Each and every day I make aspirations—really heartfelt aspirations—that we the students of the Vidyadhara will fulfill his wishes and actualize his vision of enlightened society. This is the primary way my longing for him manifests.

It is not that I do not see this happening—but rather that I know that for his work to fully benefit the world it is up to us to practice what he taught, to manifest what he taught and to realize as completely as we can what he realized.

Whenever any of us experience the vastness of his mind and act from that, I can see him smiling.

These days I know more honestly what he meant when he said that the only offering we can make is to follow his example.

I’ll like to take this chance to say—I love you Rinpoche. From life to life may I never be separated from you.

© 2007 Ani Pema Chödrön; originally posted on the Chronicles on May 11, 2007
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Ani Pema Chödrön, one of the first western women to become fully ordained as a Buddhist monastic, met Chögyam Trungpa when her hair was long and her name was Deirdre Blomfield-Brown. After this first encounter she moved to England where she studied dharma under Lama Chime and was ordained as Pema Chödrön by the Sixteenth Karmapa. Following Lama Chime's advice, she returned to the United States in 1974 to study with Trungpa Rinpoche. There she became a close student and a vessel for Trungpa Rinpoche's plans for a monastic tradition of Buddhism in the West. In the years since his death, in addition to nurturing the embryonic Shambhala-monastic tradition at Gampo Abbey in Cape Breton, she has become one of the best known Buddhist teachers in North America and the author of four best selling books: The Wisdom of No Escape, Start Where You Are, When Things Fall Apart, and The Places That Scare You.