My Eight Main Teachers — part 6

So from him we come to another Khyentse Rimpoche. I should explain that there were five Khyentse Rimpoches, ostensibly reincarnations, according to Tibetan Buddhism, of the body, speech, mind, guna and karma of the previous Khyentse Rimpoche who is known as the Great Khyentse Rimpoche. And Jamyang Khyentse Rimpoche was the chief of the five, and Dilgo Khyentse Rimpoche was the sort of brother tulku if you see what I mean. I met him in the late fifties when he was living in the Bhutanese gompa in Kalimpong together with his wife and his two daughters. I must mention that all of them, the whole family, were very, very tall. They were at least six-and-a-half feet high. Dilgo Khyentse himself, his wife and his two daughters — they were absolute giants. He was at the same time a very gentle, very kindly person and a very great scholar. He was always reading. Whenever I went to see him he always had a book in his hands, which he put aside as I entered. I received many initiations from him. He was a very humble, unassuming person, didn’t make much of a splash, didn’t look for disciples. And he’s still living, and he has visited the United States more than once. Where he is, I’m not sure, he may well be in Nepal; sometimes messages or greetings pass between us. So that’s Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.