Respect to Thangtong Gyalpo

Tibet's history is full of amazing Yogi's manifesting miracles, transforming their bodies into light and showing visible signs of accomplishment in Vajrayana tradition. There are many well known stories but I wanted to highlight one of the slightly lesser known Masters.

Here is his story with source links at the end:

Thangtong Gyalpo was a true Tibetan "renaissance man:" he was an accomplished artist, intrepid explorer and statesman, an engineer, doctor, mystic, miracle worker and even a blacksmith. Above and beyond these diverse proclivities, as a composer and playwright he is celebrated as the founder of the Tibetan Opera tradition. His miraculous activities as an alchemist were a result of his accomplishment on the visionary path of the terma tradition: he had the ability to work ably with whatever circumstances presented themselves to him. After being poisoned by a jealous lama, he remained in meditation for a week and discovered the cure through the process of revelation. The formula he discovered is called "Drubthob Rika" in Tibetan, the "White Yogi pill," and is still used successfully to counteract poison.

He had a vision of local elemental spirits who gave him a gift of blueprints for suspension bridges that had never been seen before in Tibet at that point in the Thirteenth Century. As he began to construct the chain links for these massive bridges, his alchemical wisdom was put to practice, resulting in an iron alloy that has not rusted to this day. His smelting methods still remain a mystery.

As a visionary alchemist, he tangibly manifested the wisdom of the "elixir of immortality" by living to the ripe old age of 125. He was famous for his accomplishment and transmission of the long-life ceremony, which is displayed in the iconography of this statue. This statue was possibly made by his own hand, and shows him holding the vase full of the elixir of immortality and a pill of longevity in his other hand. Courtesy of http://www.tealchemy.org/what/alchemists/index.html

Here is the wikpedia entry for him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thang_Tong_Gyalpo