Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you got a letter in the mail when you were 17, signed by someone who had a direct pipeline to Ultimate Meaning, telling you exactly who you really were and what your true destiny is? In Phoenix I stayed with a guy who got a letter like that when he was growing up in India.  

The letter was from the Dalai Lama, and it said he was not a 17 year old confused kid after all. He was really the Dharma King, the spiritual leader of a remote region in eastern Tibet. Rinpoche’s first thought was, “Am I going to have to cut my hair? Give up sex? Say goodbye to my girlfriend?” He spent the next 12 years memorizing 2,000 year old ancient texts at the Drepung monastery in Northern India, the whole time craving the kind of understanding that comes from experience. Maybe a monastery sounds like a terrific place to become a deep person, but he said that wasn’t its effect on him – he was sheltered and had a big ego and had no respect for other religions and never talked to ordinary monks. He was a snob.

Not until he got to America did he become open-minded. He came on a tour a few years ago. He likes that not everyone treats him like a divine being here. The Abbott wanted him back at the monastery, but being here is best for him. Rinpoche says sometimes he wishes he were an ordinary person. One day he called to say he was moving into an apartment by himself, so that nobody can control him.

He was skilled at minimizing his anguish over everyday struggles, but he still faced them routinely and fought his urges like any of us. Possessing that letter had not relieved him of having to figure out where he really belonged, and make some hard choices. In his mind, this question was not settled.

We have mixed feelings about the seductive notion of destiny. There’s a persistent tension between wanting our life’s purpose to be revealed to us by some higher power, and wanting to scrap and fight for it against all odds – to earn it without help. We think about destiny sort of like how we feel about inheritance – we covet its fruit, but it’s sweeter if we earned it ourselves.

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