Then there was a film of people sending birthday greetings and long life wishes to Rimpoche. Along with Robert Thurman and Richard Gere, there were other rimpoches and important lamas, including some of Rimpoche’s teachers who knew him his whole life. I learned that Rimpoche is from the aristocratic Tibetan family, the Demo family and that one of his father’s previous incarnations was the King of Tibet. I also learned that Rimpoche wanted to be a politician but was nudged into being a teacher. Thank goodness — we are all so fortunate to have him for a teacher, although I am sure that if Rimpoche had been a politician that would have been a good, a great! thing, too.

[caption id="attachment_674" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="This is Ling Rimpoche. He is very cool and speaks fluent English, having lived in California for some of his early teen years. He is about 20 or 21 now, I think. He is the incarnation of Gelek Rimpoche\'s teacher, Ling Rimpoche, who was also senior tutor to HH Dalai Lama. That gives you an idea of the high level of education that Gelek Rimpoche has. He is known as a true scholar as well as a great practitioner."][/caption]Seeing these teachers and hearing about Gelek Rimpoche’s life was especially poignant to me since the night before I had watched a film called Unmistaken Child. It is a documentary about how a tulku was found for a great lama that has passed away. It is a beautiful film — check it out.

posted on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 6:37 am.