36 GUIDEPOSTS.ORG
meditation, discouraging the man
from interacting further. He’s disap-
pointed in himself—after all, teaching
is not what this journey is about. He
intends to lose that part of himself.
Soon after this encounter, he runs
out of money. He has to sleep in a
park and beg for food—just as he’d
planned. He’s assaulted by mosqui-
toes, pummeled by a monsoon, at the
mercy of sweltering heat. Eventually,
he gets food poisoning.
He assumes the illness will pass,
but it only worsens. Unable to stand,
drink or summon help, he quickly
becomes dehydrated. His body starts
shutting down. But he is not afraid.
Rinpoche has known death ever
since he was a child. One of the first
things Rinpoche learned from his fa-
ther was that even when we are very
much alive, we are also dying, the
cells in our bodies constantly regen-
erating. In his tradition of Buddhism,
the stages of life and death are called
bardos. There is the bardo of dying
but also the bardo of becoming. One
can’t happen without the other. Isn’t
that the point of an ego suicide? The
self dying in order to see what great-
er thing God has in store for us?
Too often in the West, we avoid all
talk of death, and yet isn’t it crucial
to our faith? After all, Jesus couldn’t
OH]LYPZLU^P[OV[K`PUNÄYZ[/PZ
death and resurrection are central
to my faith.
For Rinpoche, when he is sure
he is dying, he is transported to
a bright, vital place. His eyes closed,
he sees a whole new world.
“As a drop of water placed in the
ocean becomes indistinct, bound-
less, unrecognizable and yet still ex-
ists, so my mind merged with space,”
he writes. “The entire universe
VWLULK\WHUKILJHTL[V[HSS`\UPÄLK
with consciousness. I was no longer
within the universe. The universe
was within me.” There was no within
or without, no self or nonself, no liv-
ing, no dying, just this exalted state.
Every particle of his being was alive
with love. The experience lasts for
Ä]LVYZP_OV\YZ;OLUOLISHJRZV\[
When he regains consciousness,
he’s in a hospital without any recol-
lection of how he got there. He later
discovers that the foreigner who’d
sought his meditation advice had
come to the park one last time be-
fore heading on his way. He’d found
Rinpoche half-dead. He paid for
the monk’s admittance to the hospi-
tal and for the treatment that saved
him. He put money in Rinpoche’s
backpack along with a business
card, promising to wire him any more
if necessary. Then he left.
The irony of it is mind-boggling.
The person who saved Rinpoche’s
life was the person who recog-
nized him as a monk. Losing his life,
running away from everything, he
was unwittingly found.
For three more years, Rinpoche
continued his journey, then returned
to his role as teacher and abbot.
He did have a transformative experi-
ence, only to learn that he was
meant to be where God had put him
all along. Would I discover the same
thing? Would any of us? As Jesus
ZHPK[OVZL^OVÄUK[OLPYSP]LZ^PSS
lose them, but those who lose them
MVY1LZ\Z»ZHRL^PSSÄUK[OLT