Our last full day in Bhutan.

We drove back to Thimphu, on that shocking road. Maybe because we’d already been blooded, it didn’t seem so bad this time. But it was still 3hrs+.

We did though drive through some very beautiful countryside. Rice is one of Bhutan’s staples, and it’s also a big export commodity. The fields are also stunning…

Then we had to drive another one and a half hours to Paro to interview The Master.

The Master is a Bhutanese spiritual leader, and a spiritual advisor to the Royal Family. He lives up high on a mountain top, near his monastery – and it was a hairy drive to get to his residence.

His living room was full of fascinating stuff –

But we did the interview upstairs, in what he called his mini-temple.

The interview was all in Bhutanese, but Kezang our guide did a translation after each question, which worked fine. The Master will have to be subtitled in the film.

He spoke from a learned and scholarly Buddhist perspective, and told me that the voice I heard which warned me of an impending car crash was the voice of a God that I was born with.

Everyone is born with this God, he said, and it’s this God’s task to protect you and try to guide you through life.

I asked The Master why then do so many people die in car crashes, if everyone has a God that’s tasked with protecting that person?

The Master said it might be their destiny to die at that time, but it also might be a result of past life karma. He said the reason I wasn’t killed was probably because I still had work to do on this plane – good work. He also said that I must have accumulated some good past life karma.

Whew….

The Master also said that some people don’t listen to their God when it tries to communicate with them – and they do so at their peril. This God communicates via voices, through feelings or also “coincidences” or signs, but also most powerfully through dreams.

The Master said we should take our dreams seriously, because they come to us for a reason.

I asked him what advice could he give to those in the West who might want to access their intuitive guidance – and he said that they had to act with right body, right speech, and right mind. And they had to trust these voices. These feelings.

All up it was a fascinating interview.

At the end of the interview he donned his ceremonial hat for some photos. Then we went downstairs and had bowls of rice and sultanas, with sweet white tea. This is all part of the ritual of saying thanks to a guest.

We left his residence feeling as though we’d not only captured a very important interview, but we’d also met someone who was, truly, a Buddhist Master…