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He soon discovered that little
organized information existed
about Terton Sogyal, who
was the teacher of the XIII
Dalai Lama, the predecessor
of the current Dalai Lama.
“Not unlike the Dalai Lama
today, Terton Sogyal was
a master at integrating his
political duties with spiritual
practice, while never losing
the pure motivation that holds others’ well-being as the
priority,” Matteo says.
Over the course of the next decade, Matteo engaged
in hands-on research to collect the story of the mystic’s
life. From the late 1990s to 2008, he traveled to Tibet
for months at a time. Letters of introduction from
Sogyal Rinpoche aided him in gaining access to lamas
in Tibet, and those he met along the way influenced
Matteo’s life forever.
The road map for my pilgrimage was Terton Sogyal’s
own far-ranging travels across the Tibetan plateau; his
life was not bound to isolated mountain retreats. Soon
I was meditating among hermits in remote sanctuaries
and cliffside grottoes. I slept in the caves where Terton
Sogyal had spiritual visions and revelations. On foot,
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Wyoming Lifestyle Magazine | Spring 2015
horseback and dilapidated buses, I crossed the same
glacier-covered passes that he used to travel from
eastern Tibet to Lhasa. And I sought out the masters
and yogis still alive who uphold Terton Sogyal’s
spiritual lineage and could tell me the oral history of
his life and teachings.
But the pilgrimage took an unexpected turn.
The more time I spent in Tibet delving into the
nineteenth-century spiritual teachings of Terton
Sogyal, the more often I met Tibetans who wanted to
tell me their story of frustration and pain, and about
their never-ending hope that one day the exiled Dalai
Lama would return to Tibet.
Tales of abuse and persecution were shared, with the
hopes that Matteo would help transfer them to Western
authorities that could help. Over the course of many
years, his travels led him to collect and share this
information – his journey is chronicled in his 2011 book,
In the Shadow of the Buddha. In 2006, Matteo was asked
to write a biography on Terton Sogyal – which became
reality in his 2014 release, Fearless in Tibet.
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