Water

L and I went up to to top of the Oakland Hills today, near the origin of the Sausal Creek watershed.  Can you see my house down there below?

It's my birthday, I've decided to start thinking of it as "one year closer to complete realization" rather than "one year closer to the grave."

Anyway, looking at the San Francisco Bay reminds my of another Bay long ago.  Little known (and perhaps totally uninteresting) fact:  I spent every weekend of my childhood summers on Saint Leonard's Creek, a small estuary off the Patuxant River, itself a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay.  We're talking Maryland in the 60's, here:  humid, hot, wild, and just beginning to consider an end to segregation.  My father, George, is a boat enthusiast.  We had a series of motorboats, that were moored at a southern Yacht club known as White Sands.  White Sands was a polynesian style development, two docks, vacation homes, jungly woodland trails, an abandoned mansion (with bats!), and horse stables.  I wandered, by sea and by land, with unsupervised preadolescent redneck children--the offspring of red faced men who had gained wealth through running car lots.  

The white men spent a lot of time sweating, shirtless in the bilge of their big boats, or perhaps convening together on the back of the boat, being served fried chicken and drinks by their wives.  This was not an avocation for sissies.

As children we swam in the warm brown semi-translucent water with the crabs, sea turtles, perch, and jelly fish.  The boys would do cannonballs off the tall houseboats, the girls would merely jump.  Then afterwards we would nurse our jellyfish stings with Adolf's Meat Tenderizer--MSG in a bottle--which somehow killed the pain.  And there were snakes, poisonous; copperheads on land, and cottonmouths in the water.  

It seems like I read this all, and much much more, in a novel now.  

Cage Rattling

Remember that Zhitro accumulation I mentioned post before last?  Well, Rinpoche has really rattled everyone’s cage by sending word to us that we should continue a twenty-four hour mantra accumulation  “until samsara is emptied.”  But, no, not just that, he set up two other simultaneous continuous accumulations—a special Vajrasattva mantra, and a prayer he wrote for these difficult times.  Starting immediately, and continuing forever.

Personally, I had just sunk my talons into a new sadhana, tucked in my napkin and was starting to gobble when this happened.  What do I do now?  Drop it and take up that Zhitro accumulation, which I had already decided to do sometime in my 70’s, if I live that long?  I love the Zhitro practice, and the accumulation is huge and the mantra long.  Right now it takes me an hour to say 800, without the sadhana.  If I recall correctly, think the expected accumulation for one person was 2,400,000.  If one adds the sadhana, that would be about an hour and a half a day for three years.  Or 45 minutes a day for six years—actually sounds more doable.  Then, if I spend half the year doing other practices, that would be twelve years. Of course, it gets faster as you do it.  On the other hand, now we are supposed to just keep going, so perhaps the numbers are moot.

The Zhitro is a practice related to the hundred peaceful and wrathful deities of the Bardo.  It is really supposed to help bardo beings.  I am especially drawn to helping bardo beings.  My goal is to become a special Buddha who can swoop down and grab beings who have died and are heading to hell, and put them in my new Buddhafield, The Pureland of Remorseful Reprobates.

My friend Dennis emailed me very early this morning, “I had a dream where we formed a company and we were selling aspirin that was useful in the bardo. Our slogan was ‘don't get a headache over your bad karma.’”

Mantrika Blues

Crossing the bay 

in cold rain

a map is drawn in mind

from vastness bliss

through thought

around the corner of feeling

into the little box of sadness

Mantra Moonbeams

This afternoon I was up in Marin County.  In the late afternoon I drove around and looked for a place for Osel Thegchog Ling that I saw in a dream.  Nothing matched the literal minded picture in the dream.  I pulled in in front of a place that was very similar--near Mill Valley.  Just then my cell phone rung and it was my friend C--another counsel-member for our group.  One of Rinpoche's people called on his behalf from Italy.  He wanted us to start taking shifts accumulating Zhitro mantra immediately.  It was now my turn.  So, I sat near the place I had been thinking of, and recited mantra for the better part of the hour, then continued as I drove home.  Over Berkeley, I saw this beautiful moon.

Everything is in my mandala right now, the whole world is humming.  Everyone and everything is an apparition--e-mail, phone calls, car rides... hum hum hum.

I love all you yogis and yoginis.  I really do.

Guru Rinpoche's Mountain Home

I went back down to Pema Osel Ling, because Lama Tharchin Rinpoche was teaching the Foundational Practices of Tibetan Buddhism. I was just going to stay a couple of days, but I got enthralled and stayed for five days. I've never heard Rinpoche teach this set of practices, known as the ngondro in Tibetan, in depth before. Now I understand that this is his forum for sutrayana teachings. He taught twice a day for ten days--that's four hours of teachings--just touching on some of the points in a detailed text by HH Dudjom Rinpoche. It seems strange that this has never been translated, because it could be really helpful. Perhaps it is in process. Have you been to Pema Osel Ling? It is up a narrow winding road in the redwood covered Santa Cruz Mountains. The goal here is quality, not to be a tourist destination. It is one of the few places in the U.S. that offers the whole path of practice of the Nyingma lineage, with all the supports one needs to really go into depth with it.

The stupas at Stupa Peace Park are coming along nicely. There are still chances to make a connection by offering some money towards their completion. All eight kinds of classical stupas are here (you can't see the bell-shaped on in back), plus a little averting stupa in front. Eventually there will be a mandala shaped wall surrounding them, with 108 (if I recall correctly) little stupas on the top of the wall, then landscaping. We started right after 9/11 on the recommendation of namkhai Drimed Rinpoche, who felt this would help avert future distasters, and completed the main stupa in a year. It is a really good sangha building exercise to make tsa tsas and roll mantras together--these are labor intensive works that go inside the stupas, along with hundreds of other things, such as texts, statues, Buddha relics, and so on.

Our representation of Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava), the first to firmly establish Buddhism in Tibet, it this impressive statue. It is the focal point of our large shrine room at Pema Osel Ling. Rinpoche always takes some time to look at the statue when he comes in the shrine room, the prostrates three times before taking his teaching seat.

I hope your practice goes well this week. I'm going to focus on having a little bit of discipline this week.

Puja A-Go-Go

Once you've done tsok every night in retreat, you really don't want to stop when you get out... you want some little puja to remind you of your inherent divinity.  That's where Ikea comes in.

 

Lost yet?

Puja is a kind of ceremony invoking immaterial wisdom deity, sometimes accompanied by a feast.  As Vajrayana practitioners we do tsok on the 10th and 25th day of the lunar month.  In my tradition, this can be elaborate or unelaborate.

Ikea is an overwhelming maze-like variation on the big box store.  They sell various items for tsok, some of the best tea lights around, trays for making tormas (sculptural dough offerings), and most recently I became enamored with their plastic trays with legs, that one can use to give folks something to set their text on, or to make a little impromtu shrine island when everything else is in chaos.  

Lately I have been feeling enthralled with Yeshe Tsogyal. The pre-eminent dakini--who brought me to the Dharma by sharing her life story with me, so many years ago.  I want to practice as she did, perfecting every aspect of the path.  Please Mother Tsogyal, teach me everything and enhance my capacity, devotion and bodhicitta!

My Favorite City

A San Francisco Child Development Center, Cook Street

At one time I worked for a couple of years doing hands-on nursing care for special needs kids in the San Francisco public schools.  One of the best parts of the job was that at times--especially summers--I would be assigned to go from one school to another during the day. Being out and about one weekdays all over that city, when most other people were trapped inside building was a kind of sensual experience.  San Francisco it famous for its vistas, but it also smells good, and its builders (and post-fire rebuilders) appreciated texture, pattern and color.

Above is a public building for little kids--probably the kind of center that would be in a temporary building in another town.  But, by god, the above is only part of it's magnificent facade.

I took these today after a Feldenkrais lesson at a friend's house.