In 1998 a strange story emerged from a village in the remote Kham region of eastern Tibet. It is said that a rainbow appeared one day above the cabin of Khenpo A-chos, a devout lama who had continued to practice and teach Buddhism despite the severe restrictions of the Chinese government. He was in his eighties, but not sick. Nevertheless, he lay down on his bed, began reciting the Tibetan mantra “Om mani padme hum,” and died.
Shortly after the nuns, monks, and others who studied with him began the Tibetan Buddhist prayers that accompany death, they noticed that Khenpo A-chos’s skin began to turn soft and pinkish. His students hurried to another lama to ask about this, and he told them to cover the body and continue their prayers. They placed a thin yellow monk’s cloak over him, and as the days passed, they saw that his body was shrinking. By the end of the week, the students reported, nothing remained—just a few hairs left on the pillow. Khenpo A-chos had apparently become what is known in Tibetan Buddhism as a rainbow body.
This story spread through Buddhist circles, making its way to the United States, where Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk, heard it. He realized that the miraculous event had implications for Christianity: “If we can establish as an anthropological fact that what is described in the resurrection of Jesus has not only happened to others but is happening today,” he has said, “it would put our view of human potential in a completely different light.”
Brother David enlisted the aid of Father Francis Tiso, an associate director of the secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C., who also has a doctorate in Buddhist studies. Father Tiso journeyed to Kham with a translator and recorded the testimony of several people who had witnessed the events.
