Not so long ago, while busily researching and translating texts about destroying the ‘house’ of the ordinary reactive mind—sem in Tibetan—I lived in a building whose main entrance was emblazoned with the letters S.E.M., as part of the logo of Sterling Estates Management. On several occasions I even travelled from this building labelled S.E.M. to one labelled Rigpa, just a few miles away in another part of north London. Was this an extraordinary coincidence? Or does everybody enact such symbolic representations of the Dzogchen path, proceeding from reactivity to awareness?

After several years living in S.E.M, so to speak, I moved to a small terraced cottage in East Sussex. Now, one of the challenges of being a neo-lotsawa is deciding how best to respond to the question of what I do for a living. I can’t recall how I phrased my answer when introduced to our new neighbour Jo, but, rather than provoking the usual combination of puzzlement and concern, whatever I said led her to reveal that her late husband David had been a close friend of the Dalai Lama. For it turned out that I was now living next door to the widow of David Howarth, editor of the Dalai Lama’s first autobiography, My Land and My People.