I have been lucky in terms of my connection to the dharma in
the sense that I encountered it when Tibetan Lamas where not yet roaming from
one well endowed and opulently decorated dharma center to the other across the
Americas and in Europe dispensing, from their thrones of course, droplets of
their tradition to a generally, at least to all appearances devout audience; when
there was hardly any tantric practice text translated, especially correctly,
into my mother language, except for the Buddha’s teachings as preserved in
the Pali canon; when there were only a handful authentic western Buddhist to be
found like the proverbial needles in the haystack, and after some effort in
searching them out. Yet, despite
the apparent lack in everything – no lineage teachers, not much literature, and
no dharma centers - I still call this situation as it presented itself, a blessing in disguise, not a
deficiency.
Why do I call it a blessing? Because it helped me to learn and embody the dharma slowly
from the ground up, from my home ground that is, from the rich musical,
literary and even oral heritage of my country of birth (which hadn’t been
inundated and crushed yet under US TV non-culture at the time, to the point it
is now). This slow development in
the dharma through a lot of improvising has been a source of great inner
strength and conviction. It made
the dharma feel home grown and not something foreign, that I need to adopt and
adapt to. I didn’t have to twist
my soul into becoming a dharma practitioner. I became one by being myself.
Naturally, my first Buddhist mentors were from the same
stock. They all were of my
parents’ age, or just a few years younger or older, and they were solid
professionals - doctors, lawyers,
psychotherapists – not ‘dharma practitioners’ for money. I had differences of opinion, even fought with them over some issues, of
course, as young people have to fight with their elders. The battle cry of my generation, after
all was, “Question Authority!” Not “OBEY”, as I have seen printed on some baseball
caps and T-shirts recently.
But in essence, all of these relationships were based on mutual respect
and trust. I trusted my mentors
because they were real people, the least bit bothered about fulfilling any role
model expectations. They had
practiced dharma in the trenches of World War II, or when sitting in bomb
shelters, or in exile. Their
understanding had grown from some real exposure to some real suffering, not only
from reading books, or from mimicking or imitating the flamboyant style of some
high lamas (with whom and neither with their behavior as they appear now, do I have any issue).
After I had taken refuge in January 1974 through one of Lama
Govinda’s dharma groups in Germany, I was assigned a mentor. The role of the mentor was to guide me
in the dharma and answer my questions to the best of his abilities. Lama Govinda had given these mentors a
name. According to Mahayana tradition, they called them kalyanamitras, which they indeed were:
friends in everything wholesome, sharing what is wholesome. My mentor was Dr. Friedrich Kaufmann,
who happened to live in the same small university town of Marburg where I,
together with my then girlfriend Susy Clemens had just started to study
Sanskrit, Tibetan and the Science of Comparative Religion. Dr. Kaufmann’s dharma name was
Vasubadhu. My dharma name was
Sunaga. We called each other by
our dharma names, not by our given names.
By doing so, the context for our relationship was always clear.
Dr. Kaufmann (for me, after some time and hesitation, always Vasubandhu) was a doctor by
profession, the retired director of his hometown’s Public Health Department,
and a trained psychotherapist (who had actually briefly worked both with
Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung at some point in his life). He was still practicing a Jungian form
of psychotherapy, helping mostly students through their troubles with life for
the modest fee of DM 10 (or US $ 5) per hour, because the student health
insurance plan only reimbursed that much for psychotherapy. But for Vasubadhu anything connected
with ‘healing’ was considered ‘sacred’ (in a very natural not in an ego
inflated way): he saw it purely as a service, not a money making
proposition. For us students it
was a sweet deal. Where in the
world would you get an hour of therapy with someone who had trained some with
both Freud and Jung?
At first I was a bit reserved, about to decide that I shouldn’t
connect too much with my assigned mentor because he appeared ‘too ordinary’,
too ‘old generation German’. In
short, he didn’t appear hip enough, and especially Susy held this lack of
outward ‘coolness’ against him.
Well, we had it quite wrong. He was anything but – and very extraordinary too, even
‘cool’ in his own way; very old school German, yes, but old Jewish German cool, 19th
century style. His Buddhist
teachings sometimes sounded an awful lot like Schopenhauer, whom he quoted a
lot, and he definitely knew his Spinoza, the whole of the European classics in
fact. But as I stated in the
introduction, this was anything but a flaw, or an impediment – more like a
bridge I could cross from my own cultural heritage to another cultural
heritage, meeting it on equal terms, learning how to meet someone or something
apparently foreign with devotion, but still on equal footing. Indeed, immensely useful.
Vasubandhu (and from now on I will call him only by his
dharma name) took the initiative.
He invited Susy and I to his home for coffee and cake one Sunday
afternoon, another old-fashioned very German tradition. He used the time to introduce him and
his family properly and also talked about his background.
His family was from Marburg (a small place about 150 kilometers northeast of Frankfurt), his wife’s family from
Berlin. His father-in-law had been
a Professor for Sanskrit in Berlin and shot himself when the Nazis took away
his tenure. His wife and he had
survived from 1938 in Swiss exile, in the region of Appenzell, only three
kilometers from the German border.
His brother-in-law miraculously hadn’t been deported, but (although
having a doctorate in Egyptology) had survived the war as a gravedigger in
Berlin. In 1974, by the way, he
was Professor Jacobsohn and the Head of the Egyptology department at Marburg’s
Philip’s University. Yes, some
family members had died in the camps, but others like themselves had emigrated
before, and his brother-in-law, of course, had been most lucky by surviving in
the lion’s den, in Berlin itself.
You can imagine the impact so much truth had: all of this and more on
a Sunday afternoon over coffee and cake.
I felt a bit guilty by association, perhaps, although there was no
reason for me to feel any guilt, having been born after the war.
Remarkably, there was not the least bit of anger, let alone
malice in Vasubadhu’s voice when he recounted his life’s story. His wife was very sweet, too, a
practicing Quaker, not a practicing Jew.
The daughter dropped in to say “Hi”. She was a little older than us and herself
had a daughter from a messed up marriage with a US officer. The granddaughter was half black. Later I learned how much Vasubadhu
doted on her. She was quite
naughty, too, and absolutely unashamed of her mixed heritage, which was not as
common in the early 1970s as it might be now. Probably, she could be and act so cocksure because she was so much loved.
I believe I asked Vasubandhu then and there, or I might have
asked that question also later, “But why,
did you decide to came back after the war and live here, considering what you
had gone through?” He didn’t
give the Buddhist textbook answer, along the lines of “Samsara is suffering, everywhere.” His answer was much more elaborate and personal.
He said, and I remember it very well, “I was the last Jew to have my doctoral
thesis approved by the University of Marburg, just before the Nuremberg racial
laws came into effect, in 1935. I
had it printed and it was displayed in the window of the local academic
printing press then. When I came
back visiting for the first time in 1946, it was still displayed there, in the same
window. I took this as a sign,
meaning that, after all, this was my hometown and I belonged.” His wife interjected, “Yes, I agreed but insisted that he join the
public health service rather than going into private practice. With his huge heart, my husband would
have treated everyone for free and we would have starved.” Vasubandhu first laughed (he laughed
often) and added, “We are German through
and through, and the pine trees don’t smell the same anywhere else. The Hitlers come and go. Throughout the ages people were
persecuted and killed everywhere, for their racial background and for their
faith. At our time it happened
here. Next time it will happen
somewhere else. So, why go
somewhere else! Besides I was too
lazy to study the same medicine again in English, because we would have
immigrated to the US, that I had studied in German fifteen years earlier. Here I could make myself useful and be
of service right away.”
Really, I can only sing praises for this man, my Buddhist
mentor Vasubadhu – because he was teaching Buddhism with his whole heart,
actually in his actions through his whole life, at least in the few short years
that I had the privilege to know him.
Despite his own lack of formal dharma training, he had and was able to
convey the experience of non-duality, which had the power to cut through deeply. It derived from his long years of
practice as a therapist. He
understood the phantasmagoria of the mind, the paradox of their being nothing,
and yet there being a presence, and he was able to share it.
I last saw him in early summer 1978. He had just been operated for cancer of
the throat and had to speak through a microphone. Myself, I was on my way to the airport to fly to San
Francisco and attend the summer programs at the Nyingma Institute in Berkeley,
and to complete my German translation of Tarthang Tulku’s book Gestures of Balance. In my mind I aleardy sat in the plane, and wasn't really present during the visit. I never returned to Marburg thereafter,
as in 1978 I already lived in Hamburg.
The Buddhist circle in Wiesbaden also had dissolved or morphed into
something else, now promoting Chogyam Trungpa rather than Lama Govinda. So, with me becoming a student of sorts
of Tarthang Tulku’s, the link had been severed.
But still, it was my fault, never to enquire after
Vasubandhu again in order to express my deep felt gratitude for his mentoring,
which had lasted for only three short years. Naturally, the young have less qualms about such things. I moved on and and didn’t look back.
However, not looking back does not mean forgetting altogether.
From today's vista, this life’s path feels like made
all of one taste. To a certain degree, I differentiate
between my gurus and mentors, yes, but I would never say, that, “I first studied with this one, then I left
to study with that one, then I left and studied with the third one, and so
forth.” No matter how
different their styles, all of these teachers are the one continuum, one rain
of blessings.
Feeling equal, I bow before them.
Lama Govinda and Vasubandhu (and a few others unnamed for
the time being) were special insofar as they were the first in a long line of
remarkable people that I was fortunate to meet over the course of a lifetime.
I bow again.
My apologies, but I truly don’t have any picture of dear Vasubadhu's in my possession. Otherwise I would have shared it. In its place I put a picture of Vasubandhu's teacher Lama Anagarika Govinda, who was also my inspiration and whom I met many times in Germany, India and Mill Valley, California.
