Downloaded from YTS.MX
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
I had no expectation.
I just went with an empty mind.
I had no idea what I was going to find.
I didn't have the idea of going in search of a teacher.
I just needed to solve this one question,
was getting rid of my fear of death.
I didn't feel like I was meeting a foreigner.
I was just trying to find someone who had a clue,
who understood what was going on.
And they were so welcoming
and to see these people coming,
who are from a totally different culture
and it was if he was waiting for us.
I hadn't had anything to do with Buddhism
for 20 years or so.
Poems of long life.
These letters of long life.
Some years ago, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche,
a Tibetan Buddhist teacher came to New Zealand
and I met him and he said,
"Well, you should really go back to India."
And at first I said, "No, I've left India behind.
"I'm not really interested in going back to India."
And he asked me several times and the third time he said,
"And your daughter, she should film it."
And I agreed to do it.
If it meant getting close to her, well, I would do it.
Well, I was a surfer.
One day I found a book on Buddhism in the sand hills,
and I knew that I really wanted to follow that.
It seemed to make a lot of sense to me.
I decided India was the place to go.
So my girlfriend and I headed off to India
and we ended up in Darjeeling.
Through a series of accidents,
we ended up at 54 Gandhi Road
and Kangyur Rinpoche walked up.
He was like no one I'd ever met before, or since really.
This extraordinary person,
there was nothing ordinary about him at all.
He had broken fingernails.
He looked like he'd built a monastery himself that morning.
We stayed in India for five years
and that was, we lived and breathed,
either studying from Rinpoche in the summer
or studying sitar in the winter
and completing our Buddhist practise.
We went back in 1980 after Rinpoche had passed away,
back to Darjeeling
and about two weeks into that retreat,
I had a terrible epileptic fit,
which really rocked my faith.
I was flown back to New Zealand
and the doctors gave me various medications,
which seemed to zone me out somehow.
And I think they pretty much zoned me out for 30 years.
I was a student.
I didn't want to have the life that I was seeing around me.
One night I was listening to the radio in my bed
and then there was a voice saying,
"Mr. Desjardins just published a book called
"Le Message des Tibetains."
I got up and wrote the title
and it was this meeting with all these great lamas
who were still alive at that time.
And I was particularly impressed
by what he was saying about Kangyur Rinpoche.
I hppened to see documentary movies
that our friend Arnaud Desjardins made.
There was a quite shock moment about Kangyur Rinpoche.
Arnaud told me, among all the teachers that we met,
we were most inspired and impressed by Kangyur Rinpoche.
I had six-month holiday between completing the university
and starting my job at Basta Institute
and then when I saw those movies, I said,
"That's clear and that's where I'm going."
I feel very nervous going back to India.
Nervous about what I'm gonna face there.
It was one of those unresolved parts of my life.
My reaction to losing my faith,
really was to bury myself in whatever
I had going on in the West.
Just park it to one side and leave it.
Welcome to Kolkata, ladies and gentlemen.
I was living in London doing my clinical studies,
but Charles kept writing.
In those days, we wrote letters, aerogrammes,
and saying, "You must come, you would be amazed.
You must meet Kangyur Rinpoche."
And I got a ticket and set off
to spend three or four weeks in Darjeeling.
I can't tell you how sort of exciting it seemed.
I ended up in Calcutta and the worst, worst thing
was that everything was on strike.
The railways were on strike, the buses were on strike,
and the Indian Airlines was on lockout.
I found myself in the plane
among all kinds of hippies and weird people.
I was the only one in the plane
who was not wanting to go to the south.
They asked me, "Why do you want to go there?
"There's nothing in Darjeeling."
There was this cargo airline called Jumair
which flew incredibly ropey, old planes.
We got into this plane,
there's something wrong with the back wheel,
so you had to sort of climb up
the central corridor of the plane.
All the windows were cracked and there were chickens
and crates of tea.
But this felt so exciting,
'cause I finally knew that I could get there,
but it really seemed kinda of tense.
We managed to take off
and flew for a couple of hours maybe,
and landed in a field somewhere.
And the plane pilot actually got out
and checked our passports
and then he put us all in the bus,
which he drove himself into town.
For many of us, sometimes, just by looking at a person
who has basically spent their entire life,
in concentration and attention
to values such as love and compassion,
non-duality, empathy,
understanding the world,
not only in its appearance aspect,
but also in its real, what is there.
It immediately sort of inspires you,
gives you comfort, gives you inspiration.
Makes you think that actually
there are really special human being.
Now I'm home.
Kangyur Rinpoche was born on Kham,
which is the east of Tibet.
He was a khampa, what they call a khampa,
who are the kind of tough guys in Tibet.
So he met his root teacher,
Jedrung Rinpoche, as a baby
and from seven years old became his disciple
and studied from him at the Riwoche Monastery.
Through and through was one of the great students
of first Khyentse the Great,
and also Jamgon the Great.
He was great student of these great teachers.
I'd first heard of Kangyur Rinpoche
when daddy had come back from a trip to India and he said,
"I've met the most wonderful human being I've ever met
"and his name was Kangyur Rinpoche."
And after that, it was very strange
'cause the sky seemed more vast after that
and the world was kind of bigger.
And I had this kind of idea in the back of my mind,
I'd better get there before I die.
So I was all of 17 at that time
and I'd finished my schooling,
so I decided to go to Darjeeling.
Of course it was the middle of winter
and it was not that easy to find Kangyur Rinpoche
'cause he had just moved.
I arrived down below in the taxi.
I walked up, Matthieu had said,
"There's a curtain in front of the door.
"You just knock on the door."
So I did and the curtain opened,
and this very beautiful face appeared,
and I said...
'cause I knew that was how everybody called her,
and she said, "Yes."
And she took me in to Rinpoche.
I was kind of shaky and quivering,
and Rinpoche was just sitting there
with the light behind him and this huge column of books
here and a huge column of books here,
and the whole room was kind of full of books.
And the only other thing I remember was this grandad clock
on the back wall that kept going tick, tick, tick.
I was sitting awkwardly on the floor
with my hands between the legs
and I don't know what to do with it.
And Rinpoche was laughing at me, just laughing.
I was just there and then I sort of, what can I do?
Meditation in those days was not something
that you would know in the West.
So basically, I felt inspired to try to blend my mind,
my little sort of limited,
confused mind, with the immense wisdom mind
of Kangyur Rinpoche.
Rinpoche was eating momos
and I was sort of sitting there,
not quite daring to look at him
and a momo landed in my lap.
He was throwing something at me for me to eat.
At the end of the morning,
they bring a little tray with some rice and vegetable,
cooked in mustard oil.
I remember always the smell of that oil
coming from the kitchen.
That sort of meeting with Kangyur Rinpoche,
it's hard to say what happened.
I didn't have any mystical experiences.
I just got over my own incredible tension about it,
but it was really in a way, one of the,
looking back now, it really just seems like
one of the key moments of my life, when everything changed.
Kangyur Rinpoche was 11 years old.
He heard that numbers of students
going to the farther east of Tibet
to meet Lama Mipham Rinpoche.
He was great, great scholar
and not only scholar, one of the greatest physician,
great astrologer, great musician.
He was really, really incredible teacher.
He told to his mother, that he's going to go on a trip
to see this great teacher.
His mother gave him
and you can live on it.
So he took that and went.
Lama used to come out when the sun rise,
and he sort of sit outside of his cave
and Mipham said, "Who is this boy, young boy?"
And the other lamas said "Oh, this young boy,
"he just followed us."
Then Mipham said, "Do you know how to read?"
He said, "Yes, more or less."
And he, Mipham gave his book on (foreign term),
it's his tantra, which has 100,000 names
of (foreign term) he gave.
And Rinpoche read very fast, very clear.
So, lama was so, so impressed.
Great scholars would come out of young, intelligent boys.
You will become great teacher.
So he gave his own book.
After that, if Kangyur Rinpoche read once anything,
he will not forget it.
He gained this incredible memory, part memory.
This is my broken sitar.
It broke a few years ago
and I'm gonna take it back to get fixed now.
I haven't played seriously for 25 years.
I haven't seen this man in 32 years.
We used to play together.
This is him?
Hello.
How are you, mate? - How are you?
Looking great. - So are you.
This is my (foreign term) sitar.
What happened to the..?
It smashed.
I was tuning it up.
So, I was tuning it but just like,
just tune it and bang.
It went like that, I went, oh
Bablu, I became a rock and roll promoter.
The rock and roll scene is completely another scene.
I had the operation in late 1977,
but I didn't have the epileptic fit till 1982,
81 up in Darjeeling.
So that was...
How come you didn't contact me when you were in Australia?
I thought you were gone.
Gone to the heaven.
I was gone.
Nobody, nobody has any idea about this.
We all came to know this he was no more.
Yeah, so then after that no news, nothing about that.
This is me.
Yeah.
.
Is that you?
No I think it's a female, not you.
So at 14 years old, Jedrung Rinpoche
asked Kangyur Rinpoche to
to complete a three-year retreat.
When he finished, his instructions were
to lead another three-year retreat.
told him "Now they should enrol
"in the part of monastic life and then (indistinct).
"First master the ritual and then after
"you can begin to master the chant".
"master the whole monastery".
As much as Kangyur Rinpoche
enjoyed that work,
he really wrestled with the administration
and one morning there was a note left on his bed
to say, he'd gone.
And he disappeared for 13 years.
He travelled
and he received teaching from great teachers
and he taught and he teach retreats
and it split completely.
You have the complete living example,
of what is taught in the teachings.
The messenger is the message.
You see what lies at the end of the path, right there
in front of you.
Every word, every word you can guess of his thought,
every action is in harmony with the teaching,
exemplified the teaching and amplifies the teaching.
If you are talking from the Buddhist point of view,
enlightenment is when you finally,
transcend all your obsession.
Your fixation, your judgmental mind,
all your references.
Enlightenment is beyond time, beyond space.
Enlightened being,
means uses his brain cell up to 100%.
So 100% means, it breaks, it breaks
the boundary of dualistic mind.
Of self others, yes and no
white and black, and to see bad and good,
it becomes equal.
It becomes equanimity.
Also it becomes pure and genuine.
There is no boundary there,
everything is pure wisdom.
No one knows quite where he went,
but when he returned after 13 years, in his thirties,
he had an amazing knowledge of the Khanjar.
He was constantly requested to recite the Khanjar,
over a hundred volumes of it, which could take months.
Because he had this incredible ability
to read fast and also he is so knowledgeable
in this subject, so he taught and he get transmissions.
They say that there's no one who recited
the khanjur more times than Khanghu Rinpoche, 30 times.
The Khanjur is the actual scriptures that are
in one sense or another, the words of the Buddha.
Khanghu Rinpoche received from many different sources,
the reading transmissions,
he actually heard the teachings read out by people
who'd heard it from people, who'd heard it from people.
Who've heard it from people going back
right over the centuries, right back to the Buddha.
The sound of the teachings and the fact that
they were recited was terribly important.
Travelled for months and things to receive
a rare transmission from some lineage
that he hadn't already received,
although had received many, many in the ages,
and then he himself would transmit khanjur,
so there's this whole thing of the living tradition
and that there's a direct link between,
the generations of people who'd practised
and studied the texts.
When I met this community of Westerners in Darjeeling,
most of them were French
and most of them were really non psychedelic,
non hippy people, professional people
and people that we would have called in
those days straight.
That was a kind of different kind of community
from what we would have found at the time
in most Buddhist seats.
I couldn't communicate with Rinpoche
in any known language, but it was fine
because he knew anyhow, what I was thinking.
And I came up every morning to try
and meditate with Rinpoche which was agonising,
because I didn't know how to meditate.
So Matthieu and Yarn and everybody said,
"You go and sit in front of him and meditate"
What does that mean?
What do you mediate on?
All of 17 and I hadn't a clue about anything,
Buddhism or anything.
This isn't gonna work.
So I asked Rinzin lah who came once in a while
to translate in her sweet way.
I said, "Can you ask Rinpoche
"if there's a way to start at the beginning".
And gradually I met him again and again
and he gave me some practises to do.
I said to Rinpoche "Can I do the preliminary practise?"
" But that will take a long time, at least a year".
I said, "I don't care".
It was really funny because I had no idea
what was the preliminaries,
what practises I was supposed to do.
I just did it, as if it was like a natural course of things.
I started the preliminary practise there
and we had to translate the books from the beginning.
We didn't know anything and Rinpoche would give
four line teachings and one would study for a month,
or two or three and then you'd get another
four line teachings.
It was really, drop by drop
and I remember once, Rinpoche said,
"Okay, now you have to meditate on impermanence".
go back to (indistinct) and I said,
"Okay, I'll mediate on impermanence"
He said, "No, it's not like that,
"you need to meditate on impermanence for one month".
So that was 18 hours a day, meditating on impermanence.
Was a kind of direct communication,
even though there was this language barrier.
What was intriguing was that while we were doing these
various practises, Matthieu was receiving
a kind of different level of teaching
and he would go and just sit with Rinpoche in his room
and I thought this would be great to do that.
So one day I went and I thought, I'll try this too.
So I sat meditated in front of Rinpoche.
He looked at me and of course,
there was nobody else there, so we couldn't really converse,
but he pointed me and said
he didn't do like that.
And then he went like this,
just completely relaxed.
So I did the same thing, just relaxed like this.
Then he relaxed a bit more
and I relaxed a bit more.
And this was a very interesting way of explaining to me,
without words, this notion the natural state of the mind,
not an artificial state,
which you create by your efforts of concentration
and trying to produce something,
but the natural state that's already there,
which you just have to,
be in.
If you take what we call
or tantric Buddhism,
now here, the concept of spiritual master
is usually altogether different.
Spiritual master is not,
just a master, spiritual master is the path.
You have to voluntarily choose that path
and if you've chosen that,
you have to remember, it is a journey.
It is an adventure.
So we don't have a ticket, all three of us
have to get on it and one seat.
Once you have taken this journey,
you have to have a purpose, right?
That you are taking a journey.
It's important that you finish the journey
and the journey can be very, very,
unexpected.
Things can happen.
Kim what are you looking for?
I don't know, we're looking for a plane ticket.
Because the teacher has such a clear perception of
all the credible contortions that we put our minds through,
the kind of emotions and concepts,
and the misperception,
and the twists and things that we get ourselves into.
And he can see right through all of that,
with that sort of power and that sort of encouragement
and that reflection that you get with the teacher,
all of those layers can be gradually, dispersed.
And that can be a very uncomfortable
process for the student.
Kangyur Rinpoche was incredibly disciplined.
He was also known for his personal reconstruction
of stupors and holy places
and in fact, the masons were quite scared
of working with him.
He knew so much and was such a hard worker.
He was also not afraid to stand up
for the disenfranchised,
or anyone he felt had been unjustly treated.
Quite amazing because Rinpoche was everything.
He was an architect
and then when we started building the monastery,
he was an engineer.
And when we started painting the monastery,
he was a master painter.
And when we started making the silver
and the gold and the brass elements,
he was a master goldsmith.
And all the time, there were people coming and going
and asking for medicine
and he'd go out at 3:00 o'clock in the morning
when someone came to get him because
of a member of the family was dying.
It was just, he was everything.
He just knew how to do everything.
It was quite amazing.
Visva-Bharati, the old Bharati
the old Indian style of teaching.
And the Visva-Bharati University,
it is only university in the world
the learning in the company of nature.
Where's (indistinct) ?
That's it there?
Because you couldn't get a permit
to stay for any length of time in Darjeeling,
Rinpoche sent us down to Shantiniketan
where I could study music as well as learn Tibetan
with CR Lama, Chimé Rigdzin Lama.
I think his place was over there
and our house was over here somewhere.
We were always aware that our clock was ticking
and we had very little time here,
so we worked really hard
and we knew that the end was that
we would be able to study from Kangyur Rinpoche, directly.
Maybe this was the lama's house.
I think it's very important first of all,
why you are even looking for a spiritual master?
Is it really because you are interested
in seeking the truth and the awakened state,
or you are just looking for some sort of a psychiatrist,
or a comfort zone, or someone who would confirm
your way of thinking, or a friend,
or a family or something like that,
this is very important.
If you are looking for that guru,
or the spiritual master really is not the perfect.
All Buddhists care, really, really the fundamental,
of what Buddhists really care,
is to know
the truth,
everything, meditation,
practise, discipline, whatever you do,
it has to assist and take you across the true
understanding that truth.
This place over here,
I'm not talking about some exotic, mysterious truth.
I'm talking about very,
very simple raw truth.
It's this house here.
Oh man,
it seems so,
now it seems like a long time ago.
Such a happy house though.
Chimé Rigdzin Lama
a major part of our life,
a major part of my life for several years.
Really Chime was unusual
and taking in Western students and not many but some,
and they would actually live in Darjeeling in the monastery.
It was difficult to stay there a long time.
Some people managed to sort of stay there for long times
and they became really part of the monastery
and almost part of the family.
Khanghu Rinpoche's wife was known as Amala.
My first meeting with Amalas'
was when she kind of opened the curtain
and I saw this beautiful, sweet, sweet face.
Although she always looks like a 16 year old woman,
at any age because she's so exquisitely beautiful.
Led a very simple life and always took a very humble role,
but you could always feel this wonderful power
from her compassion and her wisdom.
She came from a very well-known political family.
In fact, her mother was the governess of two provinces.
Her brothers were also politicians,
but she had no wish at all to follow
in the family footsteps.
She was however, completely devoted,
even as a child to the Dharma,
It was predicted by the age of 14
that she would meet her root teacher.
And so at the age of 13,
she travelled through many sacred spots and monasteries.
And at Sumyeh Temple met Khanghu Rinpoche
for the first time.
So when she was there, there was great teacher
He said, "You came for pilgrimage"
She said "Yes", "Maybe should stay and in one weeks time
"there will be great teacher's who's coming
"and can teach you on Buddha's work.
"This is exceptional, it rarely happens, you should stay".
So she was really inspired and she asked
"Who's giving this transmission?"
She has said, he was from monastery's great temple
great line scholar, but now he's known as
Khanghu Rinpoche, because he's teaching master
and when my mother's heard Khanghu Rinpoche
she thought I must stay to receive these teachings.
After three years,
she could receive ordination from Khanghu Rinpoche.
She became very strict nun.
I think that it would have a massive impact
on the future, Khanghu Rinpoche and Alma la
had a family, three sons and three daughters.
Every time I remember him, every time I think of him,
it's just somebody so,
there, so present and not just being present,
but his presence was so accommodating.
So kind, in fact, I remember mostly
Rinpoche as somebody so kind,
at the same time securing.
I felt that I could ask him any question.
Every night, I used to ask him to tell me stories,
stories about Tibet's greatest, most accomplished teacher,
like Milarepa.
He used to tell me stories like that,
made me feel really at home
with these great teachers of Tibet.
And when you think of them,
you don't feel them as if they were,
some part of history, but more really like
your grandparents, your uncles.
He had this ability to make me understand,
or feel that the Buddha,
although it was a great enlightened person,
at the same time,
it didn't feel that they were so out of reach.
As far as my spiritual path was concerned,
it wasn't introduced to me as a spiritual path.
It was just life.
I don't feel that they were trying to
convert me to anything,
but it was for them, the most important thing
and as parents,
I think, any parent would want to give their children
the most important thing for them.
From that point, I had total confidence
that they were doing that.
I must have tried to go from one parent to the other,
when I wanted to know things,
but it didn't work with either of them,
because when I wanted to do something,
that my mother wouldn't allow me to do,
I used to go up my father and then he used to make me
understand how important my mother was,
how important what she was telling me to do was,
that he really made me feel and understand that
she really meant the world, not just to me,
but also to him.
Good news is we have two seats.
We wanted three but we got two.
Paid for three but got one last one.
So we paid three, got two.
If you want to become a better human being,
who you need to go ?
If you want to learn how to climb mountains,
you go to see an expert mountain climber.
If you want to cross the ocean,
you go to see an expert sailor
and you learn from that person, the skill.
The main function of the teacher
is to see for you at one particular time
in your life and your degree of maturity,
what will be the best teaching at that point?
What is mostly transformative,
is the few words that the teacher would give you
from time to time, to guide you along the path,
according to your needs,
according to your difficulties,
according to your light and shadows,
so that he can best lead you on the path
without you wasting your time,
or going side tracks, or being in confusion,
or having a romantic idea of what the dharma would be,
but just keep you right there
and sometime if it needs to be a bit strict
so that you don't waste your time, then it's good.
It doesn't have to police your ego.
What's the use?
We're now on the train from Boghur to Jaliputuri
'cause we don't know what to expect.
Last time I was on this train was 1974
and it certainly wasn't like this.
It's like a European train.
Quite surprised.
A nice surprise.
That was one of the first things Rinpoche said
in Darjeeling, that there was a prediction
by Gurum Chai that when the iron bird flew over Tibet,
Dharma will come to the west.
About five years before the 1959
cultural revolution in Tibet,
Khanghu Rinpoche started having premonitions about leaving.
Although he was still free to move around
at that time in Lhasa,
things were starting to change quite quickly.
He wrote to the Dalai Lama asking him
what the Dalai Lama felt he should do.
The Dalai Lama responded by saying he felt he should go
and that he should also take with him,
a copy of the Kangyur.
Now the Kangyur is every word the Buddha spoke,
84,000 teachings and manuscript four.
For my father, these teachings were so precious.
These books were so precious,
that prior to leaving Tibet, few years before,
whatever wealth my father had and my mother had,
they sold them in order to buy books,
in order to search for books and print books
and if they couldn't be printed,
they had them copied.
Thousands and thousands and thousands of volumes.
We got all the blanket and bags
everything very nicely and they took us for one month
There were 200 packages,
something like 18 trucks within all of that,
they had three little boxes
for their own personal belongings.
When the time came to leave,
they hired two Chinese lorries
and off they set to India.
Kangyur Rinpoche head south towards Pemako,
an area non for it's incredibly
challenging physical environment.
On the way Ama la was very very sick,
She has car sick and not travelling so much.
She has quite sick and then finally
then we would ask to the driver
say if they can drive slowly.
They headed south as far as they could
until they ran into snow and ice,
unable to drive any further by truck,
so they unloaded everything off the trucks
and 200 porters carried them from there.
The family would travel as far as they could,
until they ran out of provisions to pay porters.
So they would set up a farm, buy some yaks,
lease some land, plants some crops, harvest the crops,
and then put that towards more porters, carrying the books.
They first stayed at the monastery
of Jedgral Rinpoche.
Leaving the books at the monastery,
the family made a pilgrimage to the sacred mountain
.
When I returned to the monastery,
Kangyur Rinpoche went off on his own,
on a two month pilgrimage
into some of the hardest territory.
Many people have died trying to get in there
but he returned safely.
Kangyur Rinpoche, had a decision to make.
He could either go back to Pemako
to the safety or on to uncertainty
and crossing the Indian border,
people were being killed.
Nevertheless, for the benefit of all sentient beings,
Kangyur Rinpoche, his family
with all the books crossed into India in 1960.
He could have very well stayed in Pemako
with his family and the books would have been safe,
but he took the decision to bring the books
out of Pemako into India and he probably knew very well
that there was huge dangers,
because I think 10% of all the Tibetans
who crossed the border
and caught fever and died within the first month.
He thought that the wisdom contained in these books
was important for the Western world
and that if he didn't bring them out,
they would be lost because in Tibet,
they were being destroyed on the very large scale
and no one else had been able to bring the books out
and there weren't copies outside of Tibet,
except a few in Kalimpong.
So it was really a great act of kindness
and it probably took huge amount of courage
and foresight.
Wow, look at those mountains.
That's my first view of the Himalayas
40 years.
After staying in a while in Assam,
they moved to cross the Brahmaputra river
and halfway across the boat driver held them to ransom.
They moved to another camp
and it was there that a student of Kangyur Rinpoche's
heard of their arrival from Tibet.
Oh look, there's Khachandila.
Holy cow.
Look
man.
That's so rare to see the mountains.
We hardly ever seen them.
Here's the train.
It looks just the same to me.
It's amazing.
When Kangyur Rinpoche first arrived in Darjeeling,
he stayed at a number of places looking for a home,
for this vast collection of books.
Each time we moved cause every two years,
or sometimes even less,
we used to have to move from one place to other,
because we were renting.
Every time we'd moved,
it would take a week or two to get ready.
When I came back they had moved to 54 Gandhi Road
whereas some of his disciples had bought an old
English holiday home.
It was just the ground floor,
beautiful gardens and a much bigger house.
And I think Rinpoche only accepted
to be able to store the books and get on with his projects
of recopying this and that,
because he really wasn't into having properties
and things like that.
Between 1960 and 1965
major tensions were being given by Kangyur Rinpoche,
Dudjom Rinpoche and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.
During the period of the Darjeeling,
Kangyur Rinpoche still searched out
rare manuscripts and had his family copy them
to preserve the teachings for the future.
I remember he used to have many people
that he used to pay to copy books.
That is why my brothers and sisters
have very good handwriting,
because he got them all to copy
and not only them, but he used to copy himself.
And my mother used to do it all day,
thousands and thousands of books.
And then later we'd reproduced
and then we send all over the world.
He put so much effort into preserving these.
It is really imagine if,
we had all the notes,
of all the scientists,
Western scientists all together.
And if you have their manuscripts
and many of them had not been published,
how preciously would we guard them?
How preciously would we preserve them?
And that is what I think for my father
the importance of these books.
We lived here.
I honestly don't even know where I am now.
This was bush.
The family don't live here anymore.
I don't know what I'll find.
Well this wasn't here.
Wow.
It still smells the same.
It's the same.
Exactly.
We've got some there.
The monks would sit here
and Rinpoche would sit there.
And then either one of them,
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche one of the high Rinpoche
sit there and would sit there.
Turung Rinpoche.
Hello.
Good to see you.
It has been long time.
It has been,
long, long time.
Yeah.
Just how do you?
Rinpoche here he was sitting on same chair.
This is where some students who used to come back
to sit and do meditation,
but with the time,
things changed.
Yes.
As you know, Kangyur Rinpoche
passed away long time ago.
And for us, this is a very important teaching.
Why?
It is inevitable,
the changes in life.
No one can changes after old age,
you can die.
We can all die.
This heart is burden will always be added to that,
whatever we build, it will disintegrate sooner or later.
Change, impermanence.
Everything's changing.
It didn't change in one second,
but it's changing.
Old age didn't start in one day,
but every second the skin
So therefore impermanence is really important for us to know
change is taking place.
That is something nobody can change
and everyone has to experience that.
The last time I came through this door,
I was crystal clear, you know, really healthy.
And about two weeks into the retreat,
I had an epileptic fit that completely
and utterly knocked me out.
The doctors put me on some kind of tranquillisers
and insisted that I go back to New Zealand
and get treatment in New Zealand.
I got involved in the music industry,
there didn't seem to be time for any kind of
Buddhist practise.
I think now that I look back on it,
really missed the passing of Kangyur Rinpoche.
Really missed his direction. If you like,
and just missed him, really missed him.
I knew that he would know what was best for me.
I think I've learned about suffering.
I've learned about,
the value, hard as it seems at the time of suffering.
I'm talking about, you know,
our daily life suffering
and having a leaky building
is suffering and having addictions
is suffering.
And I think if I put them in a Buddhist framework,
then it's all valuable stuff.
It's been very hard for me to see it that way.
It's taken a hit,
it's taken a very long time for me to see it that way,
as this,
the stuff that happens to you out on the West
as being Buddhist practise.
I think as I've got older,
perhaps I've had a different view on what's happened
in the last 40 years.
I was in Rio,
and I had, my first daughter had been born.
All of a sudden,
I had this terrible attack of sadness
and depression.
I thought, this is the baby blues.
It's pretty bad, but it wasn't.
I had this terrible feeling that I would never again,
have access to the teachings
in the way that I'd had before.
I just couldn't understand just in tears all day long.
In three days or two days later,
we got a telegram from Darjeeling
saying Rinpoche passed away, could we come?
My daughter by then, was 10 days old.
So we got our tickets and our visas
and off we went to India.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche very kindly
said that he would take us all as his disciples,
as Dzongsar Rinpoche requested he do so
and we would always have access to the teaching.
I felt a tremendous sense of loss and sadness
and I felt that this was really my connection.
And I thought, what's the point of going on living
when Rinpoche's not there?
So I came back to the west
and I was working and this and that.
And then when our teachers came here,
I remember being with Jinghu Rinpoche
I said, "I just feel so terrible
"now that Rinpoche is not there, I feel, difficult".
I said, "How do you feel?"
He said "The same, just the same".
In his very kind of matter of fact way.
I've been asked quite a few times
to try and remember Kangyur Rinpoche
and at first, and for quite a while, I just couldn't,
I couldn't remember,
but as time has gone on, it's like,
he's become alive again.
I remember him now.
I remember him.
I remember how much like my father he was.
I remember how, what he smelt like.
In January of 75, when Kangyur Rinpoche passed away,
daddy had decided that he wanted to give
the whole of the castle to the (indistinct) family
to make it into a library and a peace centre.
That never happened, but they did accept his invitation
to come to the region and Rinpoche had asked me,
he said, "Well where do you live in France?
And I said, "Well, I live in the Dordogne"
And he says, "Dordogne?
"That sounds like dodgy den, which is blood Gaia".
He says, "We're here in dorgy lane".
He said, "Okay, I'm going to build this Varsha bridge
"from Dordogne to dodgy den to the Dordogne."
So it seemed kind of obvious to me that this was the place
where everything was going to happen.
Came in 1975 with Digo Khyentse Rinpoche
and he gave teachings in Chartreuse,
La Sandre became his home
but then things unfolded in the west
because he made sure that all of the Rinpoche
came at regular intervals.
While these great authentic teachers
from Tibet are still around,
we should do the practise in an intense way,
so as to be able to receive their teachings
in a meaningful way.
So this is how they started these three-year retreats
when there was not really a big infrastructure or community.
But we built the first four hermitage's
by hand at Chartreuse,
it was quite chaotic because it was,
we were a bunch of hippies, I wasn't,
but most of them were.
One of the key things in the retreat
was actually being able to study quite intensely the texts
and practises, but we still had all of this material
in Tibet and very little of it
had been translated when we started the texts
and Khyentse Rinpoche would translate in
doing this sort of orally and we would make notes.
And then some of the practises that we did,
we were mainly doing it in Tibet
and some of us knew a little bit of Tibetans.
Most of us didn't know much.
And so one person starts to translate ,
or blend notes on something.
Then obviously it makes sense to share it with the others.
And when we finished the first three-year retreat,
it began to be the end of the 80s
began to be the great era of the PC computer
and then we began to see the possibility
of translating, publishing and producing books ourselves.
From that point on practise of Dharma
has spread very quickly in France and in the west.
I mean, Portugal, Finland, Spain, all over Europe,
they also go to America.
There's so much more to do,
again, this incredible body of Tibetan literature
is so vast and we've got many, many,
many more really important texts to work on
and translate.
Kangyur Rinpoche project, maybe 4,000.
I said itself, the goal of completin khanjur
on the year within 100 years.
And I think it will take that long.
I don't have a vision wide enough
to see how it fits in or Keisha.
I'm sure it's a contingencies through the propagation
of the teaching to the west and this,
even if it is just the seed,
he tells the far to,
to grow and grow into something beyond what we can imagine.
Kangyur Rinpoche's activities were great,
but through his children becoming more profound, bigger,
greater, more art spread.
They're just,
it's just like the fingers on the hand of Kangyur Rinpoche
You just kind of feel that their activity,
everything they do.
They're all incredible practitioners
and three of them, obviously with teachers,
and even though his daughters who are not
not only great teachers, but they embody the teachings,
every of their actions of the dedication to the Dharma.
What is interesting about
is that it's always the same atmosphere
as when it was just the family
and us as a sort of extended family in Darjeeling.
There's no wish to make things bigger or be famous.
It's always just the authentic transmission.
Big change has happened with the Tibetan Buddhism.
They have to move place.
They had their challenge.
Someone like me had no choice,
but to had to go to somewhere like Fiji island
and that's it, my life has to be there.
And I have given at this very important treasure
that I have to pass it down.
This treasure that they have is not designed just for that
particular group is not bound by culture,
or gender or tradition is for everyone.
Most important thing, you should be certain,
you should be clear what you have to do,
how to face the moment of death.
I think we are going through a transition
where we have to be careful.
That challenge is for my generation,
Kangyur Rinpoche's generations
have really hold that treasure
pass it to people his job, now this
whatever the treasure that they have passed,
is getting picked up.
You know, some, oh, this is good.
Oh, this Tibetan thing, you know, we in the west,
we don't need.
Not only that, there's something worse happening.
They pick up some of the ideas
and then they package it properly.
And then they claim that this is their revelation.
They got this idea from somewhere
and never giving credit to the Buddha and it surprises them.
Actually, I started to intellectual copyrights
come from the west.
I'm really careful, not always get inspired
and you're not like attracted by some glossy pamphlets that
you find in your nearby new age coffee shop,
chakra as your guide taming the mind.
And so always if you have another thinking,
okay, be careful here.
Really important.
It was like given you the key to understand everything
at that time, the teacher is not just a teacher,
is not someone that's trained, you know,
coming from the Tibetan plateau, but it's really,
someone always shows you what you are, what you are just,
and it's totally universal.
I think many of my friends were surprised and impressed.
They were there, they met somebody that,
that had never met before,
but this person genuinely cared for them.
The person's point of view,
why should we love or care for anyone?
It's not because somebody has been nice ,
because somebody has been cute,
because they are worthy of it's just anyone who is
suffering, who has pain or suffering.
Who's confused is an object of compassion, object of love,
object of caring.
And to know that, to have that kind of care and compassion,
it doesn't just come like that.
Just not just like a flower popping up suddenly
like a mushroom.
It is something that these teachers have trained
over and over again.
I've really started to realise that even though
Kangyur Rinpoche was seemingly absent from my life,
he was always there,
in some tiny part of me
and therefore I can look back on my life
and it's the things that never made sense,
actually now make sense.
So without almost being conscious of it,
I've been able to take a journey through the teachings.
When I put the suffering with that lesson,
I have that experience
and that's a way of dealing with that suffering.
19 year old, Kim hadn't had a heck of a lot of experience.
I hadn't had a life now,
30 years up the road I've had so much
and so now when I look at the teachings,
I can see this so relevant to today and onwards.
At that time, it was so exotic.
You know, it was like learning Tibetan
and you know it was all
and not really applying it to my daily life.
Now I apply it to my daily life.
He's everywhere and he lives on through his sons.
He's alive and well, and his sons
and I'm yeah
it's really a joy to get to,
to get back into what something I left behind so long ago
and really very helpful.
Most helpful.
Non-duality what is that?
That's like, if you think I'm a good man,
he may think I'm a bad man.
So the bad men and the good men is not here.
It's all in your mind.
It does not exist here.
That's the important thing.
But I mean, I'm very simplifying this a lot,
but it's quite an important, a fish thing.
We think a glass of water is a water,
but a fish doesn't think so,
insisting that a water isn't water to,
billions of fish, not a good idea.
I was just living this kind of life
and I always felt that it was something missing from that.
I wanted to find something,
but I really wasn't too sure what it was.
This time was so precious.
There was no much things said,
you didn't talk.
You didn't have to, yeah.
But the presence and then the thing,
this is 40 years later, is still here.
Then when the suddenly at one is just like a pitcher,
I want to just think about it
and the warm feeling comes back.
I have had it starts rolling
from Mount Everest, but very unhuman.
I am very gratitude
I feel very gratitude meeting such, you know,
great Rinpoche and very lucky
and maybe I can continue my practise
to support or help people in Japan.
That's all.