It was the end of 2001 and Rinpoche was preparing two retreats.

 

It was the end of 2001 and Rinpoche was preparing two retreats. The instructors' retreat and the Longsal retreat, the first retreat.

In general, at that time, we felt, I think with some reason, that the Longsal retreat could not be for just anybody who showed up. At least what I thought I understood from Rinpoche. Almost daily one came to ask Rinpoche what needed to be done with all this.

In that preparation I remember one thing that was very, very, very, important to him...

He said to me: "Apparently... you know that my students in Russia are very important. It is the place where my teaching has attracted more people ... there are hundreds, maybe thousands. There are two people there who are particular, whose names are Igor and Grisha, and those people apparently, are having difficulty getting into Venezuela. You have to make arrangements, get advice for those people, to get the necessary visa..."

Well, that was done, that could be solved well. One who participated in this from the Russian side was Gosha, who from that moment on, was an absolutely extraordinary help.

But what I want to tell here is, that in that preparation, at one point it became clear to Namkhai Norbu, and I think he told me at one point, that he was connecting with the Guardians of the teaching, with Ekajati, and at one point, he got the authorization for that retreat to be open. And in fact, it was so open, that over three hundred people attended.

When it became clear that it would be a retreat of this size, we the Venezuelans had to take into consideration, that we still, don’t have the infrastructure to receive them. How, are we going to do it?

Rinpoche knew the depot, where the sheep were, where the tractor was, the shed

So, he told me: "we are going to use the shed because it has a roof, but we need to increase that surface...".

We made a calculation, more or less, of one hundred and twenty square meters. It was not a surface that he gave us, we just saw it on the ground.

How do you do this? I'm going to show you how to make a Tibetan tent."

So, we learned well, I in particular, I learned with him that you had to put ropes in. He said: "buy a good canvas, tie a kind of canvas tubes, where we were going to sew a strong rope, that would be the one that would support the efforts. It had to be tied.

Then, we had to buy the canvas and make a surface of one hundred and twenty square meters.

We didn't have the money, we had almost nothing at that time. And Rinpoche told us, "We don't have the money, well, let's go to the casino, let's go get money in the casino. At the Hilton."

One night we went to the Hilton. Rinpoche, Fabio ... well, the little group, to bring money. (laughs)

I never win anything in that kind of thing. That night, the little pharaohs on the slot machines, on my machine, started to sing. I had almost all of them lined up on my machine and there was music coming out, a hostess also came out of nowhere with a checkbook in her hand, I'm just exaggerating. That night at the casino, we won, we lost, but we won about two or three times. Because it wasn't just me and we went back to Tashigar, that night, with $250 that we didn't have two hours before.

For me that was one thing ... again ... when you are with the master, who has a preset plan in his head, it's another kind of events that happen ... it's another life ...

That marked me a lot ...

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