In 1982, Sechen Kongtrul, Rinpoche, aka Master Gesar, was sent to a private preparatory, or 'prep', school in England at age eight. I offered to accompany him there, as his ex-Governor Head Tutor, to ensure he settled in alright so far away from his parents in a foreign country. (I was also vaguely considering moving back to England, finding America increasingly out of wack.) Before leaving, I enjoyed a brief tête a tête with his father who typically did not have all that much to say except for one clear recommendation: 'take him up to Cambridge to meet Ato Rinpoche, a fully realized Mahasiddha'. (He also gave me one of the Karmapa's gold Buddhas to take to Ireland, which I did; I believe it has since been moved to Koln.) We indeed went to Cambridge where the two met, but Ato was a little ill that day and Gesar a tad disoriented during this his first weekend off from the boarding school in a foreign country making it a somewhat perfunctory, albeit friendly, visit. Ato Rinpoche wanted to show me his shrine, in a small room upstairs. The rest of the house was all England, but here it was Tibet. It reminded me of Rinpoche's shrine at the Court, with many statues and colourful paintings. About fifteen years later I met Ato Rinpoche again in Dechen Choling, where I had invited him to teach, remembering Rinpoche's high praise. He arrived in a snappy three-piece brown suit, looking like a cross between a retired executive, a monk and a general in civvies. He taught the Noble Eightfold Path, which he said is too often overlooked by teachers and students alike. During a dinner with the senior staff before his departure, I felt overwhelmed with a sense of combined devotion and sadness, marvelling that someone of his erudition, grace and loftiness of spirit had been living with us for decades in the West working as a humble orderly in an obscure mental institution, cleaning up patient vomit and excrement. We found ourselves exchanging vague, non-sequitur jokes or some such; at the end he leaned over to me, touching our foreheads, and simply said 'Old Friend, Old Friend' before leaving the dinner and heading up to bed. There are people one meets in life who touch you deeply albeit in the simplest of ways; Ato Rinpoche was one such. Indeed, despite all the problems aired about our lineages and Tibetan politics and so forth, it still amazes me how often one finds these rare, precious individuals here in the West in the form of Tibetan exiles, despite how few of them there are. Between birth and death we are all exiles, as was our beloved teacher; we come, we dwell for a while, and then we go. Ato Rinpoche was a true treasure, a veritable bodhisattva, a realized mahasiddha, the real deal, living proof that life and this our world is not a lost cause, that the struggles are worth it. Fare well old friend.