Thubten was one of the funniest people I ever met and Tibetans are some of the sweetest and most fun loving and yet practical people I ever met traveling the world. He was a Mountain Climbing guide when I first met him in early 1986 in Dharamsala, India in the foothills of the Himalayas. (Foothills) just means that Dharamsala is between 5000 to 6000 feet in elevation and you are looking up at 20,000 foot peaks behind you into the Himalayas. Dharamsala is along the top of a 5000 to 6000 foot mountain ridge of mountains where the Dalai Lama lives with in 1985 around 10,000 Tibetan Refugees but now I hear it has grown to about 40,000 or more.
Thubten told me stories about Drukpa Kunley in English that were just so funny I laughed so hard I fell down sometimes. He had never ending funny stories to tell about Drukpa Kunley. At the time I thought it was only about spreading the Dharma (Tibetan Buddhist philosophy) in a funny Crazy Wisdom kind of way. 20 years later I found out that Drukpa Kunley was actually a real person in Bhutan and yet he is famous as a supernatural jokester to all Tibetans still today. It was really really amazing to actually find out that he was actually a real person.
So, here was Thubten telling (True) stories about a real divine madman in Bhutan and I thought they were just made up by him or others to spread the Crazy Wisdom aspects of the dharma. Nope. He was a real person. Imagine my surprise 20 years later to find out he was actually real and historical in Bhutan. And also he was a member of the Dragon lineage as well.
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