Celebrating Our Inborn Wealth of Naturalness

I am flying 35,000 feet above India, in the deep blue, with the thick monsoon cloud blanket in bizarre patterns as infinity of innumerable shades of white, black and grey far under the plane’s belly below.  I am in transit from Goa to the north to conduct some vajrayana or Diamond Path Buddhist ceremonies for friends.  We will do them together as one.  Without investing some high artificial hopes in what we do, we will celebrate peace, abundance and good health for all beings with the help of ancient liturgies.  Through them everything unfolds in a spirit of non-separation, which transcends fear.  We are free of fear because, in some sense, we completely merge with what we do.  There is no room left that fear could exploit.

India has become my home.  I have been living in this country for 20 years.  India may be many different things to many people but for me it will always be the “Land of the Buddha”.  The Buddha walked the earth, here. So did countless siddhas and similarly self-actualized beings in his footsteps.  The teachings and their lifestyle flourished and spread all over the country for 1,500 years until they almost completely vanished 800 years ago.  Yet they still deeply permeate the ground.  They are resurfacing now.  Today, India is experiencing a small renaissance of the Buddha’s ways.

I contribute to the development through mainly two activities: first by sharing traditional teachings of the Buddha and second by exploring the inner energy movements of NadiPrana in small group gatherings.   Doing so, I don’t feel that I am on a mission.  There is no zeal involved, no desire for being right, or proving the teachings right.  It all feels all very natural and down-to-earth, like cooking dinner for friends.  We may sit down and exchange a few words here and there, or prefer sitting silently sharing the tastes and flavors, the basic goodness of the moment—which in essence is the goodness of every moment: the goodness of the five elements; the goodness of our own being, one breath at a time.  Sharing the flavors of a good meal or sharing the teachings, it all unfolds in a similarly straightforward and simple manner.

Despite (or probably because) of all its inconsistencies and contradictions, the world is a good place to be.  What I am saying is that it is beyond ‘good’ and ‘bad’. So is life.  Life just IS… everything continues to be interconnected in life and through life.  This is the kind of reality, which is celebrated by vajrayana ceremonies—that of openness and interconnectedness. This is also, what NadiPrana energy movements activate throughout the bodymind: a sense of all-embracing and all-permeating presence.  This can be a deeply healing experience.

But in order to make it happen, we need to activate our ‘connectivity’ sense.  Only then can we feel really imbedded in all of life—our life.  The key to this is in being natural, in feeling fully embodied, fully and naturally present.

Which reminds me of the particular twist of ‘naturalness’ that Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche gave to the Tibetan rendering of the word ‘yoga’.  He explains that the Tibetan equivalent for yoga is naljor, and yogis and yoginis in Tibet are therefore called nalrjorpas and naljormas.  When translated into English, the word is exactly pointing to what the processes of yoga or energy movement, according to the Buddha’s transmission are all about.  Naljor, according to Dzongsar Khyentse therefore means ‘being endowed with a wealth of naturalness’.   Yogis and yoginis by connecting to the movement of their inner, subtle energies are capable of flowing with their inborn ‘wealth of natural goodness’.   We can discover this ‘wealth of naturalness’ for ourselves through NadiPrana energy movements.

We discover how to naturally just BE, and when we do we are opening to an innate treasure that we have been carrying without ever knowing!  In energy movement practices, no artificial goal is to be achieved, nothing fantastically, outlandishly special actualized!  Energy movement is all about being natural.  This naturalness is so grounding that everything is grounded in it.  With it, we are effortlessly in a state meditative stabilization, no matter what we do, or where we are.

In our NadiPrana energy movement retreats we are exploring the wealth of naturalness accessible to us by directly feeling and connecting with body, breath and mind.  We rediscover how to be simple, free of emotional and mental complexities: not guided by our impulses of thoughts and emotions, but guided only by our inborn ground of being—free of doubt and anxiety.  Which is a fantastic way to be.  As long as we live our body breath and mind are there to show us.

Ask yourself, “Do I really feel mostly connected with this basic goodness, my own nature?  Do I feel deeply rooted and grounded, NOW? 

Or do I feel cut off, disconnected?  Do I feel tossed about, pulled in different directions by forever proliferating, contradicting thoughts and emotions?”  What really are the forces and dynamics that shape my life? Do they allow me to just be and savor the moment?  Or do they push me around?”

These are questions worth exploring—may be they are the only issues worthy of our attention.  Other issues lead us away from us.  Exploring body breath and mind leads us back to us.  Through it we can find out what kind of attitudes and actions add more life to our life force and what kind of attitudes and actions steal life force from us. 

Sometimes the process of this inquiry or exploration is described as transformative, in the sense of promoting positive change.  However, what we call transformation, in actual fact is more akin to re-discovery.  Transformation when genuine reveals nothing new and nothing special.  It rather lets us feel, appreciate and connect with what has always been there.  In genuine transformation we are not changing into someone or something that we are not.  We are merely rediscovering our own basic goodness.  We connect with our own being, be it through ceremonies or be it through energy movement—in the case of the latter through the alchemy of directly feeling and being with our own body, breath and mind.  And when we finally open to being in this way, we can directly taste how ‘alchemical’ it is.

Indeed, there are parallels between ancient vajrayana liturgies and the energy movements triggered by NadiPrana.  Which is why I like to share both.  Energy work or movement may often feel like a deeply touching ceremony; like a prayer or celebration of body, breath and mind.  It touches us, moves us—into stillness and into equanimity beyond even stillness.  Energy yoga is the body’s very own and very intimate song of equanimity.  It is the body celebrating it’s own energies, its own unfathomable vastness.  It feels like divine energy in moving action.

In energy movement we touch upon the ungraspable, invisible layers of physical existence, without which there would be no physical existence—as it is the invisible that produces the visible.  Likewise, in vajrayana liturgies or ceremonies we call upon invisible beings and their reality, which informs our ordinary reality with magic and power.

As the saying goes, the body is sometimes called the temple of the divine.  May be it is more accurate to say, ‘the body itself is the divine’ albeit not in the ordinary sense of a divinity that we create in our heads as an artificial mental image—to be feared or cherished.  The body is the divine because when really felt and understood it is as unfathomable as space.

One famous Tibetan yogini nailed it as she stated, “When you don’t understand the body, you won’t understand enlightenment.”  Through energy movement we can gradually learn to listen and understand this body of freedom, so different from our ordinary way of seeing it as a vessel of bondage and limitation—manifesting sickness, old age and death.

Similarly, when we do not understand and fail to celebrate all of life through ceremonies and teachings, we fail to understand our own life’s sacredness. 

It feels so much richer and more rewarding to understand the body and to celebrate life.  It is, however, important to understand this as a path working naturally with the situation.  For this, the path itself becomes the working basis, rather than the attainment of a goal.  What we do inspires us, rather than, as Chogyam Trungpa states, “In the style of the carrot and the donkey, promises about certain achievements that lie ahead of us.”  We are more focused on noticing and doing, rather than on getting something specific out of it.  “The goal exists in every moment of our life situation, in every moment of our spiritual journey.”

News from the Goa Dharma Home

Happy Saga Dawa everyone, everywhere!

This auspicious day is such a joyous and befitting occasion to share some of what is happening (and has been happening since January) at our home, which still is just a dharma home and probably will never be turned into a dharma center. 

The fact that ours is not a dharma center (and the lack of ambition, prevalent from the very beginning, to create such a one) somehow goes back to the way Lama Dawa taught me and others here in India around me:  He taught us from his home in Kathmandu, the house that now his wife Kalsang and his daughter Rigzin own.  Or he taught us from our own home, in Goa, whenever he was staying with us, which was often. 

When in Nepal and India Lama Dawa did not take on the role of a ‘Center Lama’.  He much preferred to remain a home-based yogi, and the most powerful transmissions I ever received from him happened at his or at my home, not in the context of some officially announced event.  To meet him, you went to his room to see him and talk to him in private, with respect but without artificial boundaries.  No outside interference or made-up protocol created hurdles.  This way the teachings always just flowed as if of its own accord.  Naturally, the age-old, time-tested way of promulgating, hearing and receiving the teachings in a more intimate setting deeply impacted me and formed my own attitude toward teaching.  Officially announced events, of course have a role to play, but they can never replace the teaching at and from home—like restaurant food cannot really replace home cooking. 

Of course, when restricted to the home level everything stays small, but as E.F. Schumacher coined the phrase: Small is beautiful!  Besides, as far as we know the founding yogis of our tradition here in pre-1199 CE India, clearly preferred privacy and small size over big size and the institutionalized approach as well.  Only monasteries were big.  And monasteries are a different story altogether.  They are irreplaceable for other reasons.

Therefore, what we have here in Goa is a nameless dharma home not a big-name dharma center.  Between 2012 and 2016 Lama Dawa came to visit every year and blessed this home with his presence and by giving many teachings.  He never suggested that we should change the status from ‘home’ to ‘center’.  Now, after his passing we continue along the same lines.

I venture to say, because everything is kept within a relatively small family, beautiful developments are encouraged to unfold.  People come and do retreats not as if going to a place outside but as if coming home.  Like, in December and January Naira from Australia was here to do her first Guru retreat (after completing dakini recitations in 2015). The retreat turned out not to be so easy for her at all, and we had to work hard, to keep everything on the right track, by addressing and removing obstacles.  Yet, in the end her efforts and steadfastness showed clear and good results.  After two months she left inspired, highly motivated for more practice and for a more harmonious way of everyday living, and of course, empowered.

Toward the end of January, I flew to Kathmandu to visit Kalsang for one week, and to Chandigarh to give some more instructions, upon Bodhivajra’s and Subhadra’s request.  They were in need for more support for their preliminary practices, and generally just wished to reconnect.  I really enjoyed seeing them.  When in Kathmandu I was able to give some and to arrange for further funds for one of the eight stupas hand-carved from rock, to be erected at Lama Dawa’s birthplace.  Of course, it was good to connect with Kalsang and to meet for the first time Lama Chhodak, who has done divinations for us personally, and for our little dharma family since the time when Lama Dawa had stopped doing mirror readings.

In February Vajratara arrived.  She was to do her first dakini retreat, and she was also the first student who had not yet received the Yeshe Tsogyal empowerment from Lama Dawa, but was to receive this empowerment here in the way that Lama had taught me just before his passing.  When the day came, neither she nor I doubted that the necessary transmission would take place.  Eventually, the dreams and signs during and after the retreat, as well as the continuing shift in attitude toward self and others until now and into the future prove that our trust in the lineage and Lama’s transmission was well founded.  Of course, Vajratara also had received other empowerments from Lama Dawa, but had been guided beginning with refuge through many vicissitudes of everyday life and the preliminary practices mostly by me, starting in 2009.  She was very happy, of course that ten years of efforts finally could culminate in her first solitary retreat, with strict retreat boundaries.  And indeed all turned out beautiful, with some difficulties.  In the end she left with tears of happiness streaming from her eyes.

During Vajratara’s retreat,  Maitrivirya (who in ordinary life is her husband) went to Bodhgaya for one week to do some more prostrations (although he had completed his first 100.000 over two years ago), and to also to read out loud as many times as he could manage the Aspiration Prayer of Samantabhadra.  Especially, the reading of the aspiration prayer was the correct medicine for the moment as, by repeatedly reciting it, it cleared away many misunderstandings.

In May and part of June, Rinchen and I set up a boundary for own retreat.  This was the

first time that she and I went into retreat together, which was made possible through Tony Rodriguez’ total support.  He cared for everything, not just at home but also at Rinchen’s clinic.  What a gift to enjoy love and backing such as given to us, by Tony!  But the retreat, although flowing nicely, was not without challenges (mostly coming from the outside), for example as the roof of our house was redone during that time, for one week with ample noise in daytime.  Then one day, Varjasaraswati showed up in tears in front of our door.  I had sent her to do Vajrasattva preliminary practices retreat in a different place, but for many reasons, the location proved unsuitable.  She could not stay there.  We had to open the boundary to let her settle in our bedroom to continue with her own practice, while we stayed in the retreat room to continue with ours.  But again, everything immediately settled in its own natural flow.  The blessings of the Dudjom lineage are indeed immense!

As we were in retreat in Goa, Karunavajra stayed for one whole month in Bodhgaya, enjoying the sweltering heat of 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Farenheit), but still doing prostrations under the Bodhi Tree from 5:00 to 7:00 AM and in the course of the day, many Vajrasattva 100-syllables in his air-conditioned hotel room.  He says his stay taught him a lot, energized him a lot and deepened his connection to dharma.  Actually it may have been a blessing in disguise that he went at the wrong time of the year: at least there were much fewer visitors, as in pilgrimage season (October through March) the place becomes hopelessly crowded.

So, these were most of the activities by and through the people connected to our little dharma home, which happened during the first half of 2019.  Sharing them (even if only very few readers will be interested in such trifles) warms my heart.  By writing about them in the way I do, I don’t want to prove other approaches wrong.  Every genuine approach to dharma is helpful.  And sometimes when I do puja at home in the morning or evening, I feel the presence of all the people around the world who recite the Seven Line Prayer or play the bell and damaru like I do, dedicated to the welfare of all, no matter how imperfect my practice actually is.  It is so wonderful to know and even feel that we are all connected through the bond of our motivation and practice, no matter how much our views might differ in other regards.

About the Dharma Transmissions I Received to Share with Others & the Activities That Are Still Resulting

My dharma activities are first and foremost a result of my guru’s transmission and are based on his command.  I never asked him to make me a dharma teacher.  Whatever authorization was granted, the Nyingmapa Yogi Acharya Dawa Chhodak Rinpoche decided to bestow it without being requested.

I started to be a student of Lama Dawa’s in the summer of 1998.  From the very beginning, he did not talk much about preliminaries to me, although he gave the instructions to the foundational practices, which took me almost 10 years to complete.  Otherwise, he was very free flowing and creative in his approach.  Things didn’t unfold in the textbook order.

Refuge Lineage

In 2006 in March, out of the blue and thus totally unexpected, Lama Dawa gave me his refuge lineage and explained to me, how to give refuge to the Triple Gems properly, in the Dudjom Tersar lineage.  Then he pointed out the person to whom I should give refuge as my first dharma friend, and I did as I was told.  The person is still my dharma friend and also was Lama Dawa’s dharma friend for life and beyond, receiving teachings and empowerments from him.

Bodhisattva Lineage

At the same time, in 2006, when giving the refuge lineage, Lama Dawa also gave his bodhisattva lineage and explained how to convey bodhisattva instructions, in Dudjom Tersar.  Many times he insisted that these are NOT bodhisattva vows, but instructions!  He fine-tuned his explanations in 2013, adding a few more points, for the first time announcing the fact of his authorizing me in a wider circle, here in India.

Long Life Prayer

Again absolutely unexpectedly, before our pilgrimage to Mt Malaya in Sri Lanka, on the occasion of the Goa teachings in February 2014, Lama Dawa suggested that I should request my few dharma friends who were present at the time to appeal to him to compose a long life prayer for me, for their benefit.  The prayer was composed and delivered then, in Kathmandu in May 2014, in the Tibetan original, on which basis we together composed the English translation on the spot. Later Lama Dawa mentioned that he had sent this prayer also to some other Dudjom Tersar Lamas, without naming anyone in particular.

Giving Empowerments

In November 2017, one day before he passed into dharmakaya, Lama Dawa bestowed upon me the transmission and empowerment according to ‘The Wisdom Net of Traktung Dudjom Lingpa’s” Unelaborated Verbal Transmission and Empowerment for the Sacred Text.  My promise to Lama at the time was, that I only give empowerment to those who have been my long-term dharma friends, whom I have accompanied through the foundational Ngondro, and other challenges. 

Activities 2006 to Now

Although Lama Dawa made me promise in 2006 to bestow refuge on anyone who’d sincerely ask, I have so far only given it around a dozen times.  This is mostly due to the fact that I hardly go out and appear in public. Four of these dharma friends have gone through the entire Ngondro, and two more are almost complete.  There are private Three Roots retreats regularly happening at my residence.  Two dharma friends have done the complete initial cycle of recitations of the dakini section of the Khandro Thuktik, two more are now engaged in the guru section.  Some of Lama Dawa’s Indian students of the past also come and do retreat with me.  It goes without saying that along with teaching I follow my own personal retreat schedule.  In addition I sometimes read sutras and other texts upon dharma friends’ request, for their own and everybody else’s benefit.

Tibetan Yoga

From 1977 to 1987 I was deeply connected with Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche and the Nyingma Institute in Berkeley, California, during which time I translated five of Rinpoche’s books from English into my native German.  As a result of these efforts, in September 1982 Tarthang Rinpoche told me in a private conversation “you should teach what you have learned at the Institute in your home country”.  I followed this instruction to begin with in Germany until 1987, in the framework of his Nyingma Centers. After which time the affiliation with the organization ceased, albeit not the inner connection to Rinpoche.   As I have seen the benefit that these, let’s say ‘updated’ or ‘streamlined’ Tibetan yogic approaches that I now call NadiPrana have for people, helping them to become the kind of meditators who are more at ease with themselves and the overall situation in their lives, I have been picking up teaching these techniques again since 1998, mostly here in India, and mostly in privately announced small retreats.  My style naturally has changed much in over 30 years, and now is impregnated and saturated with the precious unborn and undying presence I was able to spend with Lama Dawa.

Future Activities

What future?

Whatever happens simply has to happen.

Additional Note

This was written for the purpose of clarification, not for soliciting students.