“The Dharma point of view is to try to destroy samsara’s tradition
through wisdom expression of skillful means, such as writing, painting,
speaking or teaching to teach enlightenment, which is beyond tradition.”
--Thinley Norbu
Thus one fine day, the Lama spoke totally unexpectedly, ”Today, I am giving you my refuge and
bodhisattva lineages, and I will explain to you exactly how you should pass
them on to others.”
I cannot claim ownership, let alone exclusivity regarding
this lineage. Yet, I feel that
some kind of a disclaimer is warranted.
Disclaimers need to be made in today’s environment more frequently than
in the past when people were more perceptive of the meaning between the lines
of what was being said or written.
Today, too often when somebody comments about an event (even from his
personal life and experience) or shares a reflection, a dream, or a momentary
impression, due to the already deeply ingrained mistrust habit, even further
corrupted by social media exposure, people take it as generalized statement with
an agenda. As if someone else’s
experience could contradict one’s own, let alone devalue it. At the bottom of this lies the basic
assumption regarding the sole validity of one’s view. Which, of course, is faulty, and creates all the trouble in
the world.
I am sharing about the event like I will about other
memories of my Lama because I like to demonstrate how multifaceted he used to
be and how free of the fetters of conventionality he occasionally acted; for
example, how Lama Dawa sometimes passed on essential teachings spontaneously,
and seemingly without preparation.
By nature, such sharing, as expressed in these events themselves as well
as in telling about them, has to be personal. And because it
is personal, it neither describes nor characterizes how Lama Dawa went about
his Lama business with others, or in general. I don’t know about how he was with others, and of
generalities I know even less.
Actually, there is no one and only way that would define or do justice
to how he acted.
He was always spot-on in the moment and taught everyone
according to capacity and past life connection. Quite a few people were blessed by being guided by him in
this manner. Everyone always
received a warm-hearted welcome. But
no one received goodies that were not his or hers to receive. Lama wasn’t a people pleaser or crowd
chaser.
His words on the day in question came out of the blue, and
even that is an understatement. Lightening
struck, so to speak, in the course of a conversational get together in Lama’s
room over cognac, red wine, and, yes, smoking Marlboros – Lama’s ambrosia and incense
of choice, at the time. I had
gifted him with a bottle of Hennesy XO only the day before. He was very fond of XO. To the chagrin (and annoyance) of many,
he used to joke that he had made a vow to build a palace in the realm of the
hungry ghosts with his empty booze bottles accumulated over a lifetime, and
that the XO bottles were required for ornamentation. To which Khandro Kalsang drily remarked that enough bottles had
been emptied already to last for three palaces. Strangely enough, I tended to take Lama’s statement at face
value. For me his words rang true.
This meeting took place in late March or early April 2006, when
I was visiting Lama in Kathmandu, like I had been doing almost every year after
1999. Since I started living in
India in 1998, it was always easier for me to connect with him while he was in
Asia. To me connecting with him in
Asia also felt more satisfying, because in my eyes he appeared different,
standing (or even sitting) taller in a way; he appeared to act even less bound
by rules and outside expectations, more carefree and spontaneous – and
sometimes doing even more outrageous things when challenging students’ egos stuck
in the mud of their own pattering.
This, again, is a personal observation, with no claim to
objectivity. May be it was my own
perception making me feel this way.
I know that I am more cautious and guarded when I am in the west than
when I am in India. And thus I
might have only projected on him to be freer, whereas he was a carefree yogi
everywhere and always.
In a way, with the few words that I said I already told the
full story. Nothing much else
happened. No bells and whistles,
no great ceremony ensued. Lama was
never the man for much ado about nothing, at least according to what I have
seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears. He was always only ceremonial when he felt it was needed. When a puja was being conducted or
substances to be collected and used for a particular purpose, he allowed for no
short cuts.
Thus, he gave me the teaching on how to bestow refuge right
there on the spot. He gave the
instructions on how to give bodhisattva instructions the next day. He told me how I should design the
refuge card, and what I should request of people when they asked for
bodhisattva instructions, because at that moment they have to give something
which they usually wouldn’t want to give. This something didn’t have to be a material thing, by
the way. He reiterated that I
should not discriminate against anyone and that I should grant refuge freely to
those who had asked, and that I should always give bodhisattva instructions not
‘bodhisattva vows’ as according to the lineage that he himself had received there
weren’t any such vows to be made or taken.
He concluded the day’s teaching by ordering me that on the
coming Padmasambhava day (whichas far as I can remember fell April 9th that year) I would need to give my
first refuge ceremony, and the one receiving it would be such and such person. It was someone I knew quite well and to
whom I had suggested that he should request refuge from Kunzang Dorje Rinpoche,
only a few days before. Hilarious:
I had sent the person to Kunzang Dorje, Kunzang Dorje referred him to Lama
Dawa, and Lama Dawa and sent him to me instead, to go full circle.
To date, I have not appeared in public much and only a
handful people know my dharma story and connection, naturally not many ask for
refuge. This is also not going to
change. I have given refuge to about
a dozen people since then, and bodhisattva instructions to even fewer. We are a close-knit yet open spirited
family so to speak, and everyone is working, in the world and on the path. I am the only non-Indian in the
group. Everyone else is from either
India or Nepal. Two have completed
the dakini part of the Tersar introductory 3-Root retreat series, one has
graduated to the Guru retreat; most have completed Ngondro or are applying
themselves, including the two teenagers in the group. In this sense, Lama’s seeds have fallen on fertile ground.
Some of our sangha members’ lives, in terms of how they feel
about themselves and their position in the world, have been evolving over the
years from utter confusion and even self-torture to merely basic confusion (of
the kind that is afflicting all of us); from total dissatisfaction to a sense
of groundedness – in that which has no ground. Which makes me, and everyone else happy, of course, if only
fleetingly. The teachings are
growing on us as we proceed. There
is no end of the process in sight.
The sights are not set on worldly happiness and comfort alone.
A few days ago someone asked me, if I was a ‘Lama’, as he
had heard that I had people at my house doing traditional Vajrayana retreats,
sometimes for weeks at a time. I
answered that in this context designations and titles were meaningless. Only actions are meaningful, and over
time are telling their own story.
Besides, I don’t have much liking for formal robes as such, not to
mention thrones. The idea of being
tied to them has not the least appeal.
Because of my childhood social conditioning, robes and thrones almost
disgust me. Stating that, I also
understand and respect the function that robes and thrones play within Tibetan
society. Therefore, I don’t feel
called to criticize or change any aspect of Buddhism. It would serve no purpose whatsoever, except ego-inflation. I teach the way I learned from Lama
Dawa, and how the process evolves, time will reveal. But whatever slight modifications will occur, they will only
be meaningful if founded in practice experience. Anyway, the essence of the Buddha’s teachings hasn’t changed
(according to Dudjom Rinpoche’s dating of Shakyamuni’s life on earth) in the
past 2.800 some years. Why should
we try and change anything now?
One event from the year before about which I had never
informed Lama Dawa, might have had something to do with his bestowing his
refuge lineage, as well. Being an
accomplished tsa-lung yogi Lama Dawa could see both past and future in the
present, and nothing could really be hidden from him, ever. However, often he closed his vision,
which is only understandable because nobody wants to know and see everything
that is going on around.
In May 2005, a young Indian woman lived in our house and
worked at the small business that I had established in Goa. She had run away from home and with
deep emotion begged me to help her to break free from the shackles of the
society in which she had grown up and furthermore to help her break the
shackles of samsara. No doubt, a
serious request was being made, and not only once. She appealed to me many times, and it was clear why. By leaving behind everything that she had
known as a safe haven since childhood, she had already proven that she meant
business and wasn’t only pretending.
She was dead serious about her desire for liberation. Besides, an uncanny intuition arose
about her past connection to the dharma, later confirmed by Lama Dawa’s mirror
divination.
I felt that I needed to encourage her with some outer sign,
some token to seal the bond in this life, so to speak. I reflected upon it for a few days, and
eventually told her that if she were up to it that I would give her refuge. To do something as outrageous as this
had never occurred to me before. I
also clearly stated that what I was proposing constituted a breach of
protocol. I was not empowered to
give formal refuge and had no instruction on how to go about doing it. Therefore, I would let my heart
spontaneously invent a ceremony for her and pray that it be in harmony with the
dharma, in both spirit and form.
In addition, I requested the protectors silently to punish only
me and not the innocent aspiring student, for my wrongdoing, adding in my
heart, “If I have to go to hell for this
violation of a basic dharma precept in my future life, let me go alone and spare
her.” I totally meant it. I am also not speaking about this as if
there had been any kind of emotional drama involved, neither outside nor inside. Everything concerning such and similar
events was and is always only what it is and totally matter-of-fact.
I have no clue if Lama perceived any of these threads from
the past through his wisdom eye, or if he only acted on an intuition himself. But when he said, that he was
giving me his refuge lineage, I felt relieved and vindicated. I hadn’t done something so totally
wrong after all.
This is how I received Lama Dawa’s Tersar refuge and
bodhisattva lineages. I always
tried to live and act accordingly before I received them. Nothing changed fundamentally after I
had received them. Much work is
still ahead, needing to be done.
No work lies ahead and nothing needs to be done. My greatest wish is always to convey
and teach what cannot be taught.
“If we
write or paint or say something that is not too close to tradition, some rigid
Buddhists think it is not the Buddhist point of view. They do not understand that the Buddhist tradition is to
break samsara’s impure traditions, to attain the vastest, purest
traditions. Tradition always makes
limits if it is not pure. So, from
the beginning, we should have no attachment to tradition in order to release
our mind from the habit of samsara’s traditional trap. We should have an understanding of the
display of many possible aspects of tradition without ignoring others’
traditions in order to benefit and satisfy samasara’s traditional beings. In this way, at the same time we
release our mind from tradition, we should play without accepting or rejecting
in order to decorate it, as a beautiful bird and a tree ornament each other.”
--Thinley Norbu
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