My woman, my children, and my community hold me up and watch my back, as I watch theirs. I know who I am, where I belong, and what I call myself, and it is enough.

God asks one individual – eventually a family, a tribe, a collection of tribes, a nation – to serve as an exemplary role-model, to be as it were a living case-study in what it is to live closely and continuously in the presence of God. This is – as Jewish history testifies – a weighty and risk-laden responsibility. Since

One must dedicate one’s own life to attaining enlightenment. Only by attaining enlightenment will we be able to guide others, to protect them, to care for them and cherish them.

We accept this responsibility with gratitude, cherish it, and protect it. Acknowledging with humility that it comes from beyond us. More important than us. And not just for us. We are in its service.

the following interview describing the passing of His Holiness Rangjung Rikpe Dorje, the sixteenth Gyalwang Karmapa, in 1981 in a cancer hospital in Zion, Illinois.