While doing a little research on renunciation (shenlok), I came across this video on the Chronicles. I remember this moment as if it were yesterday. I was seventeen. July 1973. My brother Neil brought me to hear Rinpoche talk at a Milarepa seminar at Tail. I was wearing bright orange Indian cotton pants with a drawstring. I’d heard him on tape and read some, but I hadn’t seen or heard him in person.
We waited under the tent. I was actually just outside it, my brother sat nearby, squeezed into a space at the edge, leaning against the corner tent pole. A cloud of dust came up from the road and Narayana (a friend of my brother) pulled up in a beat up Impala station wagon.
Rinpoche emerged: starched shirt, black shorts, knee high socks, high boots, and a huge limp. Who is this man? Then, he spoke about having real nausea with your life and how that was the start of the path. At that moment, I thought, that’s the truest thing I’ve ever heard. From now onward, I will follow this man anywhere. He’s my teacher.
I had no idea there was a video. A few moments in, there’s Neil and there’s me. The talk is exquisite. Mind blower.
