EMAHO
Dzogchen
Center Newsletter
Summer 2000 Archive
Updated 09 Apr 2002
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EMAHO Dzogchen
Center Newsletter Updated 09 Apr 2002 |
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Letter from Lama Surya - Lineage, Mission &
Teachings
Also in the News - Western Buddhist Teachers Conference
Hey! It's Happening! - Coal Treasure
What in Creation - Mahasattva Forty-Niner
Warm greetings and blessings to one and all, from everyone here at Dzogchen Center!
I am sure most of you have heard of the passing of our beloved guru Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche. He died at Shechen Monastery in Dordogne, southern France, in August of 1999. I was fortunate to spend a week with him there at his home, near my old three-year retreat center of Chanteloube, shortly before his death. It was a moving and profound time. Khenpo's "kudung" (preserved remains) have been transported to Bhutan, where they await cremation. A stupa and Vajrasattva temple are under construction there for that purpose, at Longchenpa's seat of Tharpaling Monastery, in response to Khenpo Rinpoche's expressed wish. Khenpo Rinpoche's wife, Damcho Zangmo, offered over 100,000 candles and sponsored hundreds of Nyingma monks in numerous days of auspicious prayer ceremonies under the bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, India, this winter, in Khen Rinpoche's memory.
In the midst of the sadness of losing this precious long-time teacher, however, in January came the most thrilling news from Tibet in a long time— the dramatic escape of the Seventeenth Gyalwa Karma, aged 14. This teen-ager is the reincarnation of my late root guru, His Holiness the Sixteenth Karmapa, who passed away in Chicago in 1981. Frostbitten and exhausted, the young Karmapa rode and walked from the blizzards of the Himalayas straight into the embrace of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, upon arriving safely in Dharamsala, India. He will begin studying soon under the greatest of the contemporary Kagyu teachers, the Venerable Thrangu Rinpoche, and under Tai Situ Rinpoche as well. These two men were his close disciples from his past life.
I myself have been working for ten years now, with Nyoshul Khenpo's unfailing help and encouragement, to establish the core practice of Tibetan Buddhism, which is the Dzogchen tradition, in this culture. In 1991 the Dzogchen Foundation was established as a framework for meditation retreats, seminars and teachings, weekly sitting groups, Tibetan lama visits, Himalayan pilgrimages and conferences for Dharma teachers. Our aim was to build up a sangha of Dzogchen practitioners in America and Europe. In 1995 we started one of the first Buddhist websites on the Internet: www.dzogchen.org.
Among those who inspired this effort stand, first of all, my teachers: H.H. the Dalai Lama, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Kalu Rinpoche, Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche, and Tulku Pema Wangyal Rinpoche. No less involved, ever since the beginning, have been valued friends and colleagues—Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, Fred von Allmen, Stephen and Martine Batchelor, Lewis Richmond, Sylvia Boorstein, Dan and Tara Goleman, Paul Crafts, Thomas Lesser, Lama Palden Drolma, and others too numerous to mention.
Today, the mission of the Dzogchen Center remains the same—to transmit the core teachings of Dzogchen in particular, and of Buddhism in general, to people in our culture, in an authentic yet accessible hands-on format.
To succeed in this, we must continue to provide students with opportunities to receive the guidance of qualified Dzogchen teachers and lineage-holders. It will become increasingly important to do everything we can to develop new teachers and translators, both East and West.
For the first time in history, here in the West, the major traditions— represented by Zen, vipassana, and Tibetan Buddhism—are being practiced simultaneously in one place at one time. Establishing a non-sectarian dialogue, and mutual understanding and cooperation between them, is absolutely critical to the development of a buddhadharma for the West. The more we are able to do this, the more Buddhist ethical and contemplative practices will be brought into the mainstream of our society.
I am amazed and gratified to see to what extent these aspirations are beginning to come to fruition. Already, strong, capable teachers are emerging from Dzogchen Center practice, and our intensive retreats together: Charles Genoud, who has also studied many years in Nepal and India; John Makransky, Professor of Buddhist Studies at Boston College; Brendan Kennedy, with years of meditative experience behind him; and Dr. Roger Walsh, from the University of California at Irvine. In addition to mine, their counsel and advice is available at many Dzogchen Center retreats, and I encourage all who attend to take advantage of their helpful knowledge, and to appreciate and explore them as spiritual friends and mentors. In addition to these teachers, practice leaders are also emerging who are well-qualified to guide local sanghas and sitting groups.
To stabilize and fully activate your retreat experience, I encourage you all to continue with the Six Building Blocks of practice, as discussed in detail in my book Awakening the Buddha Within. Briefly, they are:
We must first, however, have something to stabilize and activate. Intensive retreat experience with a qualified teacher, even if we can avail ourselves of it only once or twice a year, is the most efficient way to jump-start (or recharge) our spiritual "battery," our source of power which is the buddha within. A retreat gives us access to expert guidance from someone who has followed this map before, and knows all the shortcuts, the breathtaking sights, and the places where we can get stuck or where the road is washed out or the signs are missing. A retreat has question-and-answer sessions, and private interviews with teachers. A retreat is a laboratory where we can experiment and try out the techniques we are taught. There is no adequate substitute for it, and I encourage all of you who have not yet experienced it, to make one of our Dzogchen intensives a priority for the coming year.
Looking back over our Dzogchen retreats of the past decade, I am delighted at how they overflow with the richness of practice in the Vajrayana tradition. It is like opening a treasure chest from which spills gold and gemstones of every description. On an impulse, I wrote some of them down to show you what I mean, but this is by no means a complete list of the things we have studied and practiced together these last years.
Not counting the basic training in meditation, chanting, and Tibetan yoga which we emphasize at every retreat, we have investigated and, in most cases, continue to investigate:
Our Dharma talks focus on bodhicitta and the awakened heart of unconditional love and compassion; on generosity and selfless giving; on the meaning and purpose of life; on sangha and community-making; on sacred relationships and tantric practice; on the female Buddha principle; on conscious death and dying; on Buddhism as it exists in America today and how we can assist the Free Tibet movement, as well as how we can relate to mainstream Western faiths and religious communities; on psychology and Dharma, meditation and therapy, as well as on the four Tibetan lineages and the towering figures of Tibetan Buddhism, such as Padma Sambhava, Yeshe Tsogyal, Machig Labdron, the Karmapas, and the Dalai Lamas.
Through the Dzogchen Center, I am able to teach not only through intensive residential retreats, but also through workshops, seminars, classes, lectures, weekly sitting groups, conferences, personal guidance (spiritual direction), and online classes. Books, monographs, articles, columns, an online Ask-the-Lama feature, plus audio and videotapes and CDs, help reach many more.
I strongly urge you to take advantage of all these opportunities to deepen your practice of the View, Meditation, and Action of the Dzogchen tradition. Ultimately, your realization of the dharma depends upon you.
As many as possible of these activities have been and will continue to be provided free of charge, or on a dana (voluntary donation) basis only. But we need everyone who can, to whatever degree he or she can, to help us further this important and beneficial work. Primarily, the wider sangha needs the strength and consistency of our practice. But in the economically-based society we live in, we at the Dzogchen Center need funding to continue to do what we do, and to make the dharma available and accessible to all. Even the smallest contribution, offered with genuine caring, counts immeasurably. In the certain knowledge that all beings, even the smallest insects, wish greatly to be happy and long to be free of misery, we invite you to share in the delight of making the Dharma flourish in and for the whole universe.
Lama Surya Das
From June 19 through June 24, Lama Surya Das attended the Western Buddhist Teachers Conference, at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, outside San Francisco. Over three hundred teachers were invited, and one hundred eighty participated in the five-day gathering. H.H. the Dalai Lama was be present for two days of meetings. As one of the Conference organizers, Lama Surya Das remarked upon the uniqueness of this event, in that teachers from almost all of the Buddhist traditions came together to further the transmission of the Dharma in the West.
"So Mom, what did you do at your retreat?" asks one of my children as we share our first dinner together after a week apart.
"Well, most of the time we chanted and meditated," I answer.
My 12 year old daughter, Ali, says "I bet you meditate like this: you close your eyes... breath deeply... imagine wide open spaces... get in touch with your inner child..."
"Not exactly," I answer. "Lama Surya Das said 'Meditate as if your hair were on fire'".
They put down their pizza and stare at me. Actually, they're looking at my hair.
"Then what?" asks my teenaged son, Ben.
"Then you just stop... and drop..."
"And roll?" adds Tom hopefully, remembering the chant he learned during fire prevention week.
I continue, "And the Buddha said you shouldn't believe everything your teachers say, just because they say it".
"Far out!" says my teenager.
"And we don't close our eyes to meditate. The teacher said 'Meditate with open eyes, open nose, open mouth, open throat, open chest, open belly, open anus...'"
Milk comes squirting out of their noses.
"Your teacher said 'anus,' 'open anus'?" my daughter asks incredulously.
"Mom, what's an anus?" asks my youngest.
"Asshole," says Ben.
"Mom, Ben called me an asshole," says Tom.
"No honey," I explain, "that's what anus means."
And kids being kids, they giggle hysterically and chant "Open anus open anus open anus!" They're laughing with delight, waiting for more. On their faces I see expectation, some confusion, a little understanding. I think: this must be what Surya sees looking out at his students? Eager, skeptical, expectant faces, waiting for his words of wisdom. This is my moment, my time to spread the Dharma to my children. So I teach them the sacred camel fart. Afterwards, I look into the beautiful faces of my three jewels as together they laugh the twelve vajra laughs. Our pet bird rings the bell in his cage. My heart transforms into a ball of light. And we dissolve, one into the other.
Pamela Driscoll
Winter Dzogchen Foundation Retreat
Dover, Massachusetts January 5-12, 2000
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The Dzogchen Center Fall Intensive is scheduled for November 10 through 19, 2000. If you would like to join us this year, please see www.dzogchen.org/retreats, or e-mail us at retreat@dzogchen.org.
"Homage to Tara, whose name means star, the light that shines in the darkness." I smiled inwardly as Surya made that dedication at the close of a group Tara chanting during a November weekend retreat in Barre, Massachusetts. The night before, as I stood alone outside, I had turned to see the longest, brightest, most vivid shooting star I'd ever seen. Now it was as if it were being described by someone else, and I found it a delightful, gentle synchronicity. That's one reason I've always loved practice in nature. In Dzogchen, we practice "cutting through" duality of self and other, of "in here" and "out there." Going out in nature seems to invite the possibility of nature doing the cutting through for us, which as I understand it is the point.
But the most memorable and spontaneous analogy Surya gave during the retreat was in his very first teaching, when he called Dzogchen the "Superman practice." Instead of a gradual path akin to smelting ore into gold, one instant of grabbing the View was like Superman squeezing a lump of coal into a diamond. In fact, Surya elaborated, Dzogchen was even faster than that. You don't even need the diamond. You see the coal as perfect. Then, as your practice matures, you affirm its wealth by exploring if anything else is more valuable. Finally, having stabilized the View, the "coal" is a constant, wish-fulfilling gem.
When we took our last afternoon break of the retreat, I struck off into the woods, thinking I knew where I was going—for a view of Mt. Wachusett on the eastern horizon. To sit and gaze, "meditation like a mountain," as Surya described earlier.
I followed a twisting footpath, then scrambled atop a rocky outcrop of boulders. Through bare trees I could see Wachusett, sunlit on the horizon, mighty and imperturbable, indeed a model of unshakable meditation. Above the mountain, "view like the sky," all ashimmer. What is the light that shines in the darkness, I thought, but our own pure knowing and seeing?
But for some reason, amid such epiphanies and musings, I felt a most unmountainlike restlessness. I found myself thinking the view, both literal and figurative, might be even better from a little further up along the rocks. Or maybe I was simply drawn to move on, and this was the reason my mind was giving it. I climbed and sat, climbed and sat. Soon I knew I had to return to the hall for the afternoon's closing ceremony.
I began to scramble down toward the footpath below. Just below my last perch, among the boulders I noticed old dull-brown rusting metalwork, from some forgotten other-century light industry no doubt, and then a small black lump. A rock? I picked it up and then found another. Lumps of coal!
Gripping the coal, one lump in each hand, I bounded down the path, laughing and laughing. The vajra laugh. But you don't really laugh the vajra laugh. It laughs you. Like the lump of coal, it found me. Even my seeming restlessness was a perfect part of the discovery, for it had led me where I needed to go.
"That's a terma," Surya said when I handed the lump of coal around the group closing circle to him. "Have you read what it says?"
Terma, a hidden treasure text, offered up by the earth. All I know right now is that when I hold it in my hands—cool and utterly black, so light it's almost weightless yet surprisingly dense, rough-hewn yet smooth—its splintered surfaces gleam in the slightest light. The light that shines in the darkness.
copyright Bob Morrison, 2000
Mind the mine,
mine the mind,
mind the mind,
mine the mine.
Be a real gold digger.
Sam
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