First are some new photographs of Garpa, who figures in my forthcoming book, A Step Away from Paradise. He lives at the Tashiding Monastery in Sikkim, where he has lived for the last 50 years carving mani stones, the stones carved with Tibetan mantras.

Another lama who figures in my forthcoming book, A Step Away from Paradise, is Géshipa. From his tiny wooden room, which he rarely leaves, he contemplates depths deeper than the ocean and vaster than the sky. A master at the art of divination, he told us when we visited him in March of this year that he foresees a time of great calamity in which dark forces will destroy the Buddhist teachings of love and compassion.

His divinations are rather precise: he says the present kalpa, or great cycle of humanity, will come to an end in twenty-four years, and a great dark age will commence. In anticipation of the coming time in which the teachings of the Buddha will be lost, he is planning an expedition to the high mountains where he knows of a cave. His plan is to hide the most important Buddhist teachings in that cave, both ritually (with the help of the guardian deities), and physically by sealing them behind a wall of mud and stone.

Géshipa has already worked out the budget for this remarkable expedition. He figures he needs eighteen young men to carry the scriptures and help seal them in the cave. It will take three days for the expedition. At at 100 rupees a person per day, he has been saving up the 5,400 rupees (approximately 125 US dollars) it will take to preserve the precious teachings of Lord Buddha for the humanity to come.

One must remember, of course, that Géshipa is in his mid eighties and has been told by a doctor that his heart cannot take a trip to the high mountains. He also has plans to go to the hidden land of Beyul Demoshong,