First, despite my reservations, Grayson Dalberg. There were just a few rings from the other end before I was greeted by a deep voice, guarded in manner. I briefly explained what had happened and why I was calling. He said he’d send his driver, Dipesh, to collect me from Kathmandu airport when my flight arrived. Meantime, he’d start making inquiries.

The second call was one I looked forward to a lot more. Geshe Wangpo, or Geshe-la as he was affectionately known by all his students, was not only the person who more than anyone understood my purpose, having set me on it in the first place. He was also the only person I knew with connections in Patan, the statue-making district not far from the center of Kathmandu. He was currently a senior teacher at Sera Monastery in India.

‘I’ll see if he is available,’ came a voice at the other end.

Geshe-la and I had exchanged several letters since I’d been at Tiger’s Nest, but this would be the first time we had spoken. I couldn’t wait to hear his voice at the other end of the phone.

Our first encounter had been seven years ago, in the middle of the night. Suffering from jet lag, on my very first night in L.A. I’d woken at 3 a.m. and, unable to sleep, had decided to go for a walk around what would be my new neighborhood. The exotic scent of frangipani coming from a nearby garden had brought my footsteps to a halt as I’d paused to study the flowers—delicate, five-petal stars that trembled in the night-time breeze.

I’d been startled to find that I was not alone. Through the monochrome shadows I’d seen a face that was foreign as well as oddly familiar. An Asian man in monk’s robes.

Even in those first few moments I’d felt an inexplicable sense of connection. One which I’d resisted, as though I was aware that at some level, he already knew everything about me—or at least, everything that counted.

We’d exchanged a few words. I told him about the jet lag, and he asked me what had brought me to L.A. When I mentioned nanotechnology, a word that was usually a conversation stopper, he responded with a quote by Richard Feynman, a much-lauded quantum scientist. The very last thing I would have expected from a Buddhist monk.

When I’d asked him what he was doing in L.A., his response had been even more unexpected. ‘To be here for you.’

I hadn’t known how to take it. He couldn’t have intended in personally, could he? Presumably he meant ‘you’ as in ‘the western community?’ It was only in the months that followed that I had come to discover just how personal his mission had actually been.

•••

‘Matt?’ Suddenly he was at the other end.

‘Geshe-la! How did—’

‘Westerner, they said. I knew.’ It felt as though we had last spoken only last week. As if we had been in touch the whole time. In a way I suppose we had through the years, as my meditation practice had deepened.