Crystal Stories

Ken's Notes

  • 28Feb (Sun) : Magic. [No notes].
  • 10Mar (Wed) : Padmasambhava Day - 2nd stage of Milarepa wongkur. [No Notes]

Documents

The VISION Alan Wilkie (New Zealand) Near the end of the extended New Zealand retreat in 1973, Milton Carmen wrote a proposal for a new Darma community, signed and approved by Rinpoche. I remember...

Contributed Stories

Rab Wilkie It was a very good year, 1971. Earlier, during the previous autumn, Rinpoche announced that he was travelling to India in the spring and would anyone like to accompany him? Was there was...
(Early Days, Palmerston Boulevard) Henri van Bentum This story takes place in the late 1960’s when I used to spend most of the morning at Rinpoche’s house, arriving there with him after the...
Peter Boag (Mexico 1973) We were the lucky four, at least we started out thinking so. Chosen from the whole group to ride with Rinpoche up the coast from Mexico to Vancouver, we were indeed...
Brian McLeod (Nov 11, 2007) After a Manjusri wongkur in Wupperthal, Germany, one of Rinpoche's English students asked, "What shall we do with the sword?" Rinpoche replied, "Typical! Show a...
Gerry Kopelow (Lama Gyurme Dorje) MY POTENTIAL During a retreat at the Dharma Centre of Canada, Rinpoche got into a psychotherapeutic mode. One morning in class he instructed us to compress the...
ARTS And FLOWERS Henri van Bentum This took place during one of the public talks given by Ananda Bodhi in the late 1960's at the Theosophical Society in Toronto. The class was well-attended. The...
Gerry Kopelow A few years ago my Dharma group assisted Rinpoche's first teacher, the Sayadaw U Thila Wunta, in the construction of a 21ft pagoda at the St. Norbert's Arts and Cultural Centre on the...
Dave Pooch Auckland, New Zealand In 1982 Rinpoche was leading a retreat at Yoshino, a mountain village close to Nara in southern Japan. At the time I was on a business trip to Japan and had told...
Peter Boag The problem with clinging is that until you let it go, either you cling to it or it clings to you. Either way is suffering. Here's a story of my own clinging that spans more than twenty...
CLARIFICATION For the record, here below is the first part of a biography of Namgyal Rinpoche by Lama Sonam Gyatso, his student and first attendant, from early years in Britain to later in...
Alan Wilkie (New Zealand) Since your reference to 'The Bead Game' in Crystal Collection #1^, various memories have come back to me. (Incidentally, 'The Glass Bead Game' - literal translation of...
Dear David and Rab I have wanted to support your project but as I reflected on my long journey with Rinpoché, I realised that I mostly remembered the outflows and implications of interactions...
Michael Brine (Yukon) To tell my story I need to go back before I met the Venerable Ananda Bodhi - as he was known in 1967. In 1966 I was spending a few days in Malta with my greatest friend Peter...
Jacques Varian You asked: "What is the dance of of the World Serpent?" Well, first, you should know that during our six weeks in Paleohora, Rinpoche taught many things, but when he tried to teach...
PILGRIMAGE 1971 (Part 3) My Inner Purity Russell Rolfe (from part 2) … I was told I would miss an exceedingly rare opportunity to sleep in the presence of hundreds of age-old sacred Tibetan...
Charlene Jones (2006) Life winds us up and puts us where we need to be, most often it seems when we are not looking. The Dharma Center of Canada is the 400 acres of land in Kinmount, Ontario...
Linda Rainbird (Wales) I write this out of respect for all Namgyal Rinpoche taught and gave me in the 33 years with him and the subsequent years still learning from him.. I am sure if Rinpoche were...
Rumtek Monastery 1971 - Russell Rolfe Pilgrimage Part One is the Darjeeling Demon At the meeting that night we learned that our permits to enter Sikkim, so generously secured by the Canadian...
Lama Sonam Gyatso Rinpoche once remarked to me about his students, "With most teachers, the students all look the same but my students have nothing in common with each other.. except me!"
(August 5, 1993) The Dharma Centre of Canada David Berry Questioner to Namgyal Rinpoche: "Would you say that.. " Rinpoche: "Don't accuse me like that." Questioner: "But you don't know what I am...
Monks At Green River (1971) Rab Wilkie The air was crisp and cool that evening and the grassy path was covered with fallen leaves as we walked past a large shed towards the house, looming white...
Joanna Estelle The two months I spent studying with Namgyal Rinpoche were brief, but dramatic. It was the spring of 1971, he was known as Bhikkhu Ananda Bodhi, and he lived in a house on Palmerston...
The DARJEELING DEMON Russell Rolfe Lightening flashed constantly in the distance as our caravan of pilgrims drove towards the foothills of the Himalayas. We didn't have thunderstorms like this in...
Byron Stevens Dear Collectors; There are so many stories where does one start? I have one which may or may not provide benefit, but at least hopefully some mirth. I also apologize in advance for...
The GALAPAGOS SHIPWRECK (1969): A Not-Too-Enchanted Voyage to the "Enchanted Islands" [Part One] Henri van Bentum Ananda Bodhi asked me to make arrangements to visit the 'Enchanted Islands',...
PART TWO Henri van Bentum, Victoria BC, Canada (read Part One here) Guyaquil, Ecuador We all booked into the Humboldt Hotel. The boat that would take us to the Galapagos Islands was the "Cristobal...
Sharon Davison-Fleetwood It was a wonderful summer day and Rinpoche was offering 21 days of Tara wongkur and teachings at Tseringma House. I was new to the process of coming, sitting and waiting...
Peter Dederichs Once upon a time there was a little boy and his mother, (the Good Mother), who lived a simple but religious life. The Good Mother used to pray every day and see her spiritual...
Peter Dederichs I think it was in 1969 when my mother and I went to Mexico with Rinpoche and a group of people. We drove, and I remember very clearly being nine years old at the time, cramped in...
The RUG MERCHANT'S TAB Oliver Harte Trying to do the Lord's work with Rinpoche was like trying to pin a rug dealer on a low price. He would just sidestep wherever you were going. Or as Scott would...
David Berry As one of two people ordained on September 11 2003, the last ordination that Namgyal Rinpoche performed at the Dharma Centre and perhaps the last in his life as he died 41 days...
John de Jardin, interviewed by Stuart Hertzog, Oct 17, 2004, Victoria, BC. I met the boat and we all went to Worpswede, and Rinpoche mentioned that he wanted to take a little holiday - to do this...
page_revision: 53, last_edited: 1211615917|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z (%O ago)
Unless stated otherwise Content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License