Tuesday Lobsang Rampa - Tibetan Monk and Author

In 1971 I read a book that would change my life: The Third Eye by T. Lobsang Rampa. T. Lobsang, a Buddhist Lama, told the story of his early years as an acolyte in a Chokpori Buddhist monastery in Tibet. The trials and severe austerity. A life of hot buttered tea and tsampa (a grain based porridge), endless rituals and meditation. And for him the opening of the “Third Eye” where a heated and treated sliver of wood pierces the bone at the bridge of his nose (between the eyes), thus awaking clairvoyant and spiritual capabilities.

I became fascinated by the work of T. Lobsang and his version of Tibetan Buddhism. He seemed so wise and insightful. His collected works accompanied me on my obligatory rite of passage around Europe in the mid-1970s. Quentin, my traveling companion and a New Zealander, would frequently ask me how T. Lobsang might view certain events such as the latest policy decision the then New Zealand dictator; Piggy (Robert) Muldoon.

It came as a great shock to me to learn, a few years later, that T. Lobsang was not really a Tibetan lama at all but Cyril Henry Hoskin, a plumber from Plymton in the UK. He claimed the Lama had occupied his mind and body through the process of transmigration. When asked, the Dalai Lama very kindly stated that T. Lobsang had done much to raise the Tibetan cause in the eyes of the world but:

“In 1972, Rampa's French language agent Alain Stanké wrote to the Dalai Lama and asked for his opinion about Rampa's identity. He received a reply from the Dalai Lama's deputy secretary stating ‘I wish to inform you that we do not place credence in the books written by the so-called Dr. T. Lobsang Rampa. His works are highly imaginative and fictional in nature.”

So I decided I had better find out about the real Buddhism of the Shakyamuni Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, his many contemporaries and followers. This led me on a 40 year journey of exploration through various Buddhist traditions from the Theravada to Dzogchen, years of meditation and practice. Working to still the mind and move beyond obscuration. And now Mauro Bergonzi has laid down the greatest challenge of all! To let the seeker die. This is very confronting. What Mauro means is that we all have, within us, the means to liberation right now. We don’t need to go on a path to find it. Just step back behind awareness and allow ourselves to fall into the unknown.