Post Vajrayana in Kampuchea

28/11 “Matter is emptiness. Emptiness is matter. Matter is not other than emptiness, nor is emptiness other than Matter.” This is from Khenpo Migmar Tsering’s translation of the Heart Sutra, switching the word ‘form’ for matter. It seemed immediately more intuitive than ‘form’ as the Abhidharma and the Avatamsaka Sutra both speak of matter as particles and atoms. In the sutra’s seventh collection of books, The Universal Hall of Lights, “Samantabhadra describes ten aspects of Buddahood in detail and affirms that Buddhahood is present in every particle in the physical universe, as well as in the body and mind of every living being.”  Even in karmically negative situations Buddhahood, the Buddha’s mind, is there, but best imagined as ‘antimatter.’  Metaphorically, the real enemy and plague to heavily negative karma is antimatter which is matter composed of negative particles: “These have the same mass as particles of ordinary matter but have opposite charge and properties, such...

Perhaps the first syncretic religious figure I became aware of, but never thought of him as such, was Thomas Merton. He himself was critical of a relativistic, syncretic naiveté, that “accepts everything by thinking of nothing.” Merton was a Catholic Trappist monastic, Vietnam war resister, a fan of Thich Nhất Hạnh and also an ardent student of both Zen and Vajrayana Buddhism. He had corresponded with of one of my root Tibetan teachers, Chobgye Trichen Rinpoche, the Sakya sub-sect Tsar-pa lineage holder and Merton’s editors later placed the letter by Rinpoche on the center pages of his Asian Journals. Published, in 1973, Edward Rice, of the New York Times, had this to say: “The journals contain not only Merton's daily observations and comments, but metaphysical passages, poems, newspaper stories, dreams, definitions of Eastern terms, dialogue from comic strips and numerous (but often condensed) quotations from sources [in which] he was interested.” These writings record the last s...

20/9/23 To understand the teachings on the bardo or to give those teaching one needs to have thoroughly experienced Clear Light as it arises in meditations, before sleep, at dawn, during sexual union, at the moment of death and so forth. To wait until one dies to finally acknowledge or discover Clear Light is too late. For the Vajrayana practitioner, the focus is on the dissolution of the five skandhas, their corresponding elements, starting with earth and ending with space. Following that, one can fearlessly anticipate the ‘three empties,’ the experience of four lights are: white bodhicitta, red increase, black near attainment, and the base Clear Light of the dharmakaya, which permeates all beings. There are as many as six positive outcomes that keep one out of the bardo (the netherworld in Pali Canon) in the Sakya esoteric tradition. If one is not familiar with any of these practices, or has failed to sufficiently train in them, then once in the bardo—after forty-nine days—six real...

10/9/23 Awakening to the depth of karmic complexity, one also see the utter senselessness and pain of it all and is moved to both neutralize and ameliorate one’s basic situation. According to both Buddha and Nagarjuna this means following the Eightfold Noble Path—gateway to becoming Enlightened. Dodrupchen Rinpoche taught that both animals and humans have different strengths and abilities over each other and that this is just a sign of karmic patterning. Essentially, it’s meaningless other than a source of pride, competition—the thrill of victory and the pain of defeat. Worse, it’s also survival of the fittest. When one can see this karmic patterning, really see it, then one is elevated above its suffering altogether. Thus, the unsatisfactory nature of existence is ameliorated by the knowledge of dependent origination—karmic patterning and ‘no selves’ to ‘own’ or take pride in anything. This is the very wisdom of Emptiness, whether arrived at through logical analysis, father and mother...

“The Ngor lamas from the Vajrayana Institute really went to bat for me. I prepared for two weeks. Except for the long Hevajra sadhana it was all done in Tibetan—4 hours long. My Vajra Master was also named Sonam Gyatso and he attempted to teach me the text before hand. It took four monks to perform everything. One to keep me reading in the right part of the text. One to pour butter. One to throw seeds and grasses into fire. Definitely one of the harder things I’ve ever had to perform.” I texted the above to a Vajra sister who knew I was in pursuit of accomplishing a fire puja while in India.  Two-and-a-half weeks after leaving Dehradun and then traveling to Manduwala to request a fire puja from the generous lamas mentioned above, I undertook, with their indispensable aid, the pacification fire puja for Hevajra—having completed, less than two months earlier, the requisite nine month retreat and challenging recitation numbers. Five days before undertaking this fire puja, having wai...

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...