A heartfelt encounter with a beautiful being
Lama Yeshe Losel Rinpoche and his book: From a mountain in Tibet
With Lama Yeshe Losel Rinpoche
One of the highlights of my recent visit to Melting Forum in Ostrava, Czech Republic, was meeting Lama Yeshe Losel Rinpoche. I loved reading Rinpoche’s book, From a Mountain in Tibet, A Monk’s Journey, published in 2020. When I heard that all the speakers would be staying in the same hotel, I took my copy of his book to request an autograph.
Rinpoche’s story is an unusual one. The younger brother of Akong Rinpoche, a tulku – i.e. recognised reincarnated lama – in the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, Lama Yeshe found himself in a Tibetan monastery at a young age. But he hated it. The monastery was not for him. He tells the story that when the Red Army invaded Tibet in 1959 and monks were forced to flee, he felt liberated from a lifestyle not of his choosing.
His tale of the journey across the Himalayas to safety in India is harrowing, however. Of a group of 300 who started out, only 13 survived.