A THOUSAND ARMS
At the age of five he wanted to become a monk. By the age of fourteen he was a monk and knew of four of his previous reincarnations (he has pictures of them on his iMac screen). His vision was to be a monk, live in a Tibetan monastery, and devote his life to learning and practicing the dharma.
At sixteen Tsengdok Rinpoche left Tibet, crossing the Himalayas to India on foot. He continued to study and practice the dharma. He now lives and works in Vancouver, bringing the dharma to the world.
In our story Tsengdok is one of seven monks touring Canada, creating sand mandalas in communities from coast to coast. The sand mandala is representative of all human creations, and visions – beautiful, ultimately ephemeral and impermanent.
Tsengdok Rinpoche was required by fate and circumstance to follow a path seemingly moving further and further away from his original vision ... only to discover in the end that it was the most direct path to the realization of that vision.
