Gere devoted nearly a half of the life to practice of east spiritual exercises. The long way to self-improvement it began a zen with study, and today already by right it is considered the main Buddhist in Hollywood. Gere long time comprehended premudrennost of east wisdom in Tibet, India and Mongolia and also regularly meets Dalai Lama and listens to his lectures.
In an official photo album from Richard Gere under the name Pilgrim it is possible to find the image of a small white lodge on a dusty slope. The photo is signed as My hut for meditations. Feature of the house is the lack of a roof, in it there are only a low window and a door. Gere says that he carried out in this arbor in Zanskar which to it was advised by svyashchennikiya of the monastery of Monet, several best weeks in the life. Together with a great number of other pilgrims the Hollywood actor received Kalachakra's dedication that in translation from Sanskrit means Time Wheel and is one of the highest tantras in yoga philosophy.
What induced to move a sex symbol of the American cinema on the Himalaya slopes and to conduct medieval tenor of life which did not touch not that the twenty first, but even the twentieth century? This important question is answered by Richard Gere: I was about 24 years old, I did not feel happy, did not find rest and answers to the questions when decided to be engaged in meditation. I spent months in my apartment, repeating exercises of gymnastics melt-chi, and sweated from diligence, trying to improve practice. When something at last began to turn out, I was captured by feeling that it and is my real life! That I am engaged in meditation for a long time and never stopped practice.
In a couple of years a zen Gere visited study in India about Dalai Lama. Asked the Holy Father whether I when I play grief whether I become angry when it is necessary to play the angry person and whether I pay actually when to scenarios it is written long the hero cries? I told about actor's receptions, about Stanislavsky's system … And here the Holy Father hysterical burst out laughing! It is necessary to tell that Dalai Lama and now quite often scoffs over me. I am grateful to It for it, it for a while becomes my reflection.
In America Gere found as the Buddhist mentor Hiongl Rateau Rinpotche. He taught the novices to enter the Tibetan Tantric yoga. One of its first steps is the guru-yogi. Its sense consists in a spiritual bond with subconsciousness of the teacher. Exactly thanks to Hiongla Rateau Rinpotche who left the homeland in 1959 in nine years after the beginning of the Chinese occupation, Gere began to show sympathy for the sad fate of Tibet. At a ceremony Oscar in the mid-nineties it impressed all attendees with the ardent speech in which urged to condemn tyranny in Tibet. Me separated from Oscars, – with laughter Gere told subsequently.
Thus, the teacher from New York Hiongla Rateau Rinpotche thanks to the help of the famous pupil got to Tibet again. And the actor took the picture of group of people who met Rinpotche after so many years of separation. He called this photograph The woman with a graze. The main image in the foreground – the woman with a scar personifying all Tibet. The woman in a hat with a grain form became other model of Gere. Such hats differently look in Tibet and Mongolia, however the essence remains invariable. They represent grain with the pointed top which has to break off the veil of illusions preventing us to see things such what they are.