Post Vajrayana in Kampuchea

So there I was, an alien ingrate—filthy with I, me, mine , an old broken record with a beard—lobbying for sat-sang with one of the most accomplished lineage holders and Buddhist teachers of our time… In 1977, under the direction of His Eminence Deshung Rinpoche, we started Jetsun Sakya in New York City, and the lamas, like graceful swans, flocked to our tiny lake. After five or six years, however, our beloved Deshung Rinpoche was mostly teaching elsewhere, like in Washington, California, Taiwan, Singapore, to name a few. The monk His Holiness the Sakya Trichen recruited me to import to New York was at least proficient in English, had an Acharya degree from Varanasi’s Sanskrit University, and started attending ESL classes at Columbia University. Before we knew it our basic skills as dharma students and meditators were being reviewed and drilled. A kind of informal dress code was initiated and an anti-hippie, pro-yuppie policy instituted. Our new captain took his responsibilities seri...

In our Thunderbolt vehicle, the Vajrayana, quickness of success in one’s practice depends upon the degree of trust one has in the Guru. As if in a flash of lightening, one’s attraction to the Guru—likewise his or hers for you—comes from the passion of highest discrimination. Having seen, felt, and perhaps even tasted the very agency of the Buddha within this relationship, an inner-most, determined desire to stop the pain of existence for oneself and others arises. After such a fateful, correct appraisal of the sufferings, one takes refuge in the Guru as the Buddha, Guru as the Dharma, and Guru as the Sangha. In light of this seriousness, requiring openness and vulnerability, one embraces the Guru as one might a lifesaver in a roiling sea. Generosity, and it remedial effects, which matures patience and pliability, further strengthen one’s resolve and one’s own Buddha nature becomes closer at hand with giving and the removal of adventitious defilements, faults and failings. The compulsio...

Contagion to one’s renunciation is similar to that of the impulse making customers ‘run the bank’—a negative confidence, or lack of faith, that an institution, like the Dharma, will ‘make them whole’ in time of crisis. With the banks the crisis is financial. With confidence in the Dharma, it’s crisis of ego and identity. Self worth. For instance, what am I worth if I can’t stand up to this so and so who’s just dismissed or insulted me? Even in the most seemingly passive modes. Like the self-praiser always promoting what he or she knows, what they have, who they are in terms of status. A subtle contagion begins to spread as the insidious one-up manship mounts. We begin to take stock in our worth in terms of relative values. Situational values demanding a sliding scale of principles. Yes, I would do this or that if that were case, the ego crunches. Whatever it takes to survive the general onslaught of others generating a false self-worth as well. For in times of an ego crisis, one questi...

Kyabje Do Drub Rinpoche, the second Fourth (quantum counting) Do Drubchen, of the Ancient lineage, was much taken with the Tibetan word mitakpa, and used it effectively during his teaching at the Massachusetts Nyingmapa center he established in 1972. The word means impermanence, and is well-suited, evidently, for describing interpersonal relationships. The comings and goings amongst people. He applied this to how Katayana, Buddha’s disciple, blessed with karmic omniscient, could see that the woman holding a baby and throwing a stone at a bothersome dog was harming her own recently deceased mother or father, and other karmically connected people from her past lives.  Mitakpa means one’s friends will be one’s enemies, and vice versus. ‘Fortunes change,’ I use to say in high school, having recently shifted from a poor parent to a monied one. Rinpoche talked about a poor farmer who later became President. ‘That’s phenomenal!’ I recall saying, after Jimmy Carter got elected President....

After spinning all the little mani wheels at the smaller campus of Mindroling Monastery, I circumambulated the stories high Golden Buddha and observed many younger Indian people celebrating in the usual young person’s appreciation: selfies and group pictures with timer set. All seemed happy to be there. Then I ate at the little restaurant across from the variety store and tasted the best vegetable Thenthuk ever. Feeling fatigued from the nasty virus I picked up in either Cambodia or India, I temporized. I witnessed Tibetan monks riding scooters, and a Tibetan dressed in brown robes with an impressive over jacket, cradling a baby while hitching a ride on back a scooter. In Cambodia the monks seldom drive anything. But then they usually have zero money as well. I headed over to the larger campus, which looked like the monastery proper, and tackled circumambulations there. When you come in the main gate there’s lots of placards explaining the history, intention, and the typology of the st...

Giving up one’s children is not the same as giving up on them . Let me explain. If one holds the two sets of Buddhist vows, Bodhisattva and Vajrayana, one is pledged not to abandoned beings— nor one’s love for them —as this is the very basis of compassion. Siddhartha Gotama left his family, his father, Suddhodana, mother, Maya, wife, Pimbayasodhara, a son, Rahula, a sister and brother, who like his son became accomplished sangha. He did this after seeing the living examples of what would later become his teaching on the suffering of birth, aging, sickness, and death . I’ve always wondered how in good faith could he do that? Just leave his parents, wife, child, sister, and princely constituents on a seeming whim to explore the causes of the above sufferings? The answer is, they too will then become Enlightened , the supreme goal of the Bodhisattva being the wishing and effecting of complete liberation for all other beings.  Here in Cambodia, one’s future has traditionally held t...