Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Today's Sky




The fingerlike tendrils of clouds
crisscross the blue range.
who builds them there, the workers of instantaneous arisings?
If we swerve to see them
they swerve out of vision just as fast,
leaving particles of white flotsom
of the white ideas they had injested.




you can click on most photos on my blog to make then bigger.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Berkeley Fish Release

We crammed in Alana's car, trying to keep warm while waiting for the animals to arrive.  Ellen and Stacey made merry.
Chimey loves handling crabs, and is fearless.
Marty gets ready for the liberation.
Over it goes!

After Anne's event a dozen of us did a life release tonight at the Berkeley pier.  We bought many clams and crabs, then gathered, said a prayer and a bunch of Om Mani Peme Hungs and set them free in the Bay.

It's great to do this in Berkeley, all the bystanders on the pier think it makes perfect sense to save the lives of animals by buying them and setting them free.  

Anne Klein

This Afternoon at Orgyen Dorje Den, Alameda, California


Today was the last day of a weekend retreat with Prof. Anne Klein we (Osel Thegchog Ling) organized here in the Bay Area.  Anne is quite close to our community.  She is a 38 year practitioner and scholar of Tibetan Buddhism.  Starting with a scholarly Gelugpa approach, Anne then became a student of Lama Gonpo Tsetan, the Nyingma Scholar Khetsun Sangpo Rinpoche, and was the first western student (1996) of our lama A_Rinpoche.  She met Rinpoche at Samye Chimpuk in Tibet in 1996, and within a few years was instrumental in bringing him to America.  She remains his heart disciple, and right hand woman in America.

So, we have been asking her for years to come teach our community, and finally she did.  The topics were the Nine Yanas, coupled with some specific practices that Rinpoche asked her to promulgate.  The Nine Yana topic was initiated by HH the Dalai Lama.  When the Dharma center she and her husband Harvey Aronson started in Houston, Texas, Dawn Mountain, was invited to have an audience with him, he said that she should teach the nine yanas.  She has been exploring how to approach the topic in a heart-centered way, by coupling the framework with reference to our Longchen Nyingthig ngondro practice, and offering additional new practices to enhance our meditation.  I would say she mainly addressed the first three yanas, and how they can be experienced in light of Dzogchen this weekend.

Anne was unenthusiastic about having her picture in a blog, so I waited until Chimey went to say goodbye to her to take the above photo.  Chimey first met Anne about twenty-eight years ago when they were both students of Lama Gonpo's.  We have  four or five active members of our group that were students on Lama Gonpo, a Longchen Nyingthig dzogchen master who passed away a number of years ago.  In Tibet our lama has taken over the care of Lama Gonpo's nuns as well.

You can see the shrine room of Orgyen Dorje Den above, who were gracious enough to rent us their facility for the event.  Pictured behind Anne are three large statues of Shakyamuni Buddha, Longchenpa, and Guru Rinpoche.


Saturday, February 23, 2008

Moon Over Stanford

Thubten Jinpa with HH Dalai Lama
Moon over Stanford

Osel Thegchog Ling invited Anne Klein (you know, of "Meeting the Great Bliss Queen" fame) to come from Houston to teach this weekend in Alameda.  She then arranged a double-header, speaking at Stanford University in Palo Alto on Thursday evening. The talks title was "Land and the elements in Tibet: A Story of Living Large."
I drove down to Palo Alto with a new member of our group.  Anne's talk was a discussion of the word bla (pronounced la) in Tibetan, and I wish I could remember her definition. Bla has been translated as soul, kind of an energy body that inhabits various parts of a human body at different times, that can can be predicted by Tibetan astrology.  But land has bla, too, that can be a palpable power.  I can't do justice to her presentation.  

Interestingly, we noted a Tibetan man walk in the room who looked like that guy who translates for the Dalai Lama.  You know, the intellectual in the suit who translates Tibetan into English that is almost incomprehensible to us non-scholars.  Then, when he spoke, with that sort of English accent I --and everyone in the room--realized that it really was his holiness' translator.  He's really friendly, actually, and I can attest that doesn't wear that suit all the time.  Not just a guy after all, he is a Geshe Lharampa and a Ph.D.  His name is Geshe Thubten Jinpa.

What was funny is that he was asking Anne her perception about whether people in Tibet now are loosing their sense or belief in bla.  He said he hadn't been there since he was one.  Then, I thought, actually that's not funny.  Because of his connection to HH Dalai Lama, I imagine it would be impossible to get in to China or the TAR.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

The Cute Coots

Some kids paddling, and singing on Lake Merritt today.

Coots in the lake.

Circumambulating the lake again today, I noticed children paddling a skulling boat, and kind of singing a rowing song.  Cute.  But birds are the movie stars of Lake Merritt, which has the oldest bird sanctuary in the U.S.   I never knew that these diving birds are called American Coots.  I thought I was an American Coot, but now I see I am no where near as cute as a coot.

If I had remembered my text and my mala or electronic counter, I would have "opened" my practice, reading up to the mantra part, then accumulated my mantra while walking, then "closed" the practice by finishing up the rest of the sadhana.  One of my lamas allows me to count mantras accumulated while walking towards my practice goals.  I am not a body-oriented person, and exercise is excruciatingly boring for me, so practicing while exercising is good for me, plus the exercise brightens up the practice for me.  But I forgot the text and the mala, so I just said 21 seven line prayers, did my 3.4 miles, spent a few brief moments abiding in awareness, and called it a day.


Sunday, February 17, 2008

Circumambulating Lake Merritt


I am making the intention to walk around Lake Merritt at least once a week.  It's a pleasant 3.4 mile walk.  Lots and lots of birds, and a fair number of humans.  I tend to like the wilds of the Oakland hills more, because I am a hermit, and I encounter few humans there.  However, the thing about Lake Merritt is that it is 3.4 miles around, making it a full hours walk for this old slow poke.  That's good for the body!  So, I walked it yesterday evening.

Today I spent the day in puja and discussion with the folks from Osel Thegchog Ling, up at Christine's house in Marin.  It's looking like we are going to start borrowing Arjia Rinpoche's Mill Valley center to hold some of our practices in, we are outgrowing people's living rooms, and they have been kind enough to make it available to us.  That will be a steeping stone towards our own center, someday.

This coming weekend, Anne Klein from Houston is coming in to teach some practices from A _ Rinpoche.  We are renting Orgyen Dorje Den in Alameda for that.

If you don't live in the Bay Area (or New York City) you can't begin to imagine how much space rentals are.

Friday, February 15, 2008

Sausal Creek, Finally!



You were probably wondering when I would get around to writing about Sausal Creek.  I will start today.

I own half of a bit of an urban culverted creek.  Creeks are celebrities in the Bay Area. Sausal Creek has a fairly large community non-profit fan club, called Friends of Sausal Creek.  These folks are dedicated to restoring native flora and fauna to this little stream ecosystem corridor through Oakland.  They tell you all about it on their website.  They are wonderful people, but can rouse little enthusiasm for my part of the creek, in the low income flat part of Oakland.  The original course of the creek down here is unknown, there is a lot of fill and it looks like it's course was straightened when they logged the huge first growth redwoods up in the hill in the 19th century, so they could pull logs to ships using the creek as a sluice to float the logs out to the bay for shipping.   However, there is a little kink in the line near me house, so who knows.

Until the 80's I hear all the neighborhood kids played in the creek behind my house, and neighbors fought over the ill defined border between properties--our deeds say the properties extend half way across the creek.  Imagine the battles when erosion or course changes occurred.  Then, the creek was given high cement walls and base and a strong tall anchor style fence at the top. I have owned the house one year.   There is no way for me to get to the creek (I own half of) now.  But there are a lot of plusses to that for me, so I'm not complaining.

There is a Creek Ordinance in Oakland, and it has so many rules for what I can do with my property, that at times it seems I might be arrested for tossing out a glass of water in my yard... thanks to my friends at Friends of Sausal Creek.  I have a lot of dreams of restoring the habitat, back to what it probably never was, but should have been!  I'm share that as we go along.  Meanwhile, I'll show you the BEFORE photo, the one on top.

I love living here, I'm not the only one who lives here.  We have raccoons, feral cats, a hawk, a lot of hummingbirds, crickets, a Great Egret who visits on special occasions.  There are fish found each year upstream, so they have to go by my house.  I am determined to spot one.

Living Uncontrived


Who is this woman, dressed in red?
Rolling rolling out of my head
Who is the woman, oh so clean?
She unravels what I mean.
Living, living, uncontrived:
who knows what comes up inside?

What is this fish in Sausal Creek?
Swimming, swimming out of the dead
What is this fish, oh so live?
Leaping swimmer, unbelieved.
Looking, looking, can’t be seen:
Can’t be life in this old stream.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

A Room of My Yome

Going to evening practice in my Yome

My meditation room is a kind of cross between a yurt, a dome, and a tent, called a Yome, in my backyard.  It has been a huge success, I am really glad I chose this structure.  It is hexagonal, with a high peaked rook inside, and the coolest thing about it is its translucency.  There is something about being able to see the fine detailed shadows of moving trees, squirrels and cats outside that is just so sweet and lovely.  Sometime I'll show you a daytime view, but I'm redoing the shrine, so I'm not quite ready for an internet open house.

I have been spending a lot of time out there lately, catching up on my projects (this week the Shitro text work, mainly) and my practices.  I'm finishing up the very end of one ngondro, and because I really need some exercise, starting a new ngondro before I am done.  The ngondro practice sequence typically has prostrations that are done in the beginning and not at the end.  I have injured my back doing prostrations in the past, so I am starting very slow with small numbers--trying ten a day and seeing how it goes, then 20 and so on.  Practitioners in the Nyingma tradition pretty much practice ngondro daily until we die.

Also, everyone in our sangha is now doing Shitro practice daily, so that's no secret.   I have been very surprised how different the practice is now that I am doing it daily instead of at tsok once a month.  Anyone else been kind of blown away by the power of it?  My, my, what they say about the Dakini's breath still being warm.  Now I don't remember why I was so resistant to getting started.  Just an American who doesn't like being told what to do, I guess.  Now, I'd be happy to do two sessions a day and "finish" in a year.  But, I had other plans, so we will see how it all pans out.

I just feel so happy to be alive, and to be able to pursue my own quirky purpose in life full time for the time being.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Hiking and Hopping




My friend, actually ex-wife, Deb and I went for a walk on Sequoia-Sunset trail in the hills today. Deb is a personal chef and fundraising consultant. Deb's the best conversationalist I know, meaning she listens very intently and it makes one feel oh-so-interesting. I am trying to do as many of my social activities as I can while on the move these days. Yes, a fitness kick is underway.

The next step of my fitness kick will be to find someplace to dance. Yes, the dharma nerd likes to dance. I was in the best condition of my adult life when I went through a time when I was swing dancing three nights a week for a year in my thirties. It is also an opportunity to touch human beings, and listen to good music.

So, I've started looking at the internet to find out where to go. It seems lesbians have a few options in the Bay Area:

"Cream"
supersexy lesbian dance party with rotating DJs spinning hip-hop, old-school, funk, Latin, and disco

(Oh my goodness no. This makes me feel very old.)

"Ladies' Night with Burnin' Bush"
w/ Ital Hi-Fi spinning dancehall, reggae, & hip-hop

(That one makes me feel very... white)

Hot to Trot Women's Dance
Beginners are welcome to learn and participate in two-step, East and West Coast swing, salsa, waltzes, nightclub two-step, some Lindy and line dances.
Price: $10-$20 sliding scale, includes lesson
Time & Date: Fridays, 7:30-11 p.m.
Glenview Performing Arts Center
1318 Glenfield Ave.
Oakland CA 94602
Oakland: Glenview
510-763-1343, hot2dance@aol.com

That sounds more up my alley. Although it's still a sexual metaphor, it a nerdy middle-aged one. Unfortunately, they have Valentine's party this weekend. Yuck. I've decided I'm allergic to relationships. I'll wait until the following week.

Leading and following are completely different in these dances, and with women I learned to lead because I am tall and look silly trying to follow those little butch women.

That's if I want to play it safe and stick to women's events. Should I dare learn to follow? If we open up the whole wide world of Bay Area swing dance, the best options I see are:

Trip the light fantastic

Allegro dancers

Then the big picture:
Lindylist

What is swing dancing you ask? Well, there are different styles, here is a video of some good Lindy-hop dancers. Lindy is most popular out here in the Bay area, but I prefer the Jitterbug,
Why? Because it's easier, I couldn't even get the basic steps down of the Lindy, last time I tried.

Now, I'm loosing my nerve before I even start!

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Srid


Tonight I had dinner with my friend Laurie, the chodpen (ritual master) for Osel Thegchog Ling.  Then we went to a Tea Bar to work on Dharma text production.  We have been wrestling with the Shitro terma that our lama discovered in 2002 ever since that time, trying to develop a usable version that suits the purposes of our sangha.  Now we are poised on the brink, soon we will have a new text.  

Since Laurie and I are basically Dharma nerds, we get all worked up over things that would seem to be minor points to anyone else.  We both particularly despise Tibetan phonetics that are not, well, phonetic.  I think this is because neither of us are translators, we represent the end user of a text.  We each have our particular heated opinions about certain words.  For example, don't even show me a text that has words like "srid" or "med" throughout as supposed phonetics.  That's how we end up with 30 year American practitioners who say they are practicing chod (rhymes with odd) with their bell, drum and kangling.  I'm convinced it is a plot by people fluent in Tibetan to make the rest of us sound like total idiots!  (Those d's are rarely pronounced, and neither is that r in "srid").  At least get us in the ballpark, folks!

Anyway, I wanted to come back to the Shitro mantra chain discussion that I started some posts back.  Remember, the Rinpoche for this sangha--we'll call him A. Rinpoche--started a mantra chain of the main mantra of the Hundred Peaceful and Wrathful Deity practice.  The idea of this chain, which I prefer to call a garland, is to have at least one person in our world wide sangha saying this mantra twenty four hours a day seven days a week, by tag teams.  We have a sister sangha in Italy who is doing nights and mornings, and we are doing afternoons and evenings, having each person take a half hour or more.  I'm doing one to two pm, if you would like to chant along.

Looking at my Shitro text, I have discovered that one's personal mantra accumulation minimum is supposed to be only a million of this main mantra, as opposed to the huge number I wrote below.  Also, my speed has picked up, so somehow I find it encouraging to be working towards my personal goal rather than simply continuing "until samsara is emptied" which was Rinpoche's vajra command.  Clearly, I am far from the first Bodhisattva bhumi. 

Friday, February 8, 2008

The wide world of feeling


When the wide world of feeling
opens in your heart
There is a pressure there that feels
like it could kill.
I feel the tragedy of human life
How do people live with it
all the time
in worlds of war and hunger.
I think of them, then
notice the sensation, experienced and dissipating,
again again again.
Again.

Burn Baby Burn

The final day of Gutor, there is a grand procession of warriors. Rinpoche hurls, shoots, and slings symbolic representations of our obstacles into the fire.






Gutor at Pema Osel Ling


A few days after our breakup, I went to Pema Osel Ling for their Tibetan New Year Retreat. How merciful that it was happening right then! Above is a a picture of Lama Tharchin Rinpoche chatting with Lisa, and Kim outside the shrineroom. Harold is in the background.

Gutor is the final period of the old year, and we do a very fierce penetrating group practice, called Vajrakilaya, for a week at this time. There is a full tantric orchestra, and the most elaborate ritual of the year at this time. The lamas ritually enact the binding and obliteration of all of our obscurations and negativities of the new year. (Sorry, lamas, for these incompetent explanations, but I am just trying to give folks some context for my pictures).

It's times like this that I am so grateful for the Dharma. It gives you a whole toolkit for dealing with emotions, including ways at the higher levels that you can actually use them to enhance your practice. So, for those who are worried about me... don't be. I'm more than fine now. But hugs are very welcome.Here is something that none of us ever thought we would see again. This is Rinpoche doing the Black Hat dance, a swirling loping embodiment of battle with the legions of Mara. He hasn't been able to do this in about a decade, but has had a complete turnaround in his health since having a pacemaker put in last year.


Thursday, February 7, 2008

AH




My goodness, a lot has transpired in my life since my last post.

On January 27th, on the way to practice the ceremonial feast of The Black Wrathful Mother (Throma) at my friends' house, a discussion began with my partner, L, that lead to end of the relationship.  If I recall correctly, the same thing happened to two friends of mine four or five years ago as they were driving to the same Throma tsok, eventually ending up opening the door for one of them to enter three year retreat at Pema Osel Ling.  Throma apparently does not think much of relationships.  In point of fact, Throma does not think.

Here we go again, down to the primordial AH.

I spent much of the following day walking and looking at the sky at my secret place.  Although I have taken lots of people there, it will always be my secret place; in the words of Joni Mitchell, "it's a place no amount or of hurt or anger can depreciate."

Would you like to go there with me, dear reader?


The view from my spot

A pinkish orb that was in the sky that day.  It looks like an upside-down heart, doesn't it?  
My phenomena.