Moving Towards "Ling"

Today in Mill Valley, California

Today was the first time in our six years of existence that Osel Thegchog Ling has held routine practice/discussion/instruction gathering in a public space.  Until now, we have always met in folks homes.   A  Mill Valley Buddhist center has been kind enough to offer us space for this.  Eventually we will have our own "ling," meaning place or land.  Nina (left) and Christine (right) and I have been working together to assist Rinpoche in shepherding group practices for a bunch of years.  We each have different approaches to the task, that complement each other.

Even now that I have delegated most of my former tasks of the group to others and mostly focus on big picture thing, it still touches my life in some way every day when I am not in retreat.  It's a responsibility, and one that I care about--when I care too much I get into trouble with it, so these days I take a light touch with it as much as I can. Eventually, it will be a great center for Dzogchen teachings, and probably nothing like any of us (but Rinpoche) imagine.

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.

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.

Lama Tharchin Rinpoche's Magic

I don't know how many of you know my main root lama, Lama Tharchin Rinpoche.  He was ill for many years, and not really teaching much publicly.  Above is a 2006 photo I found online.

The aspect of Rinpoche's life story that has been on my mind lately is from his youth.  He had completed many years of retreat under Kyabje Dudjom Rinpoche in Tibet, culminating with him serving as a teaching assistant in the final group three year retreat.  He realized when he was about to come home that, as the son  of a respected lama, and someone who had completed extensive retreat, he would be treated with great esteem by people in his home area.  He knew he had not yet defeated his ego clinging, so after reuniting with his beloved mother, he told her he needed to go wander and practice in areas where he would be a complete nobody.  She said she understood, and told his father.  His father said "Good boy." His father --a fierce mahasiddha who was the ancestral spiritual leader of a community of non-monastic yogis (ngakpas) in Rekong (now Tongren, Qinghai)--had left his home for similar reasons.

Anyway, soon afterwards word came that things had gotten too bad politically to remain in Tibet to stay.  He escaped over the mountains to India.  He always jokes that the Chinese set up exactly the kind of situation he had been seeking.  He became one among many refugees, eventually settling in Orissa in Dudjom Rinpoche's refugee camp there.  There he became successful--as a very effective beggar.

Rinpoche remains the most stubbornly humble high lama I have ever encountered.  Without his guidance, I am sure that myself and countless others among his students would be real egomaniacs by now.  It is apparently easy to fall into this trap as practitioners of teachings that are said to be exalted.  Then one can undermine the whole process by wantonly engaging in the most seductive afflicted emotion there is--pride.  So hard to see in oneself, so poisonous

So the best news is that Rinpoche is healthy now, and teaching a lot this year.  Please see his teaching schedule at the Vajrayana Foundation website and the Jnanasukha website.  He has said quite often that he doesn't need new students, doesn't have any personal need to give empowerments and so forth.  All the more reason to become his student and receive as many teachings and transmissions as you can from him.

The pool of great lamas training in old Tibet is shrinking annually.  If you are alive today you are among the last people alive who will have access to such masters.  Please don't squander it by thinking they will always be there and you will meet them after you make some money and retire.  I regret so much how I squandered my first 30 years on silly dualistic political obsessions, and could have easily met Dudjom Rinpoche, Dilgo Khyentse, 16th Karmapa, and Trungpa Rinpoche instead.  

Rinpoche at Shambhala

Can you find Rinpoche in this picture?  I took this about an hour and a half ago, 

no effects added.

Preachin' the Dharma

Jetsunma

We rented the Berkeley Shambhala for the weekend to host Rinpoche's first of a series of teachings on the Kunsang Lamai Shelung (tr. as "The Words of My Perfect Teacher") a well-loved book by Patrul Rinpoche on the foundational practices of the Dzogchen tradition.  Rinpoche spoke "pandita" (scholar) style, elucidating each sentence in great detail.  Anne Klein is translating.

He made a key point that it is a mistake for people to think the foundational practices are not dzogchen.  He made an analogy to an airplane.  First you have to build an airplane before you fly it in the sky.  Ngondro is like building the plane, you have to have it built well for it to fly.  But it is an airplane before it takes off as well as while it is in the sky.

I am staffing the sales table.

You will also see a picture above of Jetsunma, our tulku of Yeshe Tsogyal, and the abbess of many nuns in Tibet.   She is said to be one of two women in Tibet today who give empowerment.  In her previous life she was Chime' Wangmo, a Dharma Physician and the daughter of Adzom Drukpa.  She is an excellent scholar, and was nearly complete her Khenpo (Doctorate-like) when forces outside of her control cut off her final year of education at the shedra she was attending.  There are some predictions she will move here to North America, but Rinpoche told me recently that the faith, devotion and practice of the Dharma here are not yet strong enough to warrant it.

Interesting how the picture came out of Rinpoche leaving his throne, above.

Join us tomorrow, starting at 10:30 am.

Tara Mandala--a vital growing retreat cnter

The Community Building, added a year or two ago.

The stupa, based on a series of dreams of Nyala Pema Duddul, a great adept of the Dzogchen lineage, this was put up in the late nineties.

From December 14 to the 24, I was on retreat at Tara Mandala.  Rinpoche has been leading a sequential program of teachings over several years there, related to the pinnacle teachings of the Nyingma tradition known as the Great Perfection, Dzogchen in Tibetan.  

Tara Mandala is a 700 acre piece of land we used to call wilderness.  Now, with a stupa, two large buildings, and one on the way, I guess we could call it one of the greatest Tibetan Buddhist retreat centers in the U.S.  Founded by Tsultrim Allione, an American Dharma teacher and visionary, in 1993, outside of Pagosa Springs, Colorado in the Western foothills of the Rockies--it is a stunning representation of what sticking to a clear and ambitious vision statement and pure intention can wrought.  I remember in about 200- being struck by seeing the architect's diagram of what Tara Mandala would become in the small yurt bookstore near the stupa in the summer of 2000, after a night of being kept up by wolves frolicking by my tent.  A community building, a temple, a three year retreat, environmentally responsible design principles.  Right!  My home Dharma center was in a circus tent at that point and it was headed by a Tibetan Dzogchen master, how was this woman and her crew of college students on work-study going to do that!  

Actually, I could see clearly that she would.  Tulku Sangngak Rinpoche later said that TM is a pure land of Tara, and she met Rinpoche a few years later who confirmed it is a "Ney" of Tara and many people will attain enlightenment in the future there.  Rinpoche is now the guiding light of TM and comes annually.  

Tsultrim has always emphasized mainly the practice of Chod (hint, you begin to approximate the pronunciation of this word by dropping the D, the o is pronounced as like it has those two dots over it) in her teaching.  She resides at TM and travels widely, helping bring Dharma to the west, and fundraising for TM.  She became well known through her book Women of Wisdom, a collection of biographies of some of the female meditation adepts of our tradition, turning on an interest in TB for western women who would not be magnetized by men in red robes sitting on thrones (which for some reason works for me, even though I have a radical feminist background).

This summer Tsultrim went to Nepal and Tibet with her large retinue, and was officially recognized by two different lamas as an "emanation" of Machig Labdron, the 11th century female meditation master who was the first native Tibetan chod practitioner.