Zurmang Rinpoche meditates

Kim, if you read this, I don't know how you say that this person is this bhumi and that person is that bhumi but I've seen the videos you have posted and none of them seem to have shamatha skills of Zurmang Rinpoche. 

I've meditated with other Tibetan lamas as well and they didn't even have Rinpoche titles or such and they were as experienced meditators as Zurmang Rinpoche. Sitting and meditating with them, your mind just locks in with theirs and the concentration would be rock solid. You would know when your mind starts to move and it would be lot easier to bring it back just because the lama's concentration would hardly move at all.

I didn't see Rinpoche close his eyelids even once after he started meditating. Or maybe I closed mine at the same time and didn't see him do it? 

Exceptional shamatha skills anyways which I haven't seen demonstrated by any other tradition than Vajrayana. This I see as evidence that shows Vajrayana practices produce results that are above and beyond any other practices in other traditions can produce.

I saw the noh play "Kuruma Zo" (車僧) once. The eponimous hero basically did nothing but sit on a wagon without blinking for at least three quarters of an hour while other stuff happened on the stage. Since he was looking more or less in my direction, I watched him with very careful attention, and his gaze didn't move once. 

That's interesting to know. Did you watch Rinpoche meditating? Did the hero stayed focused just like him? I guess that was a Japanese hero? If that's true, who knows he did shikantaza? But even then it's quite impressive if it could produce such results.

I thought of another possibility too and that is of the hero's eyelids been glued open.

I did watch Rinpoche – it's been over 10 years since I saw the play, so it's a bit difficult to compare very well. From what I remember, the Japanese hero appeared to stay as focused, but with more intensity in his facial expression. Rinpoche's face in contrast seemed devoid of any strain, in full normality, although the video was only three minutes.

I couldn't say if they had any practices, to sit like that without moving would obviously take practice, but you've made me wonder now if they practised some sort of walking meditation, because sometimes the actors would appear silently from a walkway, and they took about five minutes to get to the stage. From what I've heard and understood, the aesthetic essence is supposed to be "ma" (間), perhaps translated as space, and maybe the super slow walking is part of that. Unfortunately the result is that a heavy amount of "sloth and torpor" appears in much of the audience's experience.