Venerable Bokar Rinpoche

I never met him, but sometimes a person will shine through other people in such a way that it feels like I have.

I'll always hold Bokar Rinpoche in my heart, for the moment when Bill suddenly softened and quoted him, holding up his hand -- unconsciously, I think -- in a teaching mudra, and in a soft resonant voice said:

"Nothing to do. Just -- nothing to do."

This from a man who of course did everything, the whole nine yards of the institutional schtick. But he held on to that knowledge, that on a deeper level there was nothing that needed to be done, nothing that needed fixing; and he conveyed it to others -- pale anxious fussy foreigners from half a world away, among them.