Born In Tibet

          I expect folk who hold high positions in religious institutions to be saintly. Looking at what's been going on in the Catholic Church ... well, I don't like hypocrisy. If you put on the uniform, you should behave yourself.

          There are two aspects to juju practitioners, the internal and external. If you spent half the time whoring and dope dealing and murdering folk, it might still be possible to go on a retreat, meditate, and make real progress in working with your energy body, which is the internal aspect.

          I didn't like it when I found out that the top meditator in the Karma Kagyu was humping his taxi driver on the first trip he did to Europe, along with his attendant. At least, when he was asked about this, he did not deny it, and said that he's had trouble with a woman in a previous incarnation and did a spell that killed her.

         Kalu Rinpoche was a far more developed buddhist than I'll ever be and I still imagine him over my head every day when I'm doing some guru yoga stuff. You can't really adequately judge someone like that. I don't know what I'd be like if I came out of Tibet and found out that European women took the pill and  .... well, the question is whether it did any harm and what the motivation was. The Rinpoche doesn't look too good here, but I'd have been much worse!!

          Born in Tibet is a very well written book. Much of it is about the escape the folk who came to Scotland to set up the Samye Ling. I had thought that the Abbot here should get a book done about his escape from Tibet, but this book is it.

          I was expecting the story to be worse in terms of death, starvation and such like, but it must have been a helluva journey to make. They were eating yak leather and lying down sometimes in the snow, etc.

          There is an added chapter at the end about what happened later. I don't know the ins and outs of this, but this chapter should be taken with a pinch of salt. I also wondered about the boy mentioning that Akong Tulku Rinpoche asked him to be his guru at one point. I don't think this is unusual among Tibetan monastics. You can have hundreds of gurus. It's just someone who teaches you something and often they do this to form karmic links.

          I think anyone who has any authority over anyone should keep their zips up.