My last morning in DC was with His Holiness, receiving the blessings of White Tara, last Saturday July 16. It seems that 10,000 people were at the Verizon Center for His Holiness’s teachings and Kalachakra initiation the previous week. And many more thousands, apparently, connected remotely.
His Holiness joked, as he often does, that he gives the initiations because people get all excited and like to come, but he sneaks in the teachings first, which is what we really need to hear.
His Holiness told us that we must learn the causes and conditions necessary for happiness, and then practice that. “Permanent happiness is the cessation of suffering. And what is the ultimate source of suffering? Ignorance. . . The very nature of mind is pure, neutral. It’s not only possible to reduce, but possible to eliminate ignorance. This is nirvana. And final nirvana is Buddhahood.
“This body is fully controlled by its causes. Ultimately ignorance. So anything that comes from the body ultimately a result of ignorance, suffering. No matter how beautiful, it is dominated by ignorance. All phenomena are empty. Such independent existence is not there. That grasping sort of feeling is basis of anger, fear, conceitedness. All the destructive emotions based on this. When strong anger is there, tendency to think something absolute and permanent is there.
“In order to prove the possibility of nirvana, we need to do a lot of work to understand the nature of mind. In a room, when the heat increases, cold decreases. And the same with light, when light increases, dark decreases. That is the basis of change. If there is no contradictory force, no change, that is a natural law. It is the same with consciousness. In the mental world, we cannot see the contradictory forces, as we can in the material world, but they are there as well. This is the basis to argue that you can change. And the basis that consciousness is pure.
“Meditating on the the selflessness of person. Trying to counter the self as having some self-governing, self-existent, autonomous reality. MY home, MY family, MY things. “My” has a heavy sense to it.
“The true antidote that cleanses your mind is the realization of emptiness.”
As always, it was like nectar to hear His Holiness’s clear words. How wonderful to be like the students of Lord Buddha back then who were so ripe that by just hearing the Buddha’s words they got realizations! One day. . .
I flew to Missoula in Montana straight after the long-life initiation, to visit my old friends at Osel Shen Phen Ling. I’ve been coming here since 1997 at least, Deanna reminded me, who was the director then. Now it’s Bob Jacobson, who used to work for FPMT International Office when we were in Taos, NM. As usual, we packed plenty into our five days together, teachings every day.
Now I’m in Boulder, CO. for three days. Jhana Cayton invited me to their little group here, Lama Yeshe House. Jhana’s the son of Karuna and Pam who live just behind Land of Medicine Buddha in Soquel, CA, and he came here a few years ago to study at Colorado University. He took over from Elizabeth McLain who, with her husband Tenzin, ran the group since 2006, when they moved from Land of Medicine Buddha where he was the chef and she the receptionist.
This is my third high-elevation town this time round. I can tell how high we are by how fast the water in the offering bowls on my altar disappears! Boulder wins: it’s 8,300 feet or so above sea level. Missoula is 3,000+, although it seemed higher; and Santa Fe, NM, with its moon-like environment, being desert, is around 7,000. They’re all pretty hot, as well: I just checked the temperature app on my ipad and it’s 97 degrees fahrenheit.
My ipad. . . How I love my ipad! Now that I’m on the road full time, it’s indispensable. I am a newspaper and magazine fan. In the past much of the weight in my luggage was my New Yorkers and Vanity Fairs and New York Timeses. Not any more. First I was sad to not have the thing in my hand. I’ve been involved in printing and editing and publishing all my life, and I love the feel and the look of books and magazines, simultaneously noticing the paper, the binding, the design, the type face, the editing. At airports I couldn’t resist all those publications – I’d board the plane with a dozen of them! But now I walk right past. Someone gave me a Sunday New York Times as I left Missoula and I didn’t even open it! I am very surprised. Attachment doesn’t take long to find a new object. Now I love the elegance and simplicity of how the stories are presented: a book on the ipad even has the illusion of turning pages! Vanity Fair and the New Yorker are beautifully designed. Not sure if I like the Financial Times that much; but the New York Times is very nice. So easy to read! So easy to go from story to story! So quick! And if I read the review of a book in the paper and like it, I switch to my books app, go to the store, click on buy, and there it is, in a minute. Love it.
I’ve got Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Heart of the Path teachings on guru devotion on my ipad. I switch between reading that, a new biography of Malcolm X, and a history of the House of Rothschild.
Now I’m off to France: Institut Vajra Yogini, near Toulouse in the south, for a week’s course. And then a couple of weeks off to do some editing of a book by Rinpoche on death and one by Lama Yeshe on mahamudra.