Hey Everyone,
I don’t know if people would find this interesting, but I’ve been thinking a lot about this new book ever since I saw it on the shelf of my library - I ordered it a few months back because I thought it looked remarkable, then forgot about it until it came in. It’s about a “successful” monk, who was in charge of three monasteries, who did what might seem impossible nowadays, and maybe possibly insane - he left his monastery, without money, passport, phone, nothing, and wandered as a mendicant for around three years, at some point getting food poisoning and almost dying. I would love to hear what others think about this - for some reason I find this story so ridiculously inspiring, if admittedly utterly quixotic. I feel like Rinpoche sort of actually walks the walk, when other spiritual teachers are perfectly content to rest on their laurels. Of course, I’m not sure many people would be the sort of “holy (very intelligent) fool” that Rinpoche seems to have been, in order to make such an astonishing leap. But I just am absolutely amazed that he did this thing, and that he used his what sounds like very traumatic experiences to hone his practice. Here is a link to the Publisher’s Weekly review:
And here is an article in the Guardian, way before he wrote the book, when he had literally disappeared, and people did not know where he was:
