“I will end by urging you to understand how profoundly fortunate you are to be born a human being, with so much goodness and potential. Even if you are not able to do extraordinary things in this life–attaining enlightenment, liberating all sentient beings, and so on–what you can do is to live a sane life. This is accessible to you. It is something you deserve, and those related to you deserve it even more. This potential is inherent within you, so you are never far from this reminder.
The whole point of the dharma is to hone and strengthen the potential you have as a human being. You have the potential to have a good life and to make that good life the basis of goodness for others. If you accidentally bump into something called enlightenment in the bargain, that’s also good. Keep this in mind.”
Mindrolling Jetsün Khandro Rinpoche is a rare example of a female lama in Tibetan Buddhism. Born in Kalimpong, India, in 1967, Khandro Rinpoche’s father was the late Mindrolling Trichen, the head of the Nyingma lineage. Rinpoche was recognized at the age of two by Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, the 16th Karmapa, as the reincarnation of the Great Dakini of Tsurphu Monastery, Khandro Urgyen Tsomo, who was one of the most well-known female masters of her time. Khandro Urgyen Tsomo was the consort to Khakyab Dorje, 15th Karmapa Lama (1871-1922) and an incarnation of Yeshe Tsogyal. Her name is in fact her title, Khandro being Tibetan for dakini. For the past 25 years, she has taught throughout the world. She has established and heads the Samten Tse Retreat Center in Mussoorie, India, and she is also resident teacher at Lotus Garden Retreat Center in Virginia, USA.
Grant your blessings so that my mind may be one with the dharma. Grant your blessings so that dharma may progress along the path. Grant your blessings so that the path may clarify confusion. Grant your blessings so that confusion may dawn as wisdom.
The author of these lines, Gampopa, lived at a very critical time in the birth of our lineage and helped shape its future in profound ways. After his birth in 1079, Gampopa displayed much curiosity and openness to the dharma, and received teachings from many gurus. He was also very interested in medicine, and eventually became a physician. Gampopa married, and he and his wife were very much in love. When he was 24, she became terminally ill. Gampopa was unable to help her, despite his medical training. Moreover, she experienced great pain and suffering, and according to Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, was unable to experience her death properly. Gampopa asked her why this was and she replied, “I am not attached to possessions, nor wealth, nor faith, but I am very attached to you. Because you are only 24 years old, and you are very handsome, it is very hard for me to leave you. It is because my attachment to you is so very strong that I am unable to experience death.”
Knowing there was no cure for her illness, and at the same time understanding that her attachment to him prevented her from dying properly, Gampopa promised that he would take a vow of complete celibacy, never marry another woman, and become a monk. This promise released her from her attachment, and she experienced her natural death.
So, as he had promised his wife, he took the vow of a monk in the Kadampa tradition and went into retreat. There he practiced meditation, saw many signs and had mystical experiences. However, his practice in this tradition did not completely satisfy him, so he sought out one of the greatest yogis of all time, Milarepa. Under Milarepa’s guidance, Gampopa’s practice matured into enlightenment and he became Milarepa’s main lineage holder and successor.
Gampopa’s previous training enabled him to temper the spontaneous and relatively unstructured yogic style of his teacher (and the lineage altogether up to that point) with the structure and steadiness of his earlier monastic training. It fell to Gampopa’s student, the first Karmapa, Tusum Kyenpa, to start the tulku tradition. In this tradition, the previous abbot of a monastery reincarnates, and is found and trained to become the next abbot.
This introduced an element of continuity into the transmission of the dharma from generation to generation. The steadiness of the monastic tradition enabled the dharma to flourish for many centuries, into modern times. The monasteries provided institutional continuity and training to large numbers of monks and nuns, while yogis and married lamas continued to ensure that the dharma did not lose touch with ordinary reality.
Gampopa died in 1153, and later his four main students spread his teachings by means of what have come to be known as the “four great” schools of the Kagyu lineage.
Each line of the Four Dharmas of Gampopa begins with the phrase “Grant your blessings …..” It isn’t clear who is being asked to grant their blessings, but a good rule of thumb in buddhadharma is that, even if there is a guru nearby, that teacher’s mind is ultimately the same as yours in its basic buddha nature. However, since we don’t experience ourselves as buddhas, we seem to need to experience enlightened mind as though it is external to us. So we supplicate enlightened mind as though it is outside.
The first line also contains the phrase “one with the dharma.” When we first hear the dharma, it may seem remote. We do not feel “one with” it. As we contemplate the dharmic teachings and compare them to our own experience, we gain confidence in what is being said. The final result of contemplation is that the dharma becomes part of us. It becomes how we view the world. We are now “one with” the dharma.
We could take the idea of karma, for instance, as an example of how we might become one with the dharma. When we first hear about karma, it sounds like another example of religious belief: cosmic punishment of sin. We feel remote from the dharma. Becoming one with the dharma has three stages. The first is listening; the second is contemplating; and the third is taking to heart, or becoming one with. At the first stage of listening, we simply have to listen and understand clearly the concept of karma, and disentangle it from our previously existing ideas about Judeo-Christian ideas of sin and retribution. We have to understand that karma is just cause and effect. After listening, we go through an extended stage of contemplation, where we compare the Buddhist ideas of karma with our experience. We become more and more conscious of actions and their results. We then enter the third stage, taking to heart, automatically considering the karma inherent in everything we do or say. We begin to actually experience the world in terms of karmic cause and effect: we have become “one with.” Karma has become part of our natural view of the world.
The second line, “Grant your blessing so that dharma may progress along the path” reflects the fact that one’s ego cannot attend its own funeral. “Dharma” progresses along the path, rather than our personal selves. The teachings direct us to examine the sense of self to see if it exists or not. Only after continuous searching over a lengthy period of time is it possible to say with conviction that the self does not exist. So the self doesn’t progress along the path. The word “dharma” has several different meanings: It can refer to the “teachings,” or it can refer to natural law, in the sense of how things work. One can have the dharma of cooking eggs: when heat is applied, eggs cook. It can also mean “elements:” for instance the dharmas of existence. If there is no self, then dharma, with all its shades of meaning, might be a good word for what progresses along the path.
Grant your blessings so that the path may clarify confusion. Most of us practice because we want to clarify our confusion. We practice shamatha to tame our minds and bring them into a sense of peaceful presence. However, we notice that this calm presence happens mainly during the gaps between thoughts. This has the paradoxical effect of making us more aware of what is on either side of the gaps between thoughts: confused emotions and discursiveness. At first we try to push the thoughts aside. Later, with vipashyana, or insight, we see the nature of our thought-based projections, and how insubstantial they are in the presence of awareness. At this point confusion becomes clarified because we have seen how empty it is.
Grant your blessings so that confusion may dawn as wisdom. We can understand this on two levels. On the first level, confusion may dawn as wisdom through a profound understanding of the mind from which confusion arises. At the pre- thought level, mind is like empty space out of which anything can appear. One can glimpse a bit of this in meditation if one tries to find where one’s thoughts come from and where they go. The productive nature of the empty space of mind is sometimes called “luminosity.”
If we are ignorant of the nature of our minds, we don’t perceive luminosity directly. We perceive it fully formed as thoughts and also as perceptions of a world outside of the mind. This world seems to be “out there,” with a perceiver “in here.” So the first level of understanding is to experience thoughts, emotions and the phenomenal world as the display of the luminous-empty mind. This mind is not the personal, discursive mind of the self. The sense of a thinker and its thoughts and perceptions are just one part of a display in a much bigger picture. Understanding and living at that level is wisdom.
There is a second way to understand how confusion is transformed into wisdom. The five buddha families are an intermediate stage between the basic empty but expressive nature of mind that we just discussed, and the well developed thoughts and emotions that comprise our confusion. At this intermediate level, confusion is experienced as the wisdom energy of the mind, as opposed to buying into the emotional story lines that often accompany that energy.
Russell Rodgers has been wondering about this kind of topic for the 39 years that he has been practicing. He resides in the Kootenay mountains of British Columbia, in the town of Nelson, and has graciously agreed to allow publication of his beautiful essays on the Shambhala chants here in the Times.
In response to numerous requests from Palpung Centers worldwide as well as requests from many other Dharma communities, Guru Vajradhara the 12th Chamgon Kenting Tai Situpa has agreed to transmit the precious Dharma once a month for the next 6 months . Also, in response to numerous requests, His Eminence Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche has agreed to teach on Saturday, August 15th.
Palpung Ireland has been appointed to organize those events. These transmissions are open to everyone Buddhists or non-Buddhists, to beginners as well as to long term students.
To receive the Zoom Registration Link, please send an e-mail to:palpungirelandinfo@gmail.com Your email Title should be in English: Chinese Translation Request if you need the Chinese translation etc.
Simultaneous translation will be broadcasted via Zoom. The translated languages are: Chinese, French, Italian, Spanish, Slovenian, German and Portuguese.
Important: Only participants who need a translation should register for the Zoom webcast. If you don’t need any translation please do not register for Zoom because of capacity limitation.
Schedule for the first three online transmissions from Guru Vajradhara the 12th Chamgon Kenting Tai Situpa:
Sunday, August 9, 2020, 5:00 – 6:30 pm Indian time: ‘’A Meaningful Life’’
Registration open for those needing translation via Zoom from now until Saturday August 8th. Please send an email to palpungirelandinfo@gmail.com
Sunday, September 6, 2020, 5:00 – 6:30 pm Indian time: ‘’What Is Freedom ‘’
Registration open for those needing translation via Zoom from Saturday 29th August until Saturday 5th September. Please send an email to palpungirelandinfo@gmail.com
Sunday, October 11, 2020, 5:00 – 6:30 pm Indian time ‘’Inner Peace’’
Registration open for those needing translation via Zoom from Saturday 3rd October to Saturday 10th October. Please send an email to palpungirelandinfo@gmail.com
Schedule for Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche:
Saturday, August 15, 2020, 3:00 – 5:00 pm Nepali time: “The Art of Letting Go: ”How to Cultivate Healthy Relationships”
Registration open for those needing translation via Zoom from Monday 10th August until Friday 14th . Please send an email to palpungirelandinfo@gmail.com
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche composed “The Music of Great Bliss” at the age of 19. In this provocative doha Trungpa Rinpoche presents Mahamudra as a girlfriend or lover. He thus explains the view, path, and fruition of Mahamudra in a direct and intimate way. Thrangu Rinpoche’s commentary on this text provides insight into the circumstances surrounding this doha and teaches the meaning of it with clarity and precision.
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche was born in in eastern Tibet in 1939 and when he was 19 years old, he spent many harrowing months trekking over the Himalayas (described in his book, Born in Tibet). After narrowly escaping capture by the Chinese, he reached India in 1960. It was during this escape that Trungpa Rinpoche wrote A Symphony of Great Bliss which was an explanation of the Mahamudra approach to meditation based on Ju Mipham’s The Music of the Lute which presented the Dzogchen view.
Trungpa Rinpoche was a close dharma brother of Thrangu Rinpoche, and that long close friendship was the inspiration for Thrangu Rinpoche’s search for this lost spiritual song found in 2006. This teaching of four talks was translated by David Karma Choephel. The complete teaching in book form will be published by Shambhala Publications in August or 2020 as The Harmony of the View which includes two more teachings of Thrangu Rinpoche.