When I had said goodbye to Master Fwap at his temple door, he hadn’t indicated where or when we would meet again, but I knew somehow that we would.

Six days later, I unexpectedly met him again on top of a mountain.

That day I had spent three hours climbing up a particularly gnarly pass in search of perfect snow.

After reaching the top of the pass, I had collapsed in a heap of exhaustion.

As I lay on my back in the cold snow, heavily breathing the thin mountain air in and out of my lungs, I closed my eyes and listened to the pounding of my heart.

Then, quite unexpectedly, I felt a presence.

I opened my eyes, and to my amazement, Master Fwap was standing right above me!

Noiselessly, he sat down.

“Master Fwap, what are you doing up here?

“Of all the possible mountains in the Himalayas, how could you have know that I would be on top of this one?”

“I have been waiting for you for a little over an hour,” Master Fwap replied.

“Since this is a ‘just-right’ mountain for this day, and since I have ‘just-right’ karma, I knew that you would show up here.”

Before I could ask more questions, he continued.

“Today I am going to teach you the art of living correctly.

“To live correctly, naturally, you have to act correctly.

“Living is acting, and acting is living.

“When the two become one, your life will be perfect.

“The Rae Chorze-Fwaz method of learning to live correctly is through the perfection of all your actions.

“If you can perfect any one thing that you do, then you will experience and know what perfect living is, in that particular action.

“Once you have accomplished the perfection of one particular action, it will be then be relatively easy for you to transfer that knowledge to some other actions you perform, and eventually, you will be able to perfect everything you do.

“It really doesn’t matter which action I teach you to perfect first, so I have decided to teach you to perfect the action that you enjoy most.

“I will teach you how to go down this mountain on your snowboard perfectly.”

Master Fwap had trapped me, and I knew it.

While reincarnation and the secret doctrines of a Tantric Buddhist mystery school didn’t really matter very much to me, snowboarding did.

Snowboarding was everything to me.

And unlikely as it seemed that Master Fwap could teach me how to snowboard perfectly, I decided right then and there, that if he could, I would definitely become his disciple.

He said, “To do something perfectly, you must not think about what you are doing at all.

“Your thoughts are what create imperfections in your actions.

“They alienate you from the true reality of any action you perform.

“To become part of perfection, you must become the action that you seek to perfect.”

“But Master Fwap! So far I have been able to successfully snowboard every mountain that I’ve ever tried.”

“Yes, you are accomplished, my young friend.

“I have been watching you for the past several days.

“But you are still far from perfecting your snowboarding.”

Master Fwap must have been reading my thoughts, because he immediately addressed my concerns.

“You are wondering how I can tell you how to do something perfectly, when you are the expert and I am the novice.

“There are two reasons. The first is that I am enlightened, and the second is that I know the principles of perfect action.

“Because I am enlightened, I can directly ‘see’ the essence of anything I choose.

“Additionally, since I know the principles of perfect action in other activities, I can transfer these principles to snowboarding, or any other activity I choose.

“Let me show you. May I borrow your board?”

I handed Master Fwap my snowboard.

I didn’t understand how he was going to use it, since he didn’t have the proper boots.

Master Fwap didn’t seem to care.

He stepped onto my snowboard, and, giving himself a little push in the snow with his right foot to get started, he began his descent.

The slope was almost completely vertical.

If I was unsure about snowboarding down this particular mountain, with all the experience I had at my command, how could Master Fwap possibly do it and survive?

I had never seen anything like it in my life!

He rode my snowboard as if he had been doing it for years.

His form was perfect. I found myself laughing out loud, as I watched him masterfully cut in and out of the deep powder.

About half way down, Master Fwap took a very high jump, and he and my board shot straight off the mountain, straight over a precipice, and there was nothing but several thousand feet of very thin air between himself and the icy ridge that lay below him.

For a moment, he just hung in the air, suspended by the momentum from his jump.

I knew that in only a few seconds, gravity would change his trajectory, and he would fall to his death.

And then the most incredible thing happened.

Master Fwap and my board started to rise up in the air, and come back up the mountain.

I watched dumbfounded as he flew through the air, straight back up to the top of the mountain where I was standing.

He was levitating!

I didn’t fully believe my eyes until he returned to the summit, and was standing right next to me, calmly handing me back my snowboard.

“Master Fwap! How did you do that!”

He replied with a smile, “I simply became one with the board.

“I became the board.”

“Yes, your form was perfect, but that’s not what I meant. How did you fly through the air and get back up here?”

“Oh! That. A little more complicated to explain, I’m afraid.

“My master, Fwaz Shastra-Dup, taught me how to do it.

“But it requires many years of effort to perfect the technique.

“It was a useful way for Buddhist masters to travel great distances before the invention of the automobile and aircraft.

“In the modern world, it is no longer worth the effort to learn the technique.

“But it is impressive when you see it for the first time, isn’t it?”

“Yes!” I replied, still dumbfounded.

The monk said, “While I won’t teach you how to levitate today, I will show you how to accomplish an action perfectly.

“The secret to doing anything perfectly is to practice, and to become.

“That is all there is to it, really.

“You must practice to learn about something.

“To a certain degree, you have already accomplished this with your board.

“But what you have not learned so far, is how to become, and to be.

“That is the next step in your inner education.

“To do something perfectly, you must hook yourself to the power of nirvana,” Master Fwap said.

“Once you can do that, almost nothing is impossible.

“Whether it is levitating, snowboarding perfectly, or, being enlightened.

“You come to know all of this through meditating.

“In meditation, when your thoughts are stopped, you become empty.

“When you are empty, your mind folds back on itself, and you see through the illusions of the material world.”

“But Master Fwap, I still don’t understand any of this!

“How can you break a physical law, like you just did?”

Master Fwap laughed. “It is because I have the knowledge of the non-physical dimensions at my disposal.

“I step in and out of those dimensions, and use them to do things here in this world that would otherwise be impossible.

“The astral dimensions, when you have been properly instructed by a master in how to enter them, leave them, and deal with them, afford you opportunities to have experiences, and gain insights into the structural nature of how dimensions are made up and phased together.

“The astral is the supporting ground for the physical dimensions.

“Your understanding of the astral dimensions can help you alter structures in the physical dimensions.

“It is in and through the medium of the astral dimensions that all of the siddha powers function and work.

“You can move in and through the astral worlds, once you have gained control of your ‘subtle body’.

“Remember, the astral world is the back corridors of eternity.

“Beyond the astral dimensions are the ‘causal’ dimensions.

“The causal dimensions are not spatial or time oriented.

“They are the ‘planes of light’, and they make up the outer limits of nirvana.

“Your experiences in the causal dimensions will give you the knowledge of time, space, dimensionality, and what lies beyond all of these things.

“Remember, that what I am doing today is simply providing you with a verbal blueprint of how the universe works.

“At best, it is a mere sketch of reality. Yet a blueprint provides a necessary template for construction, and, of course, when the actual building is finished, we throw the blueprint away.

“So in practical terms, if you wish to perform snowboarding perfectly, then you must turn it into perfect yoga.

“This is what I call ‘mindfulness’.

“It is the direct application of Tantric Buddhist teachings to a physical event, a way of doing or accomplishing something, or a way of thinking and viewing something.

ॐ

“Tantric Yoga is not simply sitting and being absorbed in meditation.

“While formal meditation is certainly a critical part of Tantric Buddhism, Tantric Yoga is also a process of turning all of the activities and experiences of your daily life into meditation.”

“Master Fwap! Please correct me if I am wrong.

“But what you are saying is that you’re going to teach me about enlightenment, by showing me how to snowboard perfectly, is that right?”

“Yes it is! But to snowboard perfectly, you also must know how to meditate well.”

“So is there any interrelationship between meditation and physical events?

“Or is meditation just sitting there and spacing out on enlightened bliss?”

“Yes and no,” Master Fwap replied.

“Meditation is the ability to be in a state of perfect mind.

“At the same time, it is the ability to do physical things in a harmonious way.

“It is a way to remain centered, in a physical world that is out of balance.

“In Tantric Buddhism, we learn to meditate in two ways.

First, we learn how to sit and focus on our chakras and stop our thoughts.

“Then, when the mind is empty, we can travel into the astral dimensions, the causal dimensions, or if we are very advanced in the practice of meditation, we can merge our minds with nirvana itself.

“The second way we learn to meditate in Tantric Buddhism is by practicing mindfulness.

“Mindfulness is the practice of doing physical things perfectly, in a state of emptiness, in which we become consciously one with whatever physical or mental activity we are currently engaged in.

“You will find that as you gain more control in your meditation, it will be much easier for you to practice mindfulness.

“You will also find, conversely, that the practice of mindfulness—of doing physical and mental things perfectly—will help you improve your daily meditation practice.

“In practical terms, what all this means is that when you come to know that you are the board, your snowboarding will be perfect.

“But as long as you conceive of yourself as being separate from your snowboard, of riding on top of your board, or of directing your board, then this will not be true.

Master Fwap shifted his position slightly on the snow.

“Most people make a mistake in life. They think their lives instead of living their lives.

“They believe that what they do, who they are, and how they do what they do, is something they must think about and choose.

“This way of approaching life, however, doesn’t create perfect action.

“As a matter of fact, this approach to life makes a person very egotistical.

“People who think their lives, instead of living them directly, automatically assume they always know the best way of doing everything.

“But when we come to see that we are the thing we do, then we will be directed by the doing of that thing, rather than egotistically attempting to imperfectly direct our own emotions.”

I must have looked somewhat confused, because Master Fwap laughed good-naturedly and paused for a moment before resuming his explanation.

“For example, when you are on your snowboard going down a mountain, you must decide how to direct your board.

“But whether you are aware of it or not, your board has an inherent knowledge of its own capabilities, because it is made up of intelligent energy, just as you are!

“In Tantric Buddhism, we call the inherent knowledge that all animate and inanimate objects possess of themselves, their emptiness.

“It is the Buddhist belief that all things, experiences, and people are inherently empty.

“That is simply a way of saying that all physical and non-physical things have another side.

“A side that is not visible to the senses or accessible to the reasoning mind.

“A side that can only be known and experienced intuitively, by emptying one’s own mind of thoughts, judgments, and predispositions about life and how it works.

“Take me, for example. You can see my physical body with your eyes.

“But my physical body is nothing in comparison to my non-physical body.

“My non-physical body is the part that lives forever. It is ancient and complicated. It has lived through countless lives in both this and in other worlds.

“When I traveled back up the mountain on your snowboard, you were very impressed.

“I did that with my non-physical body, with my ‘subtle body’, with my essential emptiness.

“When you are empty, when your mind is tranquil and at peace with the universe, when it has become void of all thoughts, you become meditation.

“Then you consciously join with, and become part of the power that is in everything around you.”

He paused and asked me if I understood what he had just explained.

I acknowledged confusion, and then he was silent for several minutes.

Then he spoke to me again, at a slower pace.

“From a Buddhist perspective, it is incorrect to assume that we know what is best.

“When we take the time to meditate and empty ourselves of thoughts, we immediately connect with the inherent emptiness of our actions and experiences.

“When we do this, our non-physical side merges with the non-physical side of that which we are experiencing.

“You will come to see, in the state of emptiness, that you are the action, not the performer of the action.

“Remember, always allow the action of an activity, or an event, to take precedence over your own point of view.

“This is the Tantric Buddhist way.

“Allow the emptiness inherent within actions and experiences to guide and shape your choices.

“Let your actions direct you, the actor, not the other way around.

“Instead of your ego directing you and making countless mistakes, allow yourself to be guided by the invisible principles of the universe within your actions.

“At that time, there will be a perfect flow of energy in whatever you choose to do, and there will be a grace and power present in all of your movements.

“From a Tantric Buddhist perspective, this is perfect action.”

Master Fwap paused again for several minutes, giving me time to reflect on his explanation.

Then he spoke again.

“Now you will go on your board down the mountain. But first you must make your mind still.

“Then allow the emptiness within your board to guide you.

“Let it become your will. Remember, you are the board.

“Then your ride down the mountain will be perfect action. Try it!”

I thanked Master Fwap for his discourse on emptiness and perfect action, and got onto my board.

“Perfect action,” I thought to myself.

Then I closed my eyes, and tried to empty my mind of all thoughts.

For some reason, it was easy to do on top of that Himalayan peak.

Suddenly I was flooded with energy, and I could feel the power, what Master Fwap had been calling the emptiness of the mountain, flowing through me.

I had no thoughts, and yet I was completely aware.

I opened my eyes, and “let go” to my snowboard. It was me, and I was it.

I glided down the mountain, cutting back and forth through the granular powder, without any conscious effort on my part.

It was exactly as Master Fwap had described. My board and the mountain knew better than I did, how to interact.

I just let them take over, and I enjoyed the ride down.

It was the most perfect run I had ever made.

When I got to the bottom, Master Fwap was waiting with a “I told you so” smile on his face.

Without talking, the two of us walked down the road together.