Immediately after my first trip to Cambodia, July of 2015, I began giving generous gifts to my new found partner and her family, because they were, as my father used to say, dirt poor. Jewelry, motorbikes, and cellphones were distributed throughout the extended family. It was a mixed benevolence on my part, as I felt they too were giving me so much by way of a basic reconnection to both this ailing earth and its needy humanity. By the end of 2017, the balance of my assets from America had been transferred to Siem Reap through the acquisition of property leases and building construction. Around 2019, as a full time resident, I formerly started studying the K’mai language, and since then, I’ve had three or four main teachers. Because of their language facility, they had been my only intellectual lifeline among the nationals until I started talking with Chinta. Yesterday, I had my second serious conversation with my new friend at his ‘higher end’ cell phone shop not far from my rooftop apartment on Taphul Road. On my way to a restaurant near to Chinta’s shop, he saw me and beckoned. Since our first conversation, about ten days ago, I’d had thoughts to drop off my teacher’s book, The Three Levels of Spiritual Perception, and I felt now it was fortuitous. During our first conversation, we spoke of many things stimulated by the start of election campaigns, but also the division in Cambodian life known as anchakra and potichakra. That is, the secular and the Buddhist; or, the decision to stay laity or become a monk. So even though I didn’t have the book on me, I went to say hi anyway and ask if it’s something he might be able and ready to read. That is, to see if he had some real desire to study Mahayana, for without it, there would be no point. Thus, as I entered Chinta’s door, my administering of material gifts had finally evolved into the ministering of advanced Dharma (outside my family) here in Siem Reap.
As auspicious coincidence would have it, the intended recipient of my offering of the precious teaching of the Lam Dre Nong Sum, a replete explication given by His Eminence Deshung Rinpoche III, was the same age as myself when I received it from 1977 to 1980. Let me recount the significance. I walked in and fumbled my words in two language trying to establish first whether or not Chinta’s (his name meaning musical thoughts in K’mai) English was good enough to read The Three Levels of Spiritual Perception—a unique title bestowed by Rinpoche’s translator/interpreter, Jared Rhoton ‘Sonam Tenzin.’ Being patient with me, Chinta said he thought he could. When I told him I could bring by the physical book, he immediately suggested other alternatives. Opening the app ‘Books,’ he took it from there and, using drop-down shortcuts, located its free download. With lightening speed, he ‘airdropped’ it into his phone. There he quickly opened it and had Siri, or some other app, reading it aloud. “Well, it’s obvious you run a phone store,” I narrated. He smiled wanly, already absorbed in the introduction to the text I’d heavily underlined. To my happy surprise, he seemed genuinely interested. The last time I’d promoted the text to a new student of Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism, it was to someone I worked with in the film business, and that unfortunate person rejected it out of hand as too preachy. With Chinta, to whom English was a second or third language (He’s studied Vietnamese for nine years which, given the historical enmity, is unthinkable for most K’mai.) I could see the sophistication of the writing was daunting. So, I started to explain how, in 1977, I’d been practicing Zen meditation without much knowledge of Buddhism until I met Rinpoche through his translator, Jared Roton, when I was twenty-seven. Upon hearing this, Chinta brightened and pointed out that he was twenty-seven. It’s then I recounted how I asked my prospective root teacher if he could show me the ‘nature of my own mind.’ How clearly I now remember Rinpoche smiling, then saying, “Kali, kali.” I looked to Jared, and he said, ‘Slowly, slowly.’ I’m pretty sure my friend had told Rinpoche I was a Zen, or ‘sudden school,’ practitioner. So part of my precious teacher’s reply signaled he would teach me the ‘graduated path’ first.
Now, forty-six years later, here I was faced with an interested student who, for most of his life, had been schooled in Theravada (the vehicle of attested Buddhist basics), and I was going on about the Bodhisattva’s path, seeing all phenomena as mind only. As I knew he had knowledge of Vipasana, I further explained that while experiencing the ‘two-in-one’ of all phenomena arising as the mind only, one’s insight is then guided toward ‘the-mind-in-itself.’ This is the very teaching, once we were well into the Nong Sum, Rinpoche gave all of us New York City students at Jetsun Sakya. It’s the customary ‘nature of mind’ teaching that comes in the root teaching when and where it’s traditionally suppose to be taught. So I was indeed jumping ahead. But in truth, the prospective, if not tenuous student of the Mahayana I found in Chinta, was not of the same stuff we Americans were in the seventies, and more obviously, I was no Tibetan Lama—and, especially, not just any lama. But one of unmatched learning such as Deshung Rinpoche Kunga Tenpa Nyima, who’d been appointed to the University of Washington as one of seven authoritative commentators on the entirety of Tibetan Buddhism. This was just after the Tibetan diaspora in 1959, and Tibetan Buddhism was a subject few knew anything about in America—or the West in general. Audaciously, I ended up imparting to my new spiritual friend, twenty-seven years old, same age as me when I received them, what had taken a year or two of faithful Nong Sum attendance—suffering the Uptown subway after work and hours of organizational duties. Plus, he now had a taste of the analytical methods used to isolate it for meditation. Whatever commissions or omissions I made that day trying to introduce advanced Buddhism, may I be forgiven by the Gurus for my impetuous pretense at having given that most precious gift.
Chinta wasn’t the only person I ‘ministered’ to that day. Later, around dinner time, after spending an hour or two with Chinta, I ate at my favorite restaurant on Taphul Road. What makes it my favorite are the people who work there, and particularly a young waitress with whom I’ve become friendly and grown fond of mostly do to her delightfulness and fascinating, but flawed, appearance. She has an indigo birthmark across the bridge of her nose, as if she were at a Forty-niners football game. Or, she got struck between the eyes. It seems however to add and not detract to her cute, odd duckling like appearance, and most of the time she appears pretty upbeat. That night was no different, except she told me that inside she was not feeling good about herself. Because of my fondness I instantly feared it had something to do with me. But then I quickly disabused myself of thinking like that, and worked on trying to make her feel better. I told her she was good and asked if she ever went to the wat, meaning temple, forgetting that many K’mai mostly say pagoda. Once she understood, she said ‘some.’ It didn’t sound, however, that she sought solace from the monks, or a Loak Ta (abbot), as many do here, when she had a problem. Next, I asked her if she did meditation, again forgetting it’s a word not always immediately understood, and switched to samadhi. She said she hadn’t tried it. Overall she seemed rather self conscious and I started thinking it was about me again. Anyway, I tried several other remedies and parted the restaurant thinking at least I’d tried best to be kind and empathetic. I didn’t get too far down the road when she came running after me. It seems I’d left my nearly full bottle of water behind. I thanked her, she looked longingly, as perhaps I did too, and I grabbed her hand as she turned to go. That was it. It’s exactly what she’d needed the whole day, some physical reassurance she was a desirable person. We then parted—if I can speak for her and myself—inexplicably satisfied. Feeling more whole and fulfilled. No sooner however than I got to where my motorcycle was parked, than another friend there started telling me how he felt he had become a boring person because he was not drinking and smoking drugs anymore. He even went on to say he should be a monk, except he didn’t think he could stop having sex. It just seemed to me he didn’t know what to do with himself now that he’d gotten rid of some bad habits. I quickly counseled him to go do something good. Like volunteer at one of the free schools. Or start a charity project. Anything that produced good karma to fill the void of the bad. I could also tell he was now immersed in inertia and noncommittal behavior because of fear. So I urged he branch out and do something positive for other people. And that he practice samadhi, as he seemed a natural at it. There it was, three people in a row I’d ministered to in just a few hours. Perhaps what’s behind it are the three or four times in one month I retook my Bodhisattva vows or received teachings on how to practice them that accelerated my engagement. And that night, while practicing my Avalokiteshvara sadhana of nondual Compassion and Wisdom, I fell into a deep samadhi where, for the first time, I experienced a blissful samyoga, or intimate union, with all beings—both those I’d engaged with earlier, and countless others. For years now, it seemed the aim of disseminating advanced Buddhist teachings, both the Mahayana and the Vajrayana, here in Cambodia, was just another improbable, Mission Impossible, and equally a job for a much better actor. But clearly, something had changed.
Comments
Post a Comment