4th Time Was the Charm!!

Yesterday I found my refuge master -- and root guru.  I was privileged to spend two hours in a private meeting with Rinpoche, receiving many teachings in his characteristic enthusiastic manner ("Totally a hallucination!!  Completely!!")  I feel that it would have been rude, and made it much more difficult to concentrate on what Rinpoche was saying, to take photos while he was talking, but I really wish there had been a fly on the wall to take some, because watching him talk is a genuine experience.  He gesticulates constantly, waving his arms around, making a chopping motion with his right hand every time he refers to "cutting the root of samsara".  

On Sunday when I spoke to Roger, his assistant, Roger asked whether in my letter I meant to request that Rinpoche perform the actual refuge ritual, or whether I was just saying that I intended to take refuge at one point.  When he mentioned Rinpoche performing the ritual I responded, "Oh that would be WONDERFUL if only Rinpoche had the time!"  Roger indicated on Sunday that finding the time would be difficult, and I never dreamed that it was Rinpoche's intent to do so on Monday!!

I had left work at 2 pm so I could be at Deer Park in time for our (fourth) scheduled meeting at 4 pm, and actually got there at 3:20.  I waited in the designated place, on a bench outside the annex where Rinpoche was staying, until 4, and then called Roger's cell phone to let him know I'd arrived.  At 4:30 I called again and asked Roger to return my call when he received the message.  At 4:45 I had pretty much given up, and asked one of the monks to take a message and leave it in Roger's room; the message said that I was going to stay on the grounds until 6, and I went off to take some photos of the stupa marking the place where His Holiness the Dalai Lama had performed the first kalachakra initiation in the West.

I had just finished hiking up the hill to the stupa when my cell phone rang and it was Roger.  "Would you like to come upstairs?"  I practically ran back to the annex and hauled myself up the two flights of stairs to where Roger and Losang, my new French monk friend who had been trying to make sure I got to see Rinpoche, kept trying to pour water/tea/coffee/juice for me as if we were in the desert trying to prevent dehydration.  (The trouble was, I ALREADY had to pee but didn't want to leave the suite to walk down the hill to the rest rooms!)

Merry Colony, from FPMT Education, had warned me that I would forget everything I wanted to say and everything Rinpoche said to me, so I had brought a notebook with my questions in it and an MP3 recorder to capture everything Rinpoche said.  (To no avail, as it turns out, because he speaks so quickly and softly that I would have had to hang the recorder around his neck for it to get all of what he was saying.)  

I'll say more about our conversation after I have a chance to absorb more of it ...