Thinley Norbu Rinpoche on Nihilism, Spiritual Surrender, and the Importance of Lineage and the Guru By Tricycle Magazine FALL 1998 Thinley Norbu Rinpoche is a preeminent teacher of the Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. His books include The Small Golden Key, Magic Dance, and White Sail , published by Shambhala in 1992. He presently spends part of each year in the United States and Nepal. The term nihilism figures prominently in your book White Sail . What do you mean by it? According to my understanding, nihilism means not believing in any spiritual point of view. Nihilists only believe in what they can see, what they can hear, and what they can think, or the substantial reality of whatever temporarily exists in front of them. For example, they believe only in this life and not in previous lives or future lives, because they don’t believe in continuous mind, although it is inevitable that mind is continuous. Nihilists don’t accept...