Rinpoche

Rinpoche pronounced Rin-po-shay, short i long o, means in Tibetan, "precious". It mainly applies to "living Buddhas", enlightened Tibetan Lamas and monks who attained full enlightenment and Buddhahood in another lifetime and are capable of bringing that enlightenment and buddhahood over in lifetime after lifetime here on earth.

Of course, what this all means depends upon whether people like you believe this is true or not. Having met many Tibetan Rinpoches during the 1980s and because I am gifted in many of the same ways they tend to be, it was not difficult to see that they were what they were Rinpoche in most and maybe all cases.

This is one of the reasons it pains me to watch Tibetan culture being destroyed in Tibet over the last 30 years since I have been more aware of what that means to the world. Even though Tibetan culture is being lost even as we speak in Tibet, Tibetan Buddhist beliefs have spread out all around the world, especially in regard to groups advocating peace and especially on college campuses worldwide.

I found drawn to Tibetan Buddhism once I was able to get used to the concept of Non-dualistic thought. Non-dualistic thought is not based (at least as we know it in western countries) of western traditional good and bad. It is an entirely different system. For example, to have supernatural gifts and to use them for selfish means would be considered black magic to them. Supernatural gifts are given in order to bless all life. So the selfish use of supernatural gifts is unwholesome and unseemly.
Another difference is that Tibetans don't believe in scaring people with supernatural demonstrations, because this can sometimes cause naive listeners and watchers to have heart attacks or strokes. So, everything must appear to be naturally caused in order to protect the health in compassion to all beings. The only exception to this might be if someone were going to murder someone and something had to be done in an emergency to stop this occurance.

I also agree with all these ideas. I especially believe in supernatural politeness and of not scaring people supernaturally unless they are causing serious harm to others or they are about to take their own lives. Then I agree an exception should be made but only in these circumstances.

The point of it all is not really to develop supernatural gifts. It is that they begin to occur naturally on their own as one attains through different levels of enlightenment, just like one gets a private pilots license to fly things like a Cessna 152 before one gets a license to fly a Lear Jet. And with each successive state of consciousness one must get used to the landscape so to speak. And for a soul this goes on as long as the soul exists in whatever body the soul is born into lives in and dies in. The soul still goes on somehow through all these many changes. I cannot answer why it does, only that it does and that I have seen how this all works firsthand.

The first experience of meeting a Tibetan Lama was in Oregon. My wife had convinced me that I needed to meet a Tibetan Lama. So when an initiation was going to take place we decided to go. We lived then in Mt. Shasta, about 1 1/2 hours south of the Oregon Border in California. It was winter time so we had to be careful going over the Mt. Ashland Pass into Oregon because of all the snow and ice on Interstate 5.

When I arrived at the initiation I felt something amazing. Then I looked into the Lama's eyes as I walked to my seat. Immediately, I was two places at once. Even though I was an experienced soul traveler what was happening to me I had never experienced before of experiencing two seeming physical lives at once. In one life I was myself in 1980 and at the same time I was someone from several hundred years ago in Tibet. It was springtime and all the flowers were blooming, so in Tibet that probably would have been summer, as in the Himalayas, spring is in summer above 8000 feet in altitude which is most or all of Tibet. Even Lhasa is at 12,000 feet in elevation. I knew a lady that flew there and dropped dead soon after walking off the plane because of the altitude.

So, by the time I sat down I was completely amazed at all this and knew there actually really was something amazing about Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan Lamas and all these legends about Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism. Just walking to my seat completely changed my life ever since.

Later I found that in Tibetan Buddhism there are 49,000 correct paths to enlightenment which more than covers all the major religions, cults and individual ascetic paths. I was home and I knew it. The universe had come to me. I was home.