An Extract from: Wheel and the Diamond
From chapter 1: The Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Cultural Institute

Dhardo Rimpoche was in his late sixties. He had a grey moustache, a wispy beard, and virtually no hair – all of which gave him a highly oriental appearance. His eyes were sharp and clear, and they narrowed in wrinkling creases as they were taken up into a cheery and enormously welcoming smile. My pilgrimage had arrived at its culmination.

Although it is more customary to perform kneeling prostrations, or the kowtow, I made three full-length prostrations before Rimpoche. Nothing less could have given expression to my feelings at that moment. As I rose I presented Rimpoche with the traditional white offering scarf. He beckoned me with his extended hand to sit down. Taking this for a more familiar sort of welcome, I grasped it in a handshake. The gasps of astonishment from Jampel, and the others who were present told me that I had made my first social gaffe, but Rimpoche himself, though surprised, did not seem in the least perturbed. He returned the handshake and continued to beckon me to a seat by the window.

At first, it was all I could do to contain my excitement. Every time I tried to speak I burst out laughing – and every time I did so Rimpoche joined in himself. Eventually I was able to tell him how long I had wanted to visit and that I was delighted to be there. He welcomed me and, having heard that I had been sick in Bodh Gaya and Calcutta, asked after my health. When he enquired after Sangharakshita's health I took the opportunity to present the gift with which Sangharakshita had entrusted me. It was an expensive pen with a modern filling mechanism about which Sangharakshita had taken the trouble to write a carefully-worded letter:

'Dear Suvajra, This afternoon I went into Norwich and was able to get a rather fine, gold-plated pen for Dhardo Rimpoche. It is of a new type, and you may have to show him how to fill it. Basically, after removing the cap one unscrews the pen and then fills it by screwing the plunger down towards the nib and then unscrewing it in the reverse direction. I hope this makes sense.'

Rimpoche took great care in opening the package (carefully keeping the wrapping paper lest it come in handy) and gave a series of 'Ooh's of delight when he discovered what it contained. He took the long strip of complex instructions from the box and passed them, without a second look, to his secretary, who examined them earnestly. Letting out several more 'Ooh's, Rimpoche dismantled the pen and discovered how to operate the filling mechanism without the least help from myself or the string of instructions. This was clearly a capable man who, I was later told, often made little table lamps and thought nothing of installing electric cables. Now, fully satisfied that he knew how the pen worked, he admired it lovingly and clipped it inside the collar of his inner shirt alongside another one, his working pen. As a gift from Sangharakshita, the new pen was so precious that he would never use it. After his death it was found carefully packed in its velvet and silk-lined box.

Rimpoche seemed to have a disarming simplicity and unaffected directness. Already, within those first moments, I had seen some of his most characteristic qualities: his earnest concern about my health, his practicality, and his sense of the relativity of social conventions.

Only when it seemed appropriate did I take things further by asking him about the text he had been reading when I came in. He told me that it concerned Shunyata, or 'Emptiness', one of the most profound teachings in Buddhism. This seemed to take the conversation much further. His answer made me pause for a moment. I thought of my own difficulties in attempting to combine a busy life running the Manchester Buddhist Centre with meditation and other kinds of formal Buddhist practice. I therefore asked him how he reconciled the demands of the worldly activities involved in running a school and monastery with those of formal Buddhist practice. His answer was straightforward but, nonetheless, astonishing.