Pilgrimage to visit His Holiness, the Dalai Lama
In May of 2024, His Eminence, Kalu Rinpoche, and representatives from Shangpa Kagyu centers around the world traveled to India to make a long life offering to the Dalai Lama.
I visited my teacher, Gyatrul Rinpoche, when he was on the mend from a life-threatening illness in 2016. He was 93 years old. He weighed 90 pounds. Lying in bed, he couldn’t sit up to speak with me. All he could do was turn his head to the right. Somehow, though, his wisdom and compassion managed to fill up the room.
To experience the full vulnerability of an aging body—the challenge of simple things like walking, sitting, and standing up—is our shared human experience. No matter how hard we may resist, most of us slowly dim with age.
Great spiritual masters seem to get lighter with age, as if the shell of their body can no longer contain its inner wisdom. That was certainly the case with my teacher.
The minute I walked in, he spoke about my life with piercing accuracy, pointing out my deepest faults. Often when I tell people this, they cringe and say it sounds hurtful. It was not. Words with integrity, so rare in this complicated world, have the power to soothe. Someone with a clean heart, brave enough to be honest in this way, is a precious gem.
I longed to be in his presence again and again—even though it meant looking deeply at my own shadow. With Gyatrul Rinpoche, I always felt loved. This made it safe. As I write this, I miss him so much.
How wonderful to be so deeply seen by an evolved being.
On that particular day, I had arrived at his home in a state of suffering. Earlier in the week I had experienced a form of persecution and had tried to fight back, but it didn’t work.
Before I could open my mouth, Rinpoche offered a concise teaching about aggression.
Pointing to his frail body he asked,
“Are you going to attack me?”
What a preposterous idea. Who would attack a tiny infirm man lying in a bed? And that was his point. He modeled the truth of vulnerability, which is universal. Here was a man skin and bones, recovering from a major illness, and yet he was bigger and stronger than anyone I had ever met.
In May of 2024, I had the great fortune to experience this phenomenon once again when I traveled to India to meet the Dalai Lama. As the director of a Tibetan Buddhist meditation center in the Shangpa Kagyu lineage, I joined other representatives from centers around the world to support lineage master Kalu Rinpoche in making a long life offering to His Holiness, who is now 89 years old.
On May 18th, His Holiness arrived at the small inner sanctuary of the temple complex in Dharamshala. Five attendants helped him onto the teaching throne. They held his arms, each one so thin, I could see the bone.
Somehow, though, his face looked youthful. He was a man who had witnessed the full spectrum of human suffering and joy. In my mind’s eye, his face oscillated back and forth between young and old, eventually melding into a seemingly impossible combination of both simultaneously.
As he sat quietly on the throne, his radiance touched everything and everyone. I saw many people smiling and crying. I burst into tears. A deep relief overtook my being, in a way I had never known before. Just to see him there, to bask in his light, was enough. In the Dalai Lama’s radiance, there was total peace and safety. I wanted to curl up right next to him and rest in that forever.
As a child I used to obsess over the Bruce Springsteen song that goes “everybody’s got a hungry heart” and I would walk around the house and school chanting “hungry heart, hungry heart” like a mantra. Perhaps, more realistically, I can see now that it was a kind of spiritual cry for help.
I came to the Dalai Lama like a starving person. Being near him, this heart nourishment came into every cell of my body. Some kind of door opened.
First, all of my mental tensions bubbled up, right to the surface of my being.From a detached place, like a scientist, I observed how my mental tension created systems of belief and habits, even calcifying into physical stiffness—a tight and constricted posture. In this moment, I could see myself trapped in a system, a structure of: sensation, belief, thought and physical pain.
It was quite a predicament.
In the presence of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, though, these mental tensions started to loosen. I felt a deep remorse for my shortcomings. They visited the room like guests at a party. I invited them there, all the faults I could conjure. Flipping through a mental rolodex of memories, really fast—I summoned and visualized all of these negative things I had done in my life. They came, and poured out like a confession from my eyes. Then, from a space beyond words or mental images, everything melted.
I thought I was only crying for five or ten minutes. But later, when I watched the video of the day, I could see myself in the middle of the small inner temple, weeping. The video timestamp read: 40 minutes.
In his radiance, my resistance to goodness dissolved and there was nothing to do but let go. Heat from all over my body moved into the heart and then escaped like a gentle rain from every pore. A strong sensation of bliss infused my being. A giant smile washed across my whole face—the biggest smile—and yet my belly still quivered from crying.
His presence was that of a tender mother, completely available, attentive, nurturing, but also unattached. I sensed him to be present and loving but simultaneously empty. His love had the power to re-set my entire nervous system, and my life. It was highly specialized to treat my unique predicament; yet, it did not feel personal.
He seemed to focus on me from across the room, then make some kind of mudra. I would feel a connection. Then I could see his focus shift back into a global, panoramic awareness and universal love.
At one point I just bowed my head so low. I felt overwhelmed with his goodness and what he had faced and accomplished in his life. I could understand what is possible as a human.
I have bowed so many times in my life, but never been moved in such a way. Before the Dalai Lama, there was nothing other to do than put my head down. It was like I never fully understood a bow before that.
Then I felt my teacher’s presence very strongly—Gyatrul Rinpoche, who passed away one year ago.
Just after Gyatrul Rinpoche escaped Tibet though the Himalayas, the Dalai Lama sent him to teach in the West. At the time, Rinpoche did not want to go. The Dalai Lama insisted.
Remembering the kindness of my teacher, who went through so much hardship and displayed incredible generosity and compassion, I looked up at the Dalai Lama immediately. I was surprised to make eye contact. In my mind, I said,
“Thank you so much for sending Gyatrul Rinpoche to the United States. All of his students love him and miss him. He gave us Dharma and he changed our lives inconceivably.” More and more tears streamed down.
On that same day, His Eminence Kalu Rinpoche gave the Dalai Lama donations from all of us. I fundraised $1,080 dollars and wrote on the envelope, “in loving memory of Gyatrul Rinpoche.” Later I realized it was the anniversary of Gyatrul Rinpoche’s sea burial that very day. Something bigger than me was unfolding.
As the head of the lineage, His Eminence Kalu Rinpoche had organized an offering beautiful beyond words, with many finely crafted statues carried up and presented one by one.
Kalu Rinpoche also requested a Mahakala empowerment. Mahakala is very dear to the Dalai Lama. His Holiness told us that his mother felt so close to this dharma protector that she used to call him “our Mahakala” with much tenderness.
I thought of the previous Kalu Rinpoche’s close relationship with the Dalai Lama and what they must have gone through in the early years of exile.
What a delight to witness a reunion of spirit, as the reincarnation of Kalu Rinpoche (also named Kalu Rinpoche), now in his mid-thirties, looked to the Dalai Lama with joy and deep reverence.
At the end of the empowerment, His Holiness walked away slowly. Then, all I could see was the back of his head. The room made a collective sigh. Our hearts broke a little to see him go.
I made strong prayers for the Dalai Lama to always remain in my heart. I wished for him to be my teacher, to turn the wheel of Dharma for all beings on the earth, and for him to remain in good health and live a long, peaceful, and happy life.
I know now that when I am close to death, I will remember that day. I will think about the Dalai Lama, Gyatrul Rinpoche, Kalu Rinpoche and the astounding selflessness they displayed, the help they offered me, their blessings.
May this gratitude fill my heart, dispel fear, and benefit beings. May it light the way when I take my last breath.
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Kalu Rinpoche gazes at His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, as if one can see the former Kalu Rinpoche there too.
Gyatrul Rinpoche, of loving memory, at his home in Half Moon Bay, with the author and other devoted students, Lindy and Deidra, 2019
Gyatrul Rinpoche displaying his playful character, with the author, and students Lindy and Lama Les, 2015