Saturday, May 24, 2014

Where’s my Radish Soup?

Lama Tharchin Rinpoche jokingly referred to my house as Yudron Ling







Today, I brought my period of being a hermit to a close, rather unexpectedly. “My” Dharma center, Pema Osel Ling, contacted me, and needs my help with the annual summer retreat. It’s not that I have any great skill set, far from it. But, I can color dry white rice yellow, red and black with the best of them, and this is the kind of thing I'll be used for. So, in keeping with Lama Tharchin Rinpoche’s wishes that we all look after the center after he is gone, I did the procedure to dissolve the intense protective energy around my urban enclave. Then I had a party, all by my lonesome.

In the process, many vivid memories popped up of advice I’ve been given by my fellow practitioners and lamas. I felt sad, and didn’t know if I could bring myself to end my peaceful existence here (way earlier than I had planned). I recalled advice my friend Rinchen gave me when I went in to three year retreat. He recommended I say out loud to myself when times were rough: “Yudron, you can do this.” And so I did. It’s an amazingly powerful statement.

Lama Tharchin Rinpoche used to counsel me like that when I was having a hard time, and my mind turned negative. “Say to yourself, ‘Yudron…” What followed was a list of all the aspects of the good fortune I had. Have you ever read The Power of Positive Thinking, by Norman Vincent Peale? It was an early progenitor of the self-help book genre. I read some of it in a doctor’s waiting room long ago. Rinpoche was kinda like that. Of course, Buddhists are constantly aware of the reality of sickness, old age and death, so it has a slightly different flavor. For me, one of the main trainings in long group retreat was vey basic—how to work with your mind without going negative, when all sorts of difficult things are going on around you. Going negative usually entails coming down on someone. That person is bad, bad, bad.
 
Today, I was aware that my mind could go negative.  Since there is only one person here, I didn’t have anyone to project my disappointment on to and make into an enemy. Instead, thoughts of my own past fuck ups came up. Specifically, the many times I blew it in my relationship with Lama Tharchin Rinpoche, who I honestly loved more than anyone in the world. My friend Gail Sher wrote a book called One Continuous Mistake. The more I strove to be a good student, the more continuous my mistakes were. There is an old adage—did it come from Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche?—that the lama mirrors your neuroses. Well, ain’t that the damn truth! 

When I started to sink, I brought to mind what Dungse Thinley Norbu Rinpoche said to me in a kata line once.  He told me that when I dwell on my obscurations or defilements, I should think about Vajrasattva and Guru Rinpoche inseparable, instead.  [For those who aren’t in our tradition, these are the symbolic representations of complete purity, and the guiding principle, as deities.]  So, I did think about them for a moment, and felt better. 

Today, I also remembered many instructions on the technicalities of ritual from my two retreat masters.  There were some things I couldn’t remember, as well, but I did my best.  By the time I finished, I felt my reservations about ending my solitude were resolved, and blessings were present—as they are for anyone who practices with good heart.

The lessons go on, in the absence of the physical presence of wisdom lamas, or  the physical presence of my fellow practitioners.

                                     ***

I don’t post on my blog while I am in retreat. So, there are gaps.  Nowadays, I have hesitations about blogging at all. One is, frankly, more of our lineage lamas are using the internet these days, and they may stumble on this obscure blog. I love them, and don’t want to displease their wisdom minds. 

In Tibetan culture, half-baked people like me did not traditionally write anything about Dharma—even as tangentially as I am doing now. For starters, there was no public school system, so most people were illiterate. But, also, in a Buddhist society the written word of the Dharma is holy. People respect the depth of knowledge and realization that is necessary to write about it in a way that is both accurate and helpful. From that perspective, folks like me, who are not teachers, do not have realization, and are generally ignorant, should remain silent. 

On the other hand, my life is dedicated to the Buddhadharma, and I am a writer by nature. So blogging is natural to me.  My sojourn as a practitioner—and soon-to-be inspirational writer for teens—has it’s interesting dimensions, thrills and spills. So, I’ll press forward, and try to write responsibly. 

                               ***

The wife of the mahasiddha Saraha, one of the greats from ancient India, cooked some radish stew. She did not have time to serve it to Saraha before he went into a meditative state from which he didn’t emerge for twelve years.

When he regained normal consciousness:
“…he asked his wife for the plate of stew… She was upset by the request and questioned him, asking why after twelve years of meditation was he still full of desire for the stew. He was embarrassed and said they should move to the mountains so as to be even more isolated in his meditation and she retorted that it was not necessary for them to move. She explained to him that the greatest solitude comes when one is free from conceptual thought as well as the preconceptions and prejudices of an inflexible and narrow mind. Saraha was inspired by his wife's words and continued his meditation with the sole intention of freeing his mind from conceptual thinking. He began to experience all things as space, seeing the world in its natural state.” 
[The quote comes from the Himalayan Art website, but sounds like the translator Keith Dowman.]

This is a famous story. When I first heard it twenty years ago, I had no clue about what it meant. Now, I know that practitioners of Mahamudra don’t strive for semi-comatose meditative states. I’m not saying I am a practitioner of Mahamudra, or anything so exalted. I’m not. But, I do take his consort’s advice seriously and aspire to do as she advised. 

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