I was just reading -- at dinner tonight -- a description of the Dalai Lama's meeting with Thomas Merton (in
Re-Enchantment: Tibetan Buddhism Comes to the West by Jeffrey Paine). What was really cool though was Merton's encounter with another lama, the last one he saw before he left India.
Anyway, all this lama would teach Merton was the very advanced technique of shooting consciousness out of the fontanel at the time of death. Merton wrote in his journal something like that doesn't seem too useful. But within a few weeks, Merton was dead. Accidental electrocution. The Lama said later that he could sense that Merton did not have long to live and did not see the point in teaching him anything else.
I guess when Merton met the Dalai Lama earlier in his visit, they both got on the floor so the Dalai Lama could help Merton with his lotus position. Don't you wish they'd gotten a picture of that?
