July 2008
When I was a child, my hero was the cartoon character Mighty Mouse:
“Here I come to save the day!
Mighty Mouse is on the way!”
I used to dream about being a girl superhero. I had a ponytail and flew through the air and rescued people from “bad guys.” That was when I was about six years old. I soon gave up the fantasy and caved in to reality: I was just another powerless kid who had to go to school every day and do my chores and homework, and when I grew up I would be a powerless adult who went to a boring job and paid insurance premiums.
Guess what? Though there is undeniable truth to the “reality” version of things, the fantasy turns out to be no less true. I might not have known this had I not encountered the path of Vajrayana Buddhism, in which imagining ourselves as superheroes is not only allowed, it’s the fast track to enlightenment! And it’s not considered a fantasy; it’s an equally valid—even a more valid—way to see ourselves.
Though the Vajrayana (the type of Buddhism that came to us from Tibet) includes all the types of practice done in the other Buddhist traditions (Hinayana and Mahayana), it is distinguished by what are generally called deity practices, in which we visualize “deities” who have superhuman abilities to help beings in particular ways; in some cases, we even visualize these deities as ourselves.
These Buddhist deities are not deities in way we usually understand the word. They really are more like superheroes, whose function is to rescue beings in all the realms of existence from all types of harm. For example, Chenrezi, a four-armed luminous white superhero, relieves suffering with light rays of compassion; Green Tara, a green female superhero, stamps out fear, danger, poverty, and other types of distress. Medicine Buddha, who looks like a blue Buddha, dispels illness. There is a whole class of superhero “protectors,” some of them quite fearsome looking, who make it their business to quash our enemies and demons.
According to the Buddha, everything we experience is in some way a reflection of our own mind: the superhero deities thus correspond to various fully developed aspects of our innate potential, and the “bad guys” they take out are our own familiar disturbing emotions—anger, desire, jealousy, greed, pride, etc.—which they magically restore to their true identities as aspects of our underlying, unrealized wisdom.
In the Mahayana traditions of Buddhism, which include the Vajrayana, all practitioners aspire to be bodhisattvas, or enlightenment warriors. Bodhisattvas can look quite ordinary and show up anywhere—your next-door neighbor could be one. They don’t generally announce themselves, but work quietly to help beings in whatever way is needed. That could be as dramatic as stepping in front of a train to save a child, or, as Tai Situ Rinpoche once explained in a teaching at KTC, it could be as simple as making someone a cup of tea. You might even see one rescuing an insect from certain death—to a bodhisattva, every living being counts.
The most powerful bodhisattvas are those who have attained realization of the true nature of mind, and can therefore see what beings really need and exercise their powers to provide it; Chenrezi and Green Tara are considered realized bodhisattvas. However, anyone can become a beginner bodhisattva simply by making a formal commitment to attain full awakening in order to help others do the same, and then setting out to make it so.
A few years ago, a college student showed up at one of our Dharma center meetings in rural New Hampshire in a log cabin in the woods overlooking a quiet pond, where we met (and my fellow practitioners still meet) one evening a week to do calm abiding meditation and the practice of Chenrezi. This young man had just seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and he wanted to learn to do the magical feats and airborne acrobatics displayed by the characters in the film. We looked at each other for a moment, then welcomed him to our practice: Yep, Chenrezi practice is a perfect place to start!
July 2008
Just a few days into three-year retreat, almost seven months ago, I was helping a fellow retreatant polish some shrine bowls. It was during the lunch break, the only time talking is allowed, and we discovered that we had both come up with the same metaphor to describe our experience so far: down the rabbit hole!
Many aspects of retreat are like being in another world. We hear very little news from outside, even about the monastery whose grounds we inhabit; we are protected as much as possible from anything that might engage our thought processes unnecessarily and interfere with the process of letting them naturally settle so that we can begin to connect directly with our own vast, peaceful, powerful underlying inner nature. A classic Buddhist metaphor is of being caught up in the waves versus experiencing that they are part of the great, calm ocean.
It’s just a temporary escape; when we emerge from retreat we will fully engage once again with whatever waves the world throws our way. But in order to develop the capacity to engage truly effectively, a period of isolation is needed, and that’s what three-year retreat provides.
Well, that’s half of it. It might be isolated, but it’s full of life and activity, even if most of it is internal. Three-year retreat includes a large number of diverse meditation practices, some of them designed to calm down our current, ordinary mental busyness (the waves), and others intended to activate the various aspects of our potential realization (the ocean). These practices can be quite complex, colorful and dynamic: for more on this topic, see “We Are All Superheroes,” also posted this month.
Or, to paraphrase another classic work of Western literature:
Oh, the places you’ll go and the people you’ll meet
When you sit on your seat in a three-year retreat!
Anyway, this is just by way of letting you know that, though I am aiming to send in a post or two about once a month, there are likely to be some lulls in the process. During these first seven months, and probably for several months to come, we are still in the upper reaches of the rabbit hole, pretty much just out of sight of the surface. But my understanding is that some of the practices we will do in the future will serve as express elevators to the depths of our minds…and those periods may not be conducive to the kind of conceptualization required to write a web post.
As I mentioned in the introduction to this web page, Lama Norlha Rinpoche has given me permission to write occasionally from three-year retreat in order to keep in touch with the New Hampshire/Maine community of practitioners affiliated with KTC Monastery. But I can only write what I know (or think I know), and that isn’t much, compared with what is available from the many accomplished teachers in the Kagyu and other Buddhist traditions. There is a wealth of genuine teaching accessible via books, dvds, cds and the internet, and best is to find an authentic teacher to study with if possible. KTC Monastery is open to visitors, and its schedule of teaching and practice, along with contact information for its twenty or so affiliated centers, can be found on its website, www.kagyu.com. If you can’t get to KTC or an affiliated center, start with books or other media by Kalu Rinpoche, Tai Situpa, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Pema Chödron, and others.
Most likely, I’ll be back with another friendly post in August.
From the yellow brick road,
Yeshe Chödron
via Owl
June 2008
The maroon fence outside my window is a favorite resting spot for birds. Sometimes they sing a song, but usually they just sit for a moment or two, maybe groom themselves a bit, and then they’re off to the next thing. In April there was a parade of Carolina wrens, usually en route to the new house with some fresh nesting material. In May, the wrens could still be heard in the distance, but the fence belonged to song sparrows. Now the sparrows are rarely seen or heard, and a pair of catbirds seems to have moved in. (One is meowing on the fence as I write. Nope…now it’s gone. Postscript from end of June: the catbirds are now gone, and the blue jays have taken over.) One evening awhile back, when I was feeling momentarily dispirited, a shy wood thrush, usually heard from far off in the woods, stopped just long enough to sing its magical song.
Whenever a catbird lands on the fence, in the back of my mind there is always the hope that it will sing. If lunch is buckwheat and parsnips (it happens), I wish it were something else. If it’s Thursday after lunch (housecleaning day) I wish it were Friday (incoming mail day). The weather could be warmer…or cooler…or a little less humid. The chanting could be smoother…or more in tune…or faster…or slower….My mind could be free of thoughts…or at least full of better quality ones. What exists that could not be improved!
I have come to suspect that samsara, a.k.a. cyclic existence, this prison of confusion and suffering, might be defined simply as the state of wanting things to be different. Could it be that as soon as we wake up and see things as they are, and are able to rest peacefully in that without wishing them otherwise—whether we are walking on the beach or at work on Monday morning with a bad-tempered colleague—bingo!
In the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, of which the Vajrayana is a part, that is not quite the whole story. In order to reach full awakening, we still need to develop and carry out the motivation to help all other beings attain the same state of peace and ultimate happiness.
Still…if only I could rest in the present moment without wishing for a slightly different present moment…then everything would be perfect!
June 2008
Three-year retreat is the best possible place to be; and most of the time it feels like the best possible work to be doing, and I am very mindful of how lucky I am to have this rare opportunity.
But it also has its challenges. Right now, in late June, it’s very hot. It’s hard to get up before 4:00 a.m., and sometimes it’s hard to stay in the same seat doing the same practice hour upon hour, day after day. At this point, nearing the end of our first six months, the initial novelty has worn off and we are facing many more months of hard work without a lot of the comforts and escapes we used to take for granted. I sometimes feel like I’m “in the weeds,” my friend Anne’s copy editing term for being in the middle of a tough project with no end yet in sight.
The biggest challenge so far: retreat is pretty much designed to paint your ego into a corner. On a daily basis, I fail to live up to my own standards, in terms of both practice and interpersonal relations. As each day connects a few more dots in my devious ego’s outline, sometimes I feel temporarily discouraged, and there are days when I want to run and hide in a closet.
A few inspiring books have helped me through the difficult moments, e.g., the chapter on patience in The Jewel Ornament of Liberation by Gampopa, Shantideva’s The Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, Ngulchu Thokme’s 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, Thubten Chödron’s excellent book Working with Anger (which draws upon some of these very sources, and puts them into a Western perspective), and Mingyur Rinpoche’s brief account in his book, The Joy of Living, of his difficult first year of retreat, and how he overcame his own personal challenges through intensive application of the very meditation methods he was being taught.
When Lama Norlha Rinpoche was here to teach a couple of weeks ago, as he was leaving the shrine room, he stopped to look at a beautiful calligraphy by Tai Situ Rinpoche that hangs above the stairwell. Someone asked Rinpoche what it says, and he answered, “Ro nyam.” Asked what that means, he said, “Equal taste.” Asked to explain equal taste, he said: “Happiness and suffering are the same.”
He told us that in Tibet, practitioners would rub something soft, such as an offering scarf, against one cheek, while simultaneously rubbing something abrasive, like sandpaper, against the other, to try to get a first-hand glimpse of ro nyam.
Rinpoche often instructs us to examine our mind when we are very happy or very unhappy, and locate the part of the mind that feels the same no matter what, that is unaffected by passing emotions. I have found that instruction very helpful, both before retreat and in it. It’s an experiment anyone can do. If we just put to use the parade of emotions that march through our minds all day long, maybe we can skip the sandpaper!
May 2008
In its thirty years of existence, KTC Monastery has hosted many great Lamas, including the Dalai Lama, the Sixteenth Gyalwang Karmapa, Kalu Rinpoche (under whose guidance KTC was founded), Tai Situ Rinpoche, Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche, Thrangu Rinpoche, Bokar Rinpoche, Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, and many others. Just to read their names confers blessing!
On May 19, 2008, we hosted an especially historic visit: the Seventeenth Gyalwang Karmapa, Orgyen Trinley Dorje, stopped here for a glorious morning on his first visit to the West, in the midst of a whirlwind two-week tour of the US. (New York City; Wappingers Falls, NY—that’s us; Woodstock, NY—his official seat in the US.; Boulder, Colorado; and Seattle). We spent weeks preparing to receive him, and by all accounts it was a splendid event. (We just got to see the part in our retreat house.)
Just 22 years old (a year older than my daughter), the Karmapa first attracted worldwide attention when he made a daring escape from Communist-controlled Tibet to India at the end of 1999, at age 14. He’s been in India ever since, and we’ve been awaiting our first chance to meet him.
It was a particularly poignant moment, as it was his previous incarnation, the Sixteenth Karmapa, who, along with Kalu Rinpoche, urged Lama Norlha Rinpoche to come to New York City in 1976 and undertake the monumental task of establishing the first traditional three-year retreat program in North America. Lama Norlha Rinpoche was with him in Chicago shortly before he passed away there in 1981; he had visited KTC in 1980, as preparations for the retreat were gearing up, but was no longer with us when the first, historic retreat actually began in June of 1982.
After a welcoming ceremony in the main house, an informal talk in a tent outdoors to an audience of more than 300 members of KTC and its affiliated centers (including Jeffrey, Anne and Marguerite from KSC-NH), and a walk down the hill to bless the recently completed foundation of the new Maitreya Center and the stupa that overlooks the Hudson River, the two retreat houses were the last stops on his itinerary.
He spent about ten minutes in each retreat house—first the men’s retreat, Naro Ling; then the women’s retreat, Nigu Ling. At Nigu Ling, we played a traditional welcome on the various Tibetan instruments—conch, cymbals, drum, reed horns and long horns— even though we have barely begun learning them (I played the drum, the easiest one). Then we followed him upstairs to our tiny shrine room, where we served him traditional tea and sweet saffron rice, performed a symbolic mandala offering ceremony, and chanted some prayers. He inspected each of us closely from his seat during all this, which only took about five minutes. Then he made a few remarks, partly in English and partly in Tibetan translated for us by another renowned teacher, the Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche; and wished us well in our practice. As he was leaving, he shook each of our hands—not a traditional blessing, but a very special one.
We were told that upon taking his seat in the main shrine room at the beginning of the visit, he immediately asked in which direction the retreat houses lay. In his previous incarnation, he had a strong interest in this project, but six cycles of retreat were completed and the seventh begun, and he himself traveled from one lifetime to the next, before he was finally able to see the results. In fact, we are the first Western retreatants he laid eyes on. He promised that he will be back for a longer visit, and we hope it will be soon.
Like his predecessor, the young Seventeenth Gyalwang Karmapa radiates warmth, charisma, confidence, and wisdom. In his presence, it is impossible to look anywhere but at him. He speaks with humility, and has a playful sense of humor; we heard frequent laughter from the tent during his talk, and were told that, in honor of the unseasonably cold, windy weather that day, he began by welcoming his audience to Tibet.
He is already a very accomplished meditation master and teacher. Some of his early teachings, beginning in his teens, are included in Michelle Martin’s biography of him, Music in the Sky, which also includes a harrowing account of his escape from Tibet. I found these teachings quite moving and wonderful, along with a recent teaching on compassion in the summer 2008 issue of Buddhadharma Magazine, which features his photo on the cover.
In addition to forging an auspicious connection with this powerful young spiritual leader, the Karmapa’s visit also served to remind us what a breathtaking thing it is to be in the presence of an authentic realized master. At Kagyu Thubten Chöling, we have the great good fortune to live every day in the presence of a realized master, who has been patiently teaching us, through words and example, for more than thirty years. Sadly, it is easy to take such an experience a little bit for granted when it is so readily available. Seeing the Karmapa reminded us how very lucky we are.
I’ve heard it said that when you meet a prospective spiritual teacher, the most important question to ask is who their teacher is—to make sure they come from a genuine tradition with certified results. Otherwise, you could end up entrusting your innermost well-being to someone who just had an interesting idea…and is testing it out on you!
Each teacher inevitably puts his or her own stamp on the teachings s/he is transmitting, but it should be a question of style and not content. Even Chamgon Tai Situ Rinpoche (the “Tai Situpa” who has written several excellent books on Buddhist practice), one of the foremost Lamas of the Kagyu Lineage, when he visits the US and teaches at KTC Monastery, always warns us when he is deviating from the traditional explanation of things. He calls these moments “my own rubbish.” They are inevitably very helpful explanations from his own experience, which happens to be firmly rooted in traditions and teachings that go back in an unbroken line for 2,600 years. Calling his personal spin on it “rubbish”—that’s just how careful he is being to keep the traditional teachings completely pure and uncontaminated by someone’s bright idea—even those of a realized master.
People whose techniques don’t have the advantage of a long history of verification are often offended by the concept of lineage, and try to brush it off as some sort of outdated, closed-minded clique mentality. And of course, not having a lineage doesn’t necessarily mean your methods don’t work; they might. We just don’t know yet.
We live in a culture that seems to reserve its highest esteem for the latest thing. LAST year’s cell phone / breakfast cereal / bestseller? Throw it out! There’s an energy in innovation, a freshness, that is very seductive; and new things do sometimes turn out to be improved as well. But they can also get us into trouble. I spent 15 years as a medical journalist and reported on hundreds of studies of new medications and surgical procedures—some of them worked, some didn’t, and some caused irreparable harm. You don’t know until you’ve tested it out on enough patients for all the flaws to become apparent—which can take years, and leave behind a trail of permanent damage and death. Thalidomide…DES…hormone replacement therapy…Vioxx…lobotomy…if I had Google in retreat, I’d list a lot more. We always assume they’re fine until the damage is done.
Genuine lineage is insurance that methods have been thoroughly tested and that you are not a guinea pig. There are many spiritual traditions to choose from that come with this sort of quality assurance—that they are very likely to be effective if applied diligently and with the proper guidance, and very unlikely to do any harm.
And to take it a step further, just because someone claims to be part of or to represent a particular lineage doesn’t mean they do. The teachings urge us to check out a teacher thoroughly before we make a commitment; our spiritual progress and well-being depend on it.
It could be argued that the Buddha himself had no lineage—he started one. He did study with a number of teachers, but he felt their methods didn’t go far enough, and he had to forge the rest of the path on his own. If you meet a teacher who claims to be doing the same thing, and you are confident that you are putting yourself in the hands of another Buddha: by all means go for it! Meanwhile, I’m sticking with the tried and true, and hope that it continues to be preserved and handed down for many generations to come.
At our meditation study and practice meetings in New Hampshire, we often talked about the Four Thoughts, also known as the Four Reflections or the Four Contemplations. Their full title is the Four Thoughts That Turn the Mind, i.e., redirect it from worldly to spiritual concerns.
A number of good books exist that can help you get started meditating. We have studied several of them at Kagyu Samten Chöling in New Hampshire. Bokar Rinpoche’s Meditation: Advice for Beginners is our standard handbook. I recently read Mingyur Rinpoche’s Joy of Living and found his instructions extremely helpful as well. (The first part is about the correspondences between traditional Buddhist methodology and recent discoveries about how the brain works. It’s quite interesting, but you can go directly to part two for the meditation instructions.)