Born in the high grasslands of eastern Tibet in 1928, Garje Khamtrul Rinpoche is the fourth incarnation of Akyab Lama, a revered scholar who served as spiritual advisor to the Manchu Emperor Ch’ienlung. For twenty years, Garje Khamtrul Rinpoche was trained and groomed to carry on the spiritual traditions of his country. But when his homeland fell to the Chinese Communists in 1956, he laid aside his religious career to serve his people, first as a resistance leader and later as a government servant in India, including a stint as General Secretary to the Tibetan Government-in-exile’s Department of Religious Affairs. Rinpoche says, “Since retiring from government service, I have mainly been mindful of, attentive to and conscientious in my actions, words and thoughts while continually directing my mind to the impermanence of compounded things, the suffering in contaminated things, the selflessness of all phenomena and the peace that is nirvana. With confidence in these four summary points, I have remained in the fundamental and innate luminosity my root lama so kindly pointed out, the all-encompassing, uncompounded dharmakaya, the great bliss that doesn’t fall into siding with samsara or nirvana, the clear, pure, relaxed, carefree and unimpeded state unadulterated by dualistic appearances of adopting and abandoning, hopes and fears, accepting and rejecting. Like the master of illusory existence–nothing exists truly–who knows the illusory nature in everything he does, whether eating, sleeping, going to and fro or sitting, I allow whatever appears to arise of itself and be freed by itself, like a ripple dissolving back into water. And so I have leisurely passed my days, my body at ease, my mind happy.”