunteers to build the temple and had worked tirelessly himself on the project. The site had been consecrated in 1979 by Lama Gendun, a revered master who presided over His Holiness the Karmapa’s seat in France. Sherab Palden, whom I was delighted to see again, had created a series of beautiful paintings and artworks for the main shrine room in collaboration with many volunteers and Tibetan craftsmen. Samye Ling was no longer a hangout for hippies. It was on its way to being a monastic complex and cultural centre of huge significance.

My meeting with my other brother, Palden Drakpa, and my sister Zimey was joyous but also heartbreaking. I could scarcely believe that I was able to embrace them and to speak with them again after thirty years of separation. Zimey, with whom I had paddled in the shallows of the river in Darak, was by this time a very capable, mature woman. She was married and the mother of six children. A whole lifetime’s worth of experience had left its traces on her face, as they had on mine, but her smile was just the same.

I had few memories of Palden from before. We had only been together in Darak for a few months after he returned from the village where he grew up, to assume his role as the family’s heir. I left for Dolma Lhakang shortly after his arrival. He had been in Darak with the rest of our family when the surrounding area was taken by the Communists. Now he looked much older than his nearly fifty years. He was haggard and subdued. The story he told was devastating. My brother had been tortured repeatedly and was mentally very unwell. He recounted how, after our escape, the Chinese rounded up the family and exacted revenge for the fact that their son, a tulku, had escaped. They were all forced to participate in indoctrination sessions. My father was tortured every evening for fifteen years in what were called ‘struggle sessions’. This involved public humiliation, verbal and physical abuse as he was paraded around the village with a list of his supposed crimes written out on a sheet of paper tied around his neck. In addition to being the father of a tulku, my father, who was relatively wealthy and successful, was accused of being an enemy of the proletariat. Palden felt it was his responsibility, as the family’s successor, to take our father’s place every second evening so that he would be beaten less frequently. After that my brother was sent away to do forced labour on a road-building programme. The labourers weren’t even given adequate food. Palden had to kill many animals just to survive. He was truly a broken man.

I listened to his story with immense compassion. I felt glad that I had been able to stabilize my mind before I heard it, because, otherwise, I have no doubt that it would have stirred up feelings of anger and hatred towards the Chinese. As it was, I felt deeply saddened for all my family and for the soldiers and officials who had tormented them. Everyone involved had suffered terribly. This was also another turning point in my long journey to stop blaming Akong for my life’s losses. I had mostly let go of that resentment during my years in retreat, but now I was receiving another important lesson. If I had stayed in Darak rather than going to Dolma Lhakang, I too would have been tortured and sent to do forced labour. I would almost certainly have ended up as broken as my poor brother, if not more. I felt immensely grateful to Akong for having been the agent of my escaping this fate and instead being able to embark on a spiritual path.

Sadly my oldest brother’s story did not end well. He and my sister both lived at Akong’s house in Dumfries for a number of months, but Palden was unable to adjust to the local way of life. He would lie on the neighbours’ lawns and roll around, and refuse to move when he was asked to. He could speak no English and he used to talk wildly in Tibetan. One day the neighbours called the police. Akong smoothed the situation over, but it made him realize that Palden was so unwell that life would always be difficult for him in Britain and he would surely be happier in Tibet. So Zimey stayed in Dumfries but Palden returned and was cared for by our other sister, Yangchen Lhamo, with support from Akong.

I was about to be offered another chance to practise the discipline of mental training that I had cultivated over the previous five years. Within days of my arrival at Samye Ling, Akong announced that he would not permit me to return to Woodstock. I was shocked. In fact I have to admit that I was furious. I had made it absolutely plain when I agreed to come back for a visit that it would be short. My initial response was to refuse to stay. I had promised Khenpo Karthar that I would return. But Akong was absolutely insistent. He explained that he had been terribly worried about me because I had neither answered nor written to him any letters during my years in retreat. It was true that I saw letters as a distraction, but I had sent a message to Akong and our parents via Khenpo Karthar back in 1981. I knew that Akong and Khenpo Rinpoche were in touch with one another, so he would receive news of me.

I had to bring all my powers of forbearance and equanimity to bear on this matter in order to root out my resentment. It was a big challenge. Akong eventually won me over by promising that I could continue my retreat. He would not expect me to work in the team running Samye Ling. This promise, combined with my newfound gratitude towards him, meant that I was able to resign myself to the situation. I informed Khenpo Rinpoche that I would be continuing my solitary retreat at Purelands, the new retreat centre at Samye Ling.

For the next few weeks I settled myself into my new home. I had my own accommodation separate from the larger retreat houses in which the men’s and women’s retreats were going on. The house was simple but comfortable, with a small kitchen and bathroom and a living space with my meditation box and shrine. My days were exactly as they had been in Woodstock, though the view out of my window was once again of green rolling hills rather than the woods of New York State.

In April 1987, by which time I was more than a year and a half into my solitary retreat, I had a vivid dream about Trungpa, whom I hadn’t seen since 1980. He was telling me to come to visit him in Karma Choling, his first US centre in Vermont. Some days later I heard the news that he had passed away, at Karma Choling on 4 April. I had felt very good about that dream, and even more so after I heard the news of his passing. I believed then and still believe that our connection is very strong, that Trungpa and I have been together for many lifetimes.

Over the next year I did a lot of inner-heat practice (known as tummo), the main purpose of which is to transform mind poisons. These are called kleshas in Sanskrit and refer to the emotional afflictions of anger, desire, jealousy, pride and ignorance. There are different ways of working with mind poisons. One option is to try to avoid falling prey to them in the first place by practising various skilful means that have mindfulness as their basis – paying close attention to our mind and not indulging in negative emotions. Another way is to take the negative emotions as our path, so not avoiding them but transforming their energy as they arise. This is an advanced practice and is done by working with the subtle energies that move through our energy body via different channels and chakras. We purify them at their source by working skilfully with posture, breathing and visualization. This is the method of tummo. As a byproduct of this energy work our body can become very warm, which is useful if one lives in a cold climate such as that of Scotland or Tibet!

I was single-mindedly focused on my practice and I felt that I managed to generate some warmth. When I told Lama Ganga about this he said that my achievement was not a big deal; many practitioners of old in Tibet were able to melt snow as they meditated outdoors in the freezing winters. I felt as if he’d thrown cold water over my inspiration. For a second I was discouraged and thought that I might as well just switch on the central heating if I wanted to get warm!

This was typical of Lama Ganga, who was a complete traditionalist and very tough on everybody, regardless of their circumstances. He was a great master but he had little understanding of how the Western retreatants in his care had a very different mindset from his own, and how that might affect their practice. It was my observation that he did not grasp how complicated and how fragile Western people are in comparison with Tibetans, who have a much simpler and tougher approach to life and don’t get so absorbed in self-preoccupation. Lama Ganga did not believe in talking about personal issues, for example, so he was not prepared for the amount of distress that arose in his retreatants’ minds as they went deeper into their practice. Neither did he take account of the fact that, unlike Tibetans, who are born into a culture of Buddhism, it is hard for many Westerners to really trust in the power of the teachings and the masters who pass them on. When the Western retreatants had questions or fears, they did not have faith to fall back on, at least initially. This made them vulnerable. Lama Ganga didn’t seem ready to make any allowances for all these differences. He instilled a very harsh regime, and though some people flourished, many others became troubled.

Lama Ganga was not permanently based at Samye Ling. He was the representative of His Holiness the Karmapa at various centres in the States, had a centre in California and also taught at the Samye Dzongs (branches of Samye Ling), so he was often away. After a while I found myself getting more and more involved in helping out with the retreatants, who were by then nearing the end of their retreat. Though I was dedicated to my own practice, I did not want to be selfish about it. I felt increasingly ready and motivated to help others, so I thought I should engage with them. After all, they might find my perspective useful since, unlike Lama Ganga, I had not been trained in a traditional way, I had spent a long time immersed in Western culture and could speak fluent English.

I felt really sorry for them. They were very responsive to the way I spoke about my own experience and theirs, and I found myself going over to see them more and more frequently. I tried to make their time lighter. I asked them how they were finding things, what was worrying them. I made jokes and we would all end up laughing.

I remember talking to one female retreatant who went on to become ordained. She was having a very tough time. She had been doing thousands of prostrations, far too many, and developed a hiatus hernia in her chest. I told her to take it easy and give herself six weeks off prostrations so she could heal. She looked doubtful, but I said to her, ‘You are not going to get enlightened in a big hurry, so take a more relaxed approach.’ She also had an important question about her practice, and I arranged for Lama Ganga to come over so that I could translate both her question and his answer.

This unofficial helping role was not exactly what I’d had in mind when I’d agreed to stay on in Samye Ling, but I felt pleased to be able to support the retreatants. My hunch that they might find it helpful to talk with someone who hadn’t found it easy to purify their mind’s afflictions and commit to a spiritual path turned out to be correct. When I laughed about my mistakes I felt them relax about their own struggles. It was wonderful to see them realize that vulnerability and laughter were just as helpful as study and analysis and far more helpful than self-castigation.

In the spring of 1988 the retreat finished. Nobody apart from Lama Ganga and me had been into the retreat house and none of the retreatants had left it since they had all been ceremonially sealed in, four years previously. Akong came to formally open the boundaries and welcome the retreatants back into the world. They looked a bit overwhelmed as I waved them off on their way down to Samye Ling to celebrate with friends and family. I remained up at Purelands and settled down to focus on my own practice. Life felt peaceful for all of about a week and then the builders moved in. Once again I was having to meditate in the middle of a construction site. I should have been used to it after my time at Woodstock but, at least to begin with, it didn’t feel any easier. Plans were already being made for the next four-year retreat, which would begin in March the following year. This time there would be forty-four people participating, and therefore more accommodation was required. The team of volunteer builders who had been working so hard to finish the temple now turned their attention to pulling down one retreat house and building a much bigger one. There were seventy-five people, working seven days a week to get the project finished, right outside my front door. As well as the noise there was the small matter of the dust. They stored their bags of cement on the porch of my house and I could feel my one lung struggling. Then, to cap it all, my water supply was cut off.

I was so annoyed. Hadn’t I lived through this precise experience once already? Must I really go through it again? But then I resolved to change my way of thinking. Everything in life comes down to mind, I knew this already, and that made it easier to decide that all I had to do was simply meditate, in whatever conditions presented themselves. I focused on the joyful fact that all this work was happening because so many people wanted to go on retreat. I rejoiced in that. When I was able to cultivate the right view of events – these people are working so hard to enable others to do retreat, not to annoy me – I saved myself many months of suffering caused by getting angry over something I could not change. I have been a strong believer in the benefit of holding the right view and having the right motivation ever since.

On 8 August 1988 our beautiful new temple was inaugurated. On this auspicious date more than 1,500 people gathered to witness the ceremony. It was presided over by Tai Situpa Rinpoche, usually known as Situ Rinpoche, one of the four Heart Sons of the Sixteenth Karmapa. When His Holiness died, back in 1981, the Heart Sons had become regents and were charged with acting on his behalf until the Seventeenth Karmapa was found. Once they’d unveiled a marble plaque on the temple wall there were displays of traditional religious dancing and then there was a cake-cutting ceremony and tea for everyone. Akong was serene and modest, looking splendid in a yellow silk chuba, the traditional feast-day robe. I was thrilled for him. It was his project, through and through. It had taken nine years and been achieved through his quiet determination and his extraordinary ability to inspire people to give the best of themselves. In the end a building that would have cost approximately £1,500,000 to construct at market rates was built for less than a quarter of that, thanks to the sheer hard work and devotion of everyone involved.

I took a day away from retreat to participate in the temple’s inauguration and then I returned to Purelands. I expected to spend the next few months closing my ears to the sound of cement mixers and my mind to its irritations, with nothing further to trouble my practice. But events were about to overtake me.

In the October of 1988 Lama Ganga, who had been expected to continue to lead the four-year retreat, was taken ill in Tibet and died suddenly. It fell to Lama Thubten, a revered master from Palpung monastery in Kham who now had a centre in Birmingham, to be the retreat master for the second long retreat. The paint was scarcely dry on the new retreat houses when he officiated over the closing-in ceremony in March 1989. There were forty-four Western participants, including nine who had done the first retreat and wished to continue. Lama Thubten gave the initial instructions even though, as Akong discovered, he was already gravely unwell. He too died, some months later. Kalu Rinpoche, who had been so instrumental in my own retreat, died around the same time. Suddenly there was nobody to lead this retreat, which was already underway and taking place literally on my doorstep. Akong came to me and asked me to step in. There was nobody else, he said.

I freely admit that I didn’t want to. It was one thing to help out but quite another to be the retreat master, with primary responsibility. I would very much have preferred to continue my own practice. I felt that the most beneficial thing I could do for other practitioners was to deepen my own realization. Compared to Lama Ganga or Lama Thubten, both of whom had acquired profound knowledge of the Buddhist teachings and vast experience of retreat rituals, I was very much a novice. But I could not refuse Akong. It was impossible to leave these people without any of the guidance they required. The whole situation was comical, really. I only got the job because literally all the other candidates had died.

I decided that if I were going to do this, I would make some changes. I felt that it was crucial to accommodate the fact that almost all of our retreatants did not speak any Tibetan and for the most part had not undertaken serious study of Buddhism. Many of them were virtual beginners, so asking them to do so many pujas (prayer rituals involving chanting, mantras and visualizations) and read scripts in Tibetan was just too discouraging. I suggested to some of the participants that it was fine to simply meditate. I tried to tailor the programme to individuals’ requirements and strengths, which might sound like an obvious idea but was unprecedented within the Tibetan tradition. I wanted people to feel joyful and enthusiastic as well as committed to facing the rigours that lay ahead of them in retreat. It seemed to me that they must be hopeful about their practice, not fearful that they were not up to the task. Meditation practice is not like school. There is no final examination to swot for and we are not in competition with anybody else. Many of the Western people who come to Buddhism are fascinated by its esoteric side, and it is true that there is a vast and sophisticated philosophical system that could occupy our analytical mind for many lifetimes. But I always encourage people to see Buddhism as an everyday practice, first and foremost. An open heart and a positive mindset will benefit us more than any capacity for intellectual analysis.

Since I was still carrying out my own practice just next door to the retreatants, I was able to give interviews and advice whenever someone had a problem. But I refused to play games. I didn’t indulge people and wouldn’t see them if they became too demanding. During some parts of the retreat, when complete silence was required, and towards the end when I expected participants to be more mature, I would not give personal interviews. I wanted people to become self-reliant, which is very important.

Though I had been a reluctant retreat master, I came to love it very quickly. Far from undermining my own practice, as I had feared, it proved to be complementary. I learned so much about the mind by working with other people to overturn their mental blocks. Everything confirmed my conviction that my own obstacles and digressions had developed my ability to be a bridge between the Tibetan and Western mindset. The fact that I was not a tulku like Akong, Trungpa and so many of the great Tibetan lamas was not a problem but an advantage in helping others. This seemed to me a perfect illustration of the necessity of bringing our obstacles on to our path. In my experience, obstacles are the path.

My experience as retreat master between March 1989 and March 1993, and then again between November 1993 and January 1997, allowed me to deepen my understanding of how to spread the Dharma in contemporary Western society. It was like a laboratory for me to understand what helped people, what reached them and what didn’t.

I quickly realized that it was essential to warn participants about what lay ahead, not to alarm them, merely to prepare them. Retreat is certainly not for everyone, but I believe that all of us can benefit from a period of seclusion, whether it’s four years or four days. It is important to set aside hope for a desired outcome as well as fear of not getting what we want, and instead open ourselves up to the unexpected inner journey that unfolds on retreat. But it helps to accept that some of this may be a struggle. In retreat there is no escape from your mind, its negativities and habits. Most of us spend our lives refusing to face our mind, using any method of distraction at hand, whether that’s alcohol, long hours in the office or bingeing on box sets. So when we come to a sustained period of meditation (or even quite a short one, when we start out) we are alarmed to see what comes up when we actually pay attention. Old fears, anxieties and resentments. Endless mind chatter of the most banal kind. It can feel very noisy in there when we start to meditate and it is understandable to want to drown the noise out. Understandable but not very wise because, of course, it doesn’t go away if we can’t hear it.

Over and over again retreatants would come to me feeling bad about themselves and their past: traumatized, unable to let go, upset with themselves for not being able to do meditation ‘properly’. Many people told me that they were particularly challenged by anger. They were unable to stop digging into past hurts and insults and unable to forgive those who had caused them pain. Often they were angry with their parents. Sometimes with partners or ex-partners. A huge number of them were also angry with themselves. When I suggested that they might find it healing to forgive, they would again list everything they had to be angry about and wait for my nod of understanding. They were completely identified with their negative emotions and struggled to see them as mere phantoms of the mind. Letting go of attachment to trauma rather than continuing to focus on how we got wounded is so important because, if we cannot let go, that trauma will dictate our whole life and distort all our thinking. Identifying with past hurts entrenches a lack of forgiveness, of others and of ourselves. The problem is, without compassion for every living being, we can never be at peace. Any joy we experience is short-lived.

I’m not saying that this is easy. All of us carry painful feelings, because it is inevitable that difficult things happen in this life. For years I was burdened with memories and dreams of my escape from Tibet and the loss of my family, homeland and way of life. But gradually I learned not to make them solid and real by believing that they were me and that I was my trauma. I chose to align myself with a deeper reality – Buddha Nature, that core wisdom, kindness and goodness. My faith in this part of myself, along with the blessing of my teachers and their lineage, opened the door to profound change. Over time and with sustained practice, I was able to walk through it. I became free.

I also observed that many people who came to see me had low self-esteem, even when (especially when) they appeared to have vastly inflated self-confidence. They had been told at a young age either that they were a genius or the opposite: that they were not good enough. In each case, they ended up believing it, which caused them difficulties. In retreat, when things didn’t go well, these people punished themselves for being a failure. They forgot that the main purpose of retreat is to overcome obstacles by seeing their lack of solidity. I would urge people to focus on the fact that whatever had provoked their suffering was not happening in this very moment except in their own mind as they relived it. It was not a real thing but a story, a creation of their mind from memories of the past. With determined practice, they could begin to see through these stories and take refuge in the simplicity of the present moment. But this is hard. It takes persistent effort. Rather than plug away with their practice, many people would go back to feeling sorry for themselves, or punishing themselves for their inability to overcome their obstacles as fast as they felt they ‘should’ be able to. I would do whatever I could to help disentangle them from these patterns. I affirmed and reaffirmed their Buddha Nature to them until, finally, they could believe in it for themselves, at which point wonderful changes would begin to happen. It was always such a joy to see these flashes of opening and release.

The learning was a two-way street. One of the key things I wanted to teach was that, according to the Dharma, there is never any need to feel inadequate, or low, because our true nature is pure, whole and free. But this is hard to grasp if you have no direct experience of it and lack the faith to accept your teacher’s assurances that it really is your true nature. In addition, I began to realize that Western people have a very different relationship with their emotions from Tibetans and other Asian practitioners of Buddhism. In Tibet we learned that emotions, like thoughts, are not real and not necessarily useful. Buddhism holds that anger, desire, pride, jealousy and ignorance (the five mind poisons) are not sins as they were in traditional Christian thinking, but afflictions of the mind that make it harder for us to see our true nature. In contemporary Western culture, on the other hand, it is emotion that is king, not mind. The way you feel about something is of supreme importance. People in the West typically identify with their emotions, both good and bad, and find it hard just to observe them. This leads to trouble because they get caught up in reactivity and inner conflict. And to make matters even more difficult, in the West there are two additional mind poisons that we did not have in Tibet when I was growing up – guilt and shame. I realized that I needed to find ways to help people detach from their emotions in general, and these ones in particular.

I tried to do this by suggesting that they identify with a yidam instead, since the yidam is flawless and free and endowed with an abundance of qualities. ‘Yidams’ can be roughly translated as ‘deities’. They are radiant expressions of our Buddha Nature, and are charged with blessings. There are many different deities, such as Green Tara and Chenrezig, and each deity practice has its own specific image, liturgy and mantra. When we do deity practice we meditate on our body being an image of light, like a rainbow, and filled with qualities such as love, compassion and wisdom rather than flesh and blood that is filled with issues and problems. Yidam practices were a big part of the long retreat programme. I hoped they would help retreatants to loosen their tight identification with painful memories, emotional afflictions and the illusion of the solid sense of ‘me’.

Sometimes it worked but sometimes it ended up being counterproductive. Some people used the practices to inflame the mind poisons. For example, people who had a lot of sexual feeling misunderstood yidams and used their deity practice to indulge in sexual fantasy. Others got lost in daydreams. This led to boredom, distraction and a retreat into fantasy.

So the retreats were very much a learning experience for all of us, but I have no doubt that they were hugely beneficial to many people. I would include myself in that group. I, like many others, learned a lot about the mind. We might not have achieved the pinnacle of the Buddhist path – Enlightenment – but we got a sense of the immensity of the task, we became more mature and realistic, and we learned invaluable practices that would serve us for the rest of our lives.

In September 1992, six months before the second retreat finished, I left Purelands to attend an occasion that was absolutely momentous for me on every level. I was going back to Tibet for the first time since I had escaped thirty-three years before. I would be travelling with Akong to Tsurphu monastery, near Lhasa, for the enthronement of His Holiness the Seventeenth Karmapa.

The Seventeenth Karmapa was then a seven-year-old boy, who had been officially recognized as the reincarnation of the Sixteenth Karmapa by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Kagyu lineage regents and the Chinese Communist authorities earlier in the year. This was highly significant as it was the first time that a reincarnate high lama had been recognized by the Communists. The practice of Buddhism in Tibet had been virtually outlawed since the Cultural Revolution of 1966–76, but politics had shifted since then and the leadership in Beijing was now keen to be seen to allow freedom of worship in Tibet.

On the day that I received the news that the Seventeenth Karmapa had been found, I was ecstatic. I couldn’t wait to meet my old master in his new body and continue our relationship. So it was with a mixture of excitement and bubbling joy that I set off to travel to Tibet for his enthronement, some months later. The prospect of going back to my homeland could not have been any happier now that I was going to see the Karmapa and to witness this most spiritually significant moment for our Kagyu lineage. There was an additional excitement and sense of pride for me because it had fallen to my brother to be asked to join one of the two search parties who were charged with finding the young boy. I couldn’t wait to talk to Akong, and to hear his story of finding His Holiness.