Lam Rim Geshe

What I'm going to write about now relates to the end of "The Lookout" and the "Nechung Oracle-----"
The Lookout   The Nechung Oracle of Tibetan Buddhism

One of the traditions of Tibetan Buddhism is often for devout Tibetan Buddhist males (and likely some females too) to go 4  months in the dark meditating while food is pushed under a door into the dark room. I met one young man about 18 to 22 who was having some psychological problems because he was upset that he couldn't make it the full 4 months in the dark. There was a terrified energy to this man like he had seen a ghost or something and he couldn't deal with it.

However, later I met a man who was happy to be in the dark meditating for 17 years and his name was Lam Rim Geshe. When Jim Henson's puppteers had come to Dharamsala to design Yoda the face of Yoda was similar to Lam Rim Geshe when I met him. He was tall for a Tibetan at about 5 foot 10 to 6 feet tall. He was stocky and always smiling and peaceful but in an extremely powerful way. In other words you knew you had met a Master, (a real one). So, it makes sense to me that they would use Lam Rim Geshe as a pattern for Yoda.

So, all you people out there that always wanted to meet Yoda. I did!

He had just come out of a 17 year retreat in the dark and had done so to give lectures on the Shambala Tantra after hundreds of thousands of People had received the initiation in Bodhgaya when we did.
His home also reminded me somehow of Yoda's home in the Dagobah system because it had that kind of look to it.

I and my family asked him many questions through Thubten who by that time had become a dear friend to me and my family in Dharamshala. But, mostly it was just amazing to be around "Anyone!" who had an aura like that as this kind of master.