LAMA YESHE

The most important person in my life was Lame Thubten Yeshe. I met him in 1970 at his center in Kopan in the Kathmandu valley. He was 35 years old, and at first he just seemed to be another extremely friendly Tibetan, as had been all the ones I met on my trek into the mountains.
As I got to know him, I became fascinated with the way he dealt with us troubled Westerners. His style was extreme kindness and sometimes it took long for me to realize the strength of his non-interference.
For example an American girl arrived who insisted on meditating in the extreme. She did not talk or wash herself or eat, she just sat, and Thubten Yeshe said: “That’s very good. Meditation very good!” I thought it was too much; something should be done! But it went on and on for two weeks until hunger and exhaustion overcame her and she keeled over. Her father came and brought her home. Later she wrote a letter and thanked Lama Yeshe; the experience, she said, had been of great help to her.
I took this picture of Lama Yeshe in California the last summer before he passed away on the morning of the Tibetan New Year in 1984.


In the beginning at Kopan, Lama Yeshe would teach in Tibetan every Wednesday afternoon with Lama Zopa Rimpoche as translator. I must admit that I went as a duty. The sentences unfolded slowly, slowly, and the talk was of hungry ghosts and of eight cold hells and the various pains suffered in them, and it was not clear to me how this connected to my life.
It was the way in which Lamas Yeshe dealt with the craziest situations and turned them into learning experiences that made it clear to me what an exceptional being he was.
I remember once when my Tibetan neighbor on the other side of a plywood wall started bumping things around at five in the morning. I knocked on the wall and he responded with a powerful thump that dislodged a framed picture. In no time the Tibetan monk and I were facing each other outside and the tempers were up, but before it came to blows Lama materialized next to us saying: "Excuse me - excuse me!" That cooled me down right away, and I could only say: "Excuse me!" I thought I had overcome anger!
When Lama Yeshe started his Sunday talks in English, the teachings began to make sense to me. Lama immediately found his style, the directness that was fit to our understanding. One image still stands clear in my mind: When he talked about how we add qualifications to the objects, he said: "Now if there was dog kaka there, you would think: 'How disgusting!'" - and he was such a conjurer that I had a vision of the dog turd right in front of me - "But if a dog came in", he said, while he leaned forward and sniffed, "it would just sniff it and think: 'Oh, how interesting!'"
I had the great good fortune to be Lamas attendant when he was in Santa Cruz the last summer before he passed away. It was pure joy to be with him. His kindness knew no limit; he was like a bosom friend. For example when his comrade from the monastery in Tibet, Geshe Gyatso, was visiting and they spoke in Tibetan, he would stop and translate the gist of their conversation for me.
One Sunday we watched a tear-jerking movie on TV about a boy that got lost and then reunited with his family. I felt a little ashamed of how much I cried, but when the movie was over and I turned to Lama, his cheeks were completely wet and we burst out laughing.
Lama showed a keen interest in my life and asked me intimate questions about both my sex life and my beliefs.
“You have girlfriend?” he asked.
“ No, I have a boyfriend,” I said.
“Maybe that’s even better - you really know each other,” he said and held his two index fingers next to each other. “It’s like Tantra,” and after a pause: “if you don’t loose energy!” This was often the way he gave his teachings to me, just a short remark aside, but it stuck in my mind.
I told him that my sexual preference had been a problem for me and he said with angry emphasis: “Don’t listen to society. They are so stupid!”


The things that I learned from Lama Yeshe:
First of all: pure love is the love that is equal for all sentient beings.
Second: whatever happens, it is my karma created by me, and I can blame only my self.
Third: there is only one absolute truth, Sunyata. Anything that can be described is at best a relative truth.
Fourth: no action is inherently good or bad; it all depends on the motivation.