I arrived in Miami this morning, on an early flight from Raleigh, NC. The sun was shining! The air was warm! Since mid-2012, I’ve seen only a glimpse of sunny weather; and the way my schedule looks, I won’t have a proper summer until June 2015, when I’m back in the States.
I’m loving the warm weather here in Deerfield Beach, south Florida. I’m here for two weeks, teaching at Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s center Tubten Kunga. Photo yoloboatrentals.com.
There was no let up for me in New York: snow and cold every day. We had a good time together at Shantideva Center. They’re growing nicely. Many of their classes are now held at Tibet House, an elegant environment on West 15th Street. And the snowy cold followed me to Boston, but not before I saw masses of it in Syracuse, NY, where I visited the Reverend David McCallum, a Jesuit priest I’d met in New York years ago at meal with Lama Zopa Rinpoche on the Upper East Side. We’ve remained friends since. I have such a fondness for my Catholic past, and I love to talk about the meaning of things with David. He’s the interim dean at the the business school at the Jesuit university there. The priests have a very nice house, and I had lunch with a few of them.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s center in New York, Shantideva, has been growing nicely. I was a guest at their holiday party in December, here with George Cuesta, one of their board members, and Jennifer Kim, the center director, who took over from Mary Esbjornson recently. Photo by 2013 © Eliana Castanho
Many of Shantideva Center’s classes are now held at Tibet House, the non-profit organization founded by Robert Thurman and Richard Gere in the late 80s. They have a beautiful space on West 15th St, near Union Square. Photo Shantideva Meditation Center.
In late December, before my Boston trip, I visited an old friend, the Reverend David McCallum, SJ at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, in upstate New York. I have such a fondness for my Catholic past, and I love to talk about the meaning of things with David. Photo David McCallum.
I also spent a fews days with Joyce Smith, wife of James Moore, who’s been in prison for 54 years. She’s been working for years on his behalf, attempting to have him released, as he should have been years ago. It’s as if he’s been lost in the system. We worked on ideas for a book of Jim’s memoirs. We’ve decided it should be written as stories: he’s seen so much over the years, the worst and the best of human nature, in the prisons of New York State. He was at Attica during the famous riots of the 1970s and has many clear memories of the terrible events. He’s such a dear man, 80+ now and in ill-health. He’s been studying and practicing Buddhism for 20 years, having first brought into his prison the Zen teachings.
I visited Joyce Smith in Auburn, NY; here with her husband James Moore on my visit to him at Cayuga Correctional Facility in 2011. James is a dear man who has been in prison for nearly 60 years.
I arrived in Boston on December 20, my 69th birthday. First a meeting with Tim McNeill and Andy Francis at Wisdom about the book of Rinpoche’s that I’m close to finishing, about how to help people at the time of death. I told Rinpoche in March in Hong Kong that I’d have it done for publication “early 2014” and I got the thumbs-up for this. Well, I’m quite anxious because we’re already into early 2014. . .
Getting the thumbs-up from Lama Zopa Rinpoche in Hong Kong in March for promising to have the teachings on how to help people at the time of death ready by early 2014. Photo Ven. Thubten Kunsang.
It’s been a difficult book to work on. Rinpoche gives so many practices, so much detail, and if it’s presented in the usual way, as lots and lots of words in paragraphs and chapters, it’s just too dense, too hard to distinguish exactly what to do when. Which is the point, of course. So it’ll have lots of chapters, headings, bullet points. The latter chapters of which will have titles such as “How to Create a Conducive Environment,” “What to See and Touch,” “What to Think About.” And then detailed instructions about what to do during the weeks and days and hours before death, with variations according to whether your loved one dies at home, in hospital, suddenly, etc., etc. And, of course, instructions on what to do during the days after the breath stops, how to determine that the mind has left the body, how to prepare the body for cremation, etc. The second part of the book will be a list of all practices mentioned by Rinpoche, 70 or so. The ones that don’t need Highest Yoga Tantra initiations will all be there.
I spent a lot of time on the chapters relating to the death process and the twelve links. It seems that the eighth and ninth links, craving and grasping, play a very powerful role especially at the time of death. Rinpoche points out that, “in order to receive this perfect human rebirth that we have now, we needed not only the karma of perfect morality and great generosity but also the strong desire – grasping, the ninth link – to have another human body.” That grasping is what then triggers the second link, the karmic seed that will determine our next life. Obviously, then, we need to train our minds throughout our lives strongly wanting, desiring, another human rebirth, or, as Rinpoche points out, a rebirth in the pure lands of the Buddhas, where we can practice very easily and quickly get realizations, become a buddha, and then be reborn as a human again to help others. I like that plan!
After Boston I went to the West Coast, to Land of Medicine Buddha, for a weeklong Tara retreat. After that it was North Carolina. Every year I go there, and my first visit was in 1997, I think. I stay with Robbie Watkins, Kadampa Center’s director. He has an almost self-contained flat on the third floor. I could happily disappear up there and do retreat, quiet and undisturbed.
I teach at Land of Medicine Buddha, the FPMT center in Santa Cruz every year. In January we did a weeklong Tara retreat. Photo Ven. Katy Cole.
The beautiful Tara statue at Land of Medicine Buddha’s gompa. Photo Land of Medicine Buddha.
On the last day of the teachings at Kadampa Center in Raleigh, NC, we were entertained by the center’s youngest members. Photo David Strevel.
My friends from Maine, the Staffords, moved here earlier in the year. Troy makes incredibly beautiful picture frames; and Maddy and Mia and Maude are homeschooled by Mer, who also is working part-time with the center’s spritual program coordinator Sarah Brooks, to prepare for Rinpoche’s Light of the Path teachings in May.
My friends the Staffords recently moved to Raleigh, NC from Maine: from left: Maddie, Maude, Mer, Mia, and Troy. Photo Stafford Family.
On the Tuesday and Wednesday of my second week in Raleigh I did a quick trip to Kentucky State Penitentiary to visit Mitch Willoughby on death row there, who’s been practicing sine the early 1990s. Fifteen of his friends on death row came to the class and I spent time personally with him the next day. I don’t know what it is, but we spend all our time in peels of laughter! He realizes he says, how fortunate he is: He doesn’t have to work, he gets three meals a day, has no housework to do, has access to the teachings, and time to study and meditate on them: all the conditions of a precious human rebirth.
My dear friend Mitchell Willoughby, who has been on Kentucky State Penitentiary’s death row since 1983. Mitch says he realizes how fortunate he is: He doesn’t have to work, he gets three meals a day, has no housework to do, has access to the teachings, and time to study and meditate on them: all the conditions of a precious human rebirth.
As I said, I’ve now arrived in Florida. Tubten Kunga’s director Maggie and spiritual program coordinator Michael picked me up at the airport and we drove the hour north to Deerfield Beach. The last time I was here was in 1999, when my nephew Amiel was shooting Chasing Buddha.
It’s Monday February 3, the evening, and I’m staying at the center geshe’s house while he’s away. I have the air conditioning on, as opposed to the heating, which was on full time in Raleigh. More about this once I get a feel for the place!