Ling Rinpoche and Trijang Rinpoche

Rinpoche means "Precious, like a wish fulfilling jewel" it also denotes a "Living Buddha".

I was traveling in Dharamshala, India which is on the far western side of India to the North in Himachal Pradesh state. Dharamshala is around 5600 to 5900 feet in elevation. I was there in January 1986 with my family. We had flown over from San Francisco to Tokyo to Bangkok to Kathmandu and by rented car and bus and train we slowly made our way to Bodhgaya, India where Guatama Buddha had attained enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree about 2500 years ago. One of the babies of this tree was still there in 1985 in December when we received the Kalachakra Initiation from the Dalai Lama along with 500,000 other Tibetan Buddhists from all around the world. About 10,000 of them were westerners from places like Europe, North and South America, Australia and Japan and places like that. The rest of them were mostly in their Native dress of places like Tibet, Nepal, Sri Lanka and various other Tibetan Buddhist countries and areas including India. After that initiation with our friend Geshe Lobsang Gyatso who we had met in Santa Cruz, California, we traveled by train to Varanasi (Benares) to the place where Buddha first taught his first Brahmin disciples and to the Burning Ghat, and then by Train to the Taj Mahal and then we stayed a while in New Delhi at a hotel there. When our 12 year old daughter got ill we decided to get her up into the mountains where tropical diseases are less problematic. She got Delhi Belly which is like Montezuma's revenge in the states and Mexico "diarrhea". So we rented a compartment in a train to Dharamsala with Geshela, our family and his Tibetan Translator from Darjeeling. And the last short leg up into the mountains we took a bus. We stayed at the Kailash and Green Hotels. We stayed the most time at the Green Hotel because they lad larger rooms at that time to accomodate the 5 of us. The beds were wood with a thin 2 inch cotton futon so we usually put our North Face sleeping bags on top of the bed for warmth in january. At first it was very cold because there were no heaters in the room as the night time temperatures got down to 10 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit during the night but might get up to 35 to 55 during the day then in January. We were in the foothills of the Himalayas with 20,000 foot high peaks nearby. So, we bought a kerosene stove to boil water so it was drinkable for westerners without getting sick at that time. If you boiled it for 5 minutes and then let it cool we put it into each of our canteens that we always carried during the day. Also, it kept our rooms more bearable until we went to sleep when he had to turn it off. However, there was no vent for the Kerosene burning smell so one had to be careful regarding all this. When we couldn't do this traveling we bought soda pop to drink because we couldn't always count on people not refilling bottled water with a hose and reselling it at that time all over Thailand and India. But we could always count on an Indian  Orange  soda pop being boiled and sealed properly in bottles at that time. And usually the tea you bought from vendors had been boiled and usually boiled eggs and potatoes and curry with saffron could usually be counted on to be safe when traveling. However, salads, tomatoes, and most vegetables often were not safe to eat for westerners traveling on trains and buses and staying in guest houses which is a very reasonable way to travel with a group of 5 people like we were for 4 months in Japan, Thailand, India and Nepal. It was very much like going to another planet and was the most like the U.S. and Japan in Bangkok and New Delhi and Kathmandu. At that time you could eat good western food like a King for about 10 dollars for 5 people with a very good meal. However, after 3 months in India and Thailand 4 of the 5 of us got ghiarrdhea(protozoa in one's intestines) and it took about 6 months back in the U.S. for this to slough off. We 4 got very very thin during this time. We went to a foreign disease specialist after we returned to California and she said the least harmful to our livers would be to let it just slough off on its own so we did. We were all young enough and healthy enough to survive getting this thin.

While we were in Dharamshala we had many amazing experiences. I felt the heaven realms joined with the physical realms there in a way I hadn't experienced before. I think it was probably like this in Tibet before the Tibetans had to leave and go to India to survive along with the Dalai Lama. One day we were taken to see Ling Rinpoche. We weren't told where we were going we just knew we were privileged to take this journey at the time. So, when we were led to a remote mountain cabin made of stones with a locally hewn slate roof.  As we walked inside, on a table in the main room of the house was Ling Rinpoche. He had been sitting there for 2 years and had gone into the heaven realms but kept his body still here on earth to project the heaven realms back to earth through. One could feel this amazing feeling of heaven in the room from his soul projecting it back through his body which was not decomposing even after 2 years continuously sitting upon this table in Maitreya Mudra with teaching hand up and the other hand near his lap. Having lost my father just 6 months before I went outside and cried because this was not death it was something else where you projected heaven back to earth through your body. So I felt amazed and privileged to experience this along with all my family. We also were directed to meet the reincarnation of Trijang Rinpoche then. He was about 4 years old and banged his dorje (dharma thunderbolt) upon all our heads in blessings. He hit me pretty hard with the metal dorje and it hurt for a while. But I also realized he was 4 and getting used to being a Rinpoche once again. Ling Rinpoche is the senior teacher of the Dalai Lama and Trijang Rinpoche is the junior teacher of the Dalai Lama. Ling Rinpoche ruled Tibet until the Dalai Lama turned 18.