Yeshe

I got my Tibetan name, Yeshe Palden, from Lama Yeshe. It means ‘Having glorious transcendental Wisdom’. All Tibetan names are like that, road signs pointing at the highest aspirations. What I liked specially about my name was that it contained the wisdom part, Yeshe, from Lama Yeshe’s name.
There was one boy, the son of an Italian couple that I had met at Kopan in Nepal back in the early seventies, who also had the name Yeshe. He came to visit at Vajrapani when he was nine years old.

From my diary, July 15, 1985:

Today left my little wisdom-brother. Just before we separated yesterday he asked me: “Do you have a good life?”

I had a shower before writing this, on the balcony surrounded by pink and purple flowers, in the warm breeze, the cool water.

Playing robot with Yeshe yesterday he had a soft-button on his spine in the hollow of his back. I demonstrated him for the others and when I turned him soft he collapsed in a heap on the floor, his big porcelain eyes staring, empty of expression, a limp Pinocchio.

I said: “Yes, I have a good life; what about you?”
And he said: “Oh! I have a very good life.”
Already at the age of nine he is so full of human qualities of the kind that elevates man.