Sam-ye Ling 1: Kalu Rinpoche

Driving to Sam-ye Ling in Scotland I had plenty time to reflect on my previous visits to Samye Ling. I had first gone there with our newly founded Dundee Buddhist Group in 1973, when I was 21. I had been a Buddhist for about five years and had not met another Buddhist in Scotland until the recent forming of the Dundee Buddhist Group under the inspiration of Ray Truesdale. Although I was voted Chairman at the first meeting it was really Ray’s group and, as Secretary, he ran it. He had organised eight meetings, three of which were visits to outside groups – Edinburgh Buddhist Group, Glasgow Buddhist Group (which we discovered had transformed into FWBO Glasgow and the woman in charge of it, Mrs Turpie, had herself changed into Mallika) and Samye Ling. I no longer remember in which order the visits went. In fact there were two visits to Samye Ling - one to the famous ‘Garden Party’ and another weekend visit.

As I drove up the motorway I realised that except for the most important memories there were very few memories left of those two visits. The first of the two visits, whether the Garden Party or the Weekend visit, was the crucial one. It was one of the main turning points in my life as a Buddhist. We were visiting Samye Ling when Kalu Rimpoche was there. I hadn’t known about Kalu Rimpoche until, Lorraine, one of our group, started telling me about him. Her closest friend, June Campbell, had become Kalu Rimpoche’s attendant and English translator and had been travelling with him for a several years. It was through June that Lorraine had learned of Kalu Rimpoche. Kalu Rimpoche, I was told, was one of the most senior of all the monks from Tibet and that he was a great master of meditation. He had led in Tibet three cycles of the three, three-year retreats – a total of twenty-seven years. What this must have meant to a twenty-one year old who until just a few months before had never met another Buddhist you can hardly imagine. I had spent the previous five years struggling to practise mindfulness of breathing from a book and had been preparing myself patiently for the Guru to appear! I can still remember the feelings I had of excitement, expectation, wonder, awe, reverence – it’s almost impossible to encapsulate the feeling in words.

There in the garden was the old guru sitting at a table with a few people surrounding him. He was the archetypal guru: old and wizened, emaciated to the point of being skeletal. His high cheekbones seemed to lift up his lips and lend his face a benign smile. It was hard tear my eyes away from him. He was an ideal figure for all my positive projections – but at the time I didn’t know that. He just appeared so special and, at the same time, so ordinary sitting at the table. I was thankful that he had come in such a humble way and that there were no great fanfares of trumpets (unlike when I met the Karmapa shortly afterwards and which had left me cold). There he was just sitting quietly in the garden being introduced to a few people now and then. No great scrabble to see him. No great hordes of Lama worshippers. Just an old man who was a meditation master and a guru. When Lorraine insisted that go up to him I was quite clear I didn’t need to. I had seen this old monk and it was enough just to be near him – what need to go and speak to him, to bother him and so on. What would I have said? I felt no regret afterwards that I had not been one of the ones to go forward ,although Lorraine could not understand it. On our second visit to Samye Ling I again saw Kalu Rimpoche and was just happy that such a man existed. Although I had been naively preparing myself patiently for the promised Guru to appear I did not feel personally ready, nor that this was the mythical promised Guru. (In fact, I had a fair idea, even then, that Sangharakshita was my guru although he looked nothing like a Guru and that it would be five years before I would meet him face to face.) However such was the effect of seeing Kalu Rimpoche on that first occasion, and closely followed by the second, that for the first time in five years I was able to establish my meditation practice on a regular basis which resulted in significantly deeper experience of meditation. Now that I could actually see with my eyes that meeting wise men was possible in this world I began to take my practice of the Dharma more seriously.

Many years later, not long before Kalu Rimpoche died I was able to visit him in his Gompa at Sonada, near Darjeeling. He was much older – I think in his nineties – frailer than ever. There was only bone under the translucent skin. His shaking hands continuously fingered his pale pink coral mala but he could no longer count individual beads - he had to take them in great swathes. Fifteen years or so had intervened since I had first seen him at Samye Ling and although in the intervening years I had found my own ‘Guru’ I still harboured strong appreciation and gratitude to this Lama. His little bedroom cabin had windows on two sides covered with thin cloth of a warm colour and as the sun sank the room filled with unearthly amber light. He was giving a talk to a few Westerners on the various hells. The contrast could hardly have been greater: the heavenly light in the room and the dark descriptions of hot and cold hells. At the end of the session, since there were so few of us I was able to go forward and say a few words. I told him that I had seen him twice before at Samye Ling but I had never before spoken to him or even heard him talk. I told him that the effect of just seeing him, all those years ago, was such that my Buddhist practice had deepened so that it had become the guiding force in my life. I told him that I just wanted to thank him for being there. He accepted my thanks and took a white scarf and placed it around my neck. His outstretched bony hand blessed me on the crown of my head with an amazing strength for such an old man. He muttered a few words of blessing and smiled at me as I departed.