Timeless Rapture: Inspired Verse from the Shangpa Masters

The Shangpa Masters and Their Lineage 377
year retreat center. Bokar Rinpoché, who had long deeply wished to
accomplish such a retreat, was overjoyed at the plans and helped enthusiastically
with the building work, which was done with whatever was at
hand since money was scarce. The work was finished in three months and
the retreat began. The program was devoted to the Shangpa lineage practices;
Kalu Rinpoché himself transmitted to his disciples the empowerments
and instructions. This was how during three years (1964–1967)
Bokar Rinpoché joyfully absorbed the new lineage now available to him.
During the second retreat at Sonada, Bokar Rinpoché continued to live
in the retreat center but did not participate in the full program of meditation.
While he was free to come and go as he pleased, Kalu Rinpoché
conferred on him the responsibility of guiding the new retreatants, the
role of retreat master (drubpön). Later, however, he joined the third retreat
(1971–1974) as a full participant, happy that Kalu Rinpoché had accepted
his request that the retreat be focused on the Karma Kagyu lineage, which
fulfilled his aspiration that had been frustrated a few years earlier by the
Chinese army’s occupation of Lhasa. The training he received in this retreat
allowed him to later accept Karmapa’s invitation to be the master of
Rumtek’s retreat center.
In all, Bokar Rinpoché stayed with Kalu Rinpoché for twenty-five years
and accompanied him until his final breath. Here is his personal assessment
of that relationship:
To be honest, in the beginning I saw him as a good lama, whom I
respected and in whom I had confidence, but I didn’t have any
special feelings of devotion or faith toward him. Then gradually
over the years, I glimpsed his vast qualities. In fact, they were so
deep that they were impossible for me to grasp right away. Yet the
more I discovered them, the more my faith and devotion grew until
I became convinced that Kalu Rinpoché was one with Buddha
Vajra Bearer, which is to say that he had realized the nature of all
things, the body of ultimate enlightenment.
On completion of his retreats at Sonada, Bokar Rinpoché planned to
withdraw into a hermitage, but Kalu Rinpoché dissuaded him. He advised
his disciple to continue living in a monastic setting.
In 1984, while visiting Mirik, a village near Sonada that seemed promis
ing to him, Bokar Rinpoché had the idea of founding a small retreat