Where is Zhenren?

(1866–1936). A highly respected Tibetan Buddhist lama, renowned for his spiritual accomplishments, scholarship, contributions to preserving and spreading Buddhist teachings, and establishing the first Gelugpa monasteries in regions where there had been none.

He was also the head of Ghoom Monastery from 1910 to 1936. During his tenure, the lama commissioned and oversaw the construction of the main 5-metre statue of Maitreya Buddha inside the monastery, as he had done in other monasteries.

The name Ngawang Kalsang was offered to him by the Eighth Panchen Lama when he entered Tashi Lhunpo Monastery at the age of eight. After twenty years of study he received the Kachen degree, which was the Tashi Lhunpo’s equivalent of the Geshe degree of Central Tibet’s great monastic universities.

In different holy places along the Himalayan snow mountain range, in caves and other isolated places, Geshe Rinpoche maintained his practice and actually saw the different meditational deities, receiving their blessings, teachings, guidance, and predictions.

He was the first of the Tibetan lamas to go on pilgrimage repeatedly to the Buddhist holy sites in India before this became an established practice. Domo Geshe Rinpoche was openly praised by both the Ninth Panchen Lama and the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, who referred to him as a “realized one who is completely tamed” and as someone who is “Lama to people inside and outside of Tibet and whose widespread fame resonates like the sound of a great bell.” Geshe Rinpoche enjoyed a close relationship with the Ninth Panchen Lama, from whom he received a special holy object: the mould for the famous image of Je Tsongkhapa called “Tsong-bon Geleg.”

Domo Geshe Rinpoche was also known as “the precious doctor of Chumbi,” since he healed numerous people using a variety of methods. The famous holy pills (rilbus) that he made from hundreds of sacred and medicinal ingredients were of unequalled power and cured many otherwise hopeless cases.

After his death in 1936, the Tibetan government allowed his body to be embalmed, although this practice is only customary in the case of the bodies of the Dalai and Panchen Lamas, noting: “In Southern Tibet, including Sikkim, etc., Domo Geshe Rinpoche’s activities were exactly like those of Je Tsongkhapa. In accordance, we will allow Rinpoche’s body to be preserved.”

(c.15–c.100 CE). A wonderful Greek philosopher born in Cappadocia; an ardent Pythagorean, who studied the Phoenician sciences under Euthydemus and Pythagorean philosophy and other studies under Euxenus of Heraclea. According to the tenets of this school, he remained a vegetarian all his long life, fed only on fruit and herbs, drank no wine, wore vestments made only of plant-fibres, walked barefoot, and let his hair grow to its full length, as all the Initiates before and after him. He was initiated by the priests of the temple of Asclepius at Aegae, and learnt many of the “miracles” for healing the sick wrought by the god of medicine. Having prepared himself for a higher initiation by a silence of five years, and by travel, visiting Antioch, Ephesus, Pamphylia, and other parts, he journeyed via Babylon to India, all his disciples having abandoned him, as they feared to go to the “land of enchantments.” A casual disciple, Damis, however, whom he met on his way, accompanied him in his travels. At Babylon he was initiated by the Chaldees and Magi, according to Damis, whose narrative was copied by one named Philostratus a hundred years later. After his return from India, he showed himself to be a true Initiate, in that the pestilences and earthquakes, deaths of kings and other events, which he prophesied duly happened. At Lesbos, the priests of Orpheus, being jealous of him, refused to initiate him into their peculiar mysteries, though they did so several years later. He preached to the people of Athens and other cities the purest and noblest ethics, and the phenomena he produced were as wonderful as they were numerous and well attested. “How is it,” enquires Justin Martyr in dismay, “how is it that the talismans (telesmata) of Apollonius have power, for they prevent, as we see, the fury of the waves and the violence of the winds, and the attacks of the wild beasts; and whilst our Lord’s miracles are preserved by tradition alone, those of Apollonius are most numerous and actually manifested in present facts?” But an answer is easily found to this in the fact that after crossing the Hindu Kush, Apollonius had been directed by a king to the abode of the Sages, whose abode it may be to this day, by whom he was taught unsurpassed knowledge. His dialogues with the Corinthian Menippus indeed give us the esoteric catechism and disclose (when understood) many an important mystery of nature. Apollonius was the friend, correspondent, and guest of kings and queens, and no marvellous or “magic” powers are better attested than his. At the end of his long and wonderful life, he opened an esoteric school at Ephesus, and died aged almost one hundred years.