Ven. Lharamapa Geshe Tarab Tulku in India 1965
Tarab Rinpoche fled to North-India, where he spent the next two years in the Buxadur refugee camp. Following the wish of his teacher Khensur Pema Gyaltsen he set up the traditional study program and taught Buddhist 'Ancient Inner Science of Mind and Phenomena' to his students. Confronted with the fact of having lost everything on an outer level Tarab Rinpoche began to ask himself how the comprehensive knowledge he had acquired in Tibet could be opened up and brought to practical use also outside of the safe spiritual-religious context of Tibet. As the future was totally unsure also Khensur Rinpoche at this time asked Rinpoche to use his dream abilities in order to find a way to bring together the essence of what Rinpoche had learned in Tibet.
Rinpoche then had a dream in which he received four verses of which on waking he remembered three. He wrote them down and Khensur Rinpoche was delighted to see them. However it did take Tarab Rinpoche many years before it became completely clear to him what the poem meant in depth. Slowly, as Rinpoche started to develop his own particular approach in the West, Unity in Duality, it became more and more clear to Rinpoche that actually everything, which had unfolded as Unity in Duality, was buried within these verses from the very beginning.
Once Ven. Kalu Rinpoche was visiting Tarab Rinpoche in Denmark, and Rinpoche showed these verses to him. Kalu Rinpoche responded with asking which practices Rinpoche was doing at this time, because he thought that Rinpoche could neither have written nor conceived of these poems unless he had been in an extraordinary state. Kalu Rinpoche told that from the words, the spelling and the constellation of the sentences one could see that these poems were not from the present time - they were from a very different time and very exceptional indeed.
While in the Buxadur refugee camp between 1960-1962 Tarab Rinpoche was offered first to go to Japan, then to Germany, and finally to Denmark. Rinpoche was very reluctant to leave his students and his old teacher, but at the third request from His Holiness the Dalai Lama's administration Rinpoche's teacher told him that he had to accept this invitation by Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark, the Royal Library and the University of Copenhagen. Rinpoche then went to Denmark and was teaching Tibetan language and culture at the University of Copenhagen and attending to the special Tibetan collection of manuscripts and block prints acquired by Prince Peter and other collectors in 1965 acquiring his first experiences of modern culture.
Rinpoche was only really interested in going back to teach his students and look after his old teacher, but this never happened again as he, with his high education and open mind, was needed by the Tibetan Exile Government. His Holiness the Dalai Lama asked him to take over the job as director of Tibet House, New Delhi, where he collected a great amount of Tibetan antiques for this museum, which are exposed there today. After the director job Rinpoche was going to be appointed the director of the Tibetan Studies in Sarnath. However, not feeling well in this in-between-culture of India with its aspirations for the materialist culture of the West, Tarab Rinpoche made the decision in 1967, with the permission of His Holiness, to return to the West.
