By Adele Hulse

I have been working on Lama Yeshe’s biography for four years now. When I run into students, as one does, we chat for a bit and then they say, “And uh, how is the book going? When will it be out?” So for all those who never run into me, let me tell you where we’re up to.

The idea is of course to create as vivid and as truthful a biography as possible, and my safeguards are the tried and true methods of exhaustive research and long consideration. Lama Yeshe was a ground-breaker, there is no one who does not honor him as such, and he dedicated himself to translating Tibetan Buddhism to the West. His first students were mostly raving hippies, the first wave of Himalayan hash-shop trekkies who came with their backpacks and a list of Indian ashrams they heard of on the way. If Sister Max had not had a proper job at the American school in Kathmandu, the FPMT might not exist today. “Too muchy!” Lama learned to say in the old Blue Tibetan Cafe dressed in the latest American polyester shirts Zina bought for him. No other Tibetan lama was getting around in gear like that; it must have taken unshakeable will and enormous affection. Lama continued to wear funky robes, and many will remember with some emotion his favorite fuchsia fringed zen. He even wore it on His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s tour of Europe in 1982.

“Tell people about Lama, write about what you’re learning,” said Robina as she spins me another deadline. I tell you, some days I just can’t go on typing for half an hour because what I just typed touches me so much. After I had recorded the death of Lama’s first Western student, Zina Rachevsky in late August 1973, I had to stop for the afternoon. I never met Zina, but her fabulous and eccentric great-heartedness, her triumph over a life of loneliness and suffering, which was not helped by the fact that she was a drop-dead traffic-stopping platinum blonde with a film star figure and a life in the fastest of the fast lanes – when she died saying her mantras in the mountains I just had to turn everything off and think about her and what we all owe her.

And always in the background the indescribably thin, most ascetic, sometimes tubercular Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who was a lot older than people thought, though he did look about 15 for a long time. Lama Zopa, the English speaker – what a miracle that was for us. Lama Zopa sitting on his bed meditating or studying or coughing. And at night, when the dark unelectrified Kopan hill lay quiet but for the rustle of stray dogs, there would burst into the black silence the most ridiculous, pealing, infectious, raucous, outrageous laughter, on and on, so that all who heard it – and how could they fail? – were refreshed and smiled and stayed on.

I have now collated about 500 pages of archive, that is, sorted out everyone’s story and put the bits in more less the right order, up until the 11th course of November 1978. His Holiness Zong Rinpoche has just completed his first tour of the West at Lama Yeshe’s invitation. There are now 17 centers around the world, and the first CPMT meeting has been held in England. Wisdom Publications has published its first book, Lama’s Silent Mind, Holy Mind. The Geshe Training Program will begin at Manjushri Institute in England on January 1, 1979.

Lama Yeshe should have been dead six years ago, according to doctors. His heart, which has three damaged valves, continues to perform against all possible odds, including four years’ solid international travel, a passion for cheesecake and leaping up steep paths at Lawudo. Lama has received his California driving license, which he proudly shows to fellow geshes at Kopan. The heart conditions of those who taught Lama to drive may have been as fragile as his own after a few sessions. Lama loves to drive wildly, though he has only had two accidents – one in Queensland and one in Ibiza.

When they have a chance, the lamas rush to Bodhgaya, Dharamsala or south India for teachings with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Whenever they return from a teaching tour they go straight to Dharamsala to report everything they have seen and learned and done to His Holiness. “Some of the students of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa are beginning to subdue their minds,” said Kalu Rinpoche.

We continue. It’s not so easy to just pull out a section and give it to you in this column. The archive has to be checked and completed before I start again on the whole thing, this time turning the focus intensely onto Lama and telling the story as clearly and in as few words as possible. As Lama himself was so fond of saying: “Long way to go baby!”