Akong Rinpoché and Samye Ling: Part 7

Sherab Palden Beru: a Priceless Friend

Sherab Palden was a Tibetan master accomplished in many fields, having been his monastery’s ritual leader (umdze), bursar, caravan leader but first and foremost a master-artist, to become later in his life the surviving main exponent of the Karma Gadri school of thangkpa painting. Akong Rinpoché and Trungpa Rinpoché had met Sherab in India, where the latter was doing artwork in Delhi and helping the famous Lokesh Chandra with his research into Tibetan iconography and also taught art in the Young Lamas Home School. Knowing what a valuable asset he would be, they brought him to Samye Ling in its earliest days.

Some thirty years Akong Rinpoché’s senior, Sherab became his ideal companion, confidant and advisor. As a general rule, eminent Tibetan lamas are loners: not necessarily lonely but having little or no peer contact. The relationships between most rinpochés tend to be rather formal and polite; respectful yet remote. The advanced practice of dharma itself leads to a lack of need for worldly familiarity and requires one to stand alone in full happiness and courage. Although that is the theory, in practice the fact that tulkus are removed from their birth families early on and brought up strictly, without close friends, can be challenging for the best of rinpochés. Furthermore, Tibetans by nature tend to trust only family. Akong Rinpoché stated this many times and also pointed out how it takes Tibetans a long time to form a deep friendship but that, once formed, it is a totally-dedicated relationship: people would die for each other.

The main peer-to-peer relationship enjoyed by Rinpoché had been that with Trungpa Rinpoché, with whom, as mentioned, he had spent some significant moments in his life story up to 1969. In the period 1969-1985, i.e. until his younger brother Jamphel Drakpa, now become Lama Yeshe Losal, joined him, Akong Rinpoché was very much on his own, in a still strange land. He had guidance from the great masters visiting Samye Ling and most particularly from the Gyalwang Karmapa, Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoché and the Very Ven. Kalu Rinpoché yet these were passing figures in his life. Although not technically a “rinpoché”, Sherab Palden had spent much of his life meditating and was a profoundly-spiritual person, as well as being a wise and knowledgeable one. His maturity in years and long experience in Tibet itself and of Tibet’s great masters, such as the previous Tai Situpa, made him an ideal companion for Rinpoché.

In the earlier years they were often to be seen walking around Samye Ling, hand in hand, discussing various things. Blessed with longevity, Sherab passed away a centenarian, only a year before Rinpoché. The author witnessed on innumerable occasions the strength these two special beings brought to each other and how their combined skills shaped Samye Ling as we know it today. 

......continue to the next part of the story: Leading the First Group Pilgrimage