Sunday 14 August 2016

A Matter of Life and Death

Rainbow above Sydney Park

We think that we are the body. We identify with it in almost every way. We spend inordinate amounts of time, energy, and money to keep it fed, rested, beautiful, clean, healthy etc. Is there anything we would not do to make this 'body' more at ease, more comfortable, more attractive?


Yet every single one of us knows, deep down, that one day this body will dissolve into the elements from which it originally arose. Everything that is born into this world will one day die. Can we point to any great figure, in all the history of past aeons, who did not die to this world, sooner or later?

Yet we seldom really give much attention to this fact. Life swallows us up with its distractions and fascinations. By focussing all of our attention on the shifting shadows of day-to-day goings on we constantly fail to notice what is unshifting, stable and ever-present.

Yet, there are those who have solved the mystery of our 'existence' and who live and move in this world fundamentally unfettered by the physical body and all that concerns it. They are the authentic teachers in this world; those who have gone beyond the strictures of religious ideologies and dogmas.


We may or may not have the karma to meet with such as they, in this lifetime, but we should, at least, know that they exist and that all of us have the potential to be as they are.

They are as a 'lighthouse' in this world. Beacons of hope in a shifting landscape filled with danger. We need to know that there is so much more to who and what we really are and they come into this world to help us to realize that. Essentially they are our inspiration and our hope.

The following is an excerpt from the book; Who Lives? Who Dies?

Early one morning I woke to the sound of thunder. It was a humid pre -monsoon dawn in Boudhanath, Kathmandu. The year was 1991.
I bathed, dressed and had a light breakfast, then made my way along the lanes and pathways from the room where I was staying to the Monastery of
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, which was nearby.

I knew that something ‘special’ would be happening that morning in Rinpoche’s room and I was determined not to miss it.
I reached the temple and quickly skirted the Mani wheels as I headed clockwise around the main building to the back entrance.

Once inside I was able to dart swiftly up the stairway to the third level where Khyentse Rinpoche had been staying the last several weeks and was just in time to slip inside the door before it was carefully and resolutely bolted from the inside.

I was one of the very last arrivals, all others were already inside and seated quietly on the floor. The room was full but not overcrowded. Only a selection of Tulkus, Lamas and a handful of western students were there.

The atmosphere was charged, not only with the gathering of focused and largely influential attendees, but, also by the approaching storm which filled the room with flashes of lightning and claps of thunder.

Storms were a common afternoon occurrence at this time of the year in Nepal, but only rarely did they take place in the early morning hours.

I had heard the day before that Tulku Orgyen (a great Dzogchen Master) would be offering a special Long Life Empowerment to Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche(a contemporary and also a great Dzogchen practitioner) who had not been well for some time.

Although I had received this particular blessing already numerous times before, to be present when two such illustrious masters were coming together and under such deliciously secretive circumstances, was not something to be missed.

I quickly found a place to sit at the back of the gathering so that I could take in all the proceedings while leaning comfortably against the outer wall. The supplication chanting had begun.

Tulku Orgyen Rinpoche had already completed all of the preliminary preparations for the empowerment and a number of ministering attendant Lamas were officiating near the mandala and ritual objects which had been carefully laid out and arranged.

As soon as these prayers had been offered in unison by all those present, Tulku Orgyen launched into the main part of the ceremony.

Few people knew that this empowerment was taking place and the whole thing had been kept very hush, hush with only certain close students in the ‘know.’ If it had not been kept secret there would have been throngs of devotees hoping to attend and the sheer numbers would have made the event untenable.

All proceeded smoothly until I suddenly noticed that Tulku Orgyen had stopped reciting the prayers and was doubled over on the cushion just in front of Khyentse Rinpoche.

One of his long-time Western students from Germany, a qualified Doctor, who had been attending Orgyen Rinpoche for some years, was present and swiftly flew to his side. A ripple of surprise and alarm passed through and around the room, all eyes were glued to the drama unfolding at the front.

It so happened that at the moment of recitation of a certain part of the empowerment Tulku Orgyen had suffered a heart attack. Khyentse Rinpoche who was sitting right in front of him had been reading a small text while all this was going on and quietly looked up. He made some comment and then continued on with his reading.

Before long, Tulku Orgyen, with the help of one of his several sons, sat up again and continued on with the empowerment to its conclusion. It was all carried forward in such a manner that anyone not alert might have completely missed what had just taken place.

However, the irony of that morning was not lost on many of those who were present. In the dynamically charged atmosphere, it was a moment few of us were likely to easily forget. Death had come knocking at the door of the Lama who was bestowing the ‘long life’ empowerment. Khyentse Rinpoche had acknowledged what was happening and then continued on with his reading as though it were the most ordinary of day-to-day occurrences.

The ceremony was completed without further mishap. All were given the blessing and sent on their way.

Tulku Orgyen Rinpoche lived on for many more years and Khyentse Rinpoche passed away within three months.

Both of these masters were fully accomplished in the Dzogchen ‘view’ and all of us present that eventful morning were in awe of their realization. Neither Lama feared death or life, having gone courageously beyond both, and reached stability in the ‘natural state.’

None can predict or interpret the dance and play of the forces that rule our lives.

We may forget to acknowledge the extraordinary mystery of That which powers this whole display of being born, living out the allotment of our days and then undergoing all the stages of physical dissolution, but whether it is acknowledged or not, it is played out relentlessly.

From the standpoint of ‘realised beings’ such as our two distinguished Lamas at the centre of this event; nothing happened because their reality was based on something so much larger; something un-shifting, unchanging and unfathomable.

We all witnessed the manner in which neither master took this incident personally, or was even particularly concerned by it. They simply noted what was happening and continued on, just as they did with everything else that came their way.

Having a ‘view’ as wide as the sky, what is there to fear in the passing events which occur throughout life? That which is unshakeable, unchanging and eternal is our basic, inmost nature. In abiding in this state a realised being is able to pass through all the fluctuations of transitory events while remaining completely unaffected by them and in so doing, point clearly, un-mistakenly and powerfully towards that which is our natural inheritance.

***

What is the moral of this story, you might ask?
Once one crosses, for good, the threshold of recognition of one’s inmost, true nature, one transcends forever, the limitations of the mind, which is chained to the relative world and its conception of ‘life and death.’


Thursday 4 August 2016

Sooner or Later We Will Face the Mystery


There comes a time in our lives when we get shaken up. It might come about through any number of happenings and in any number of ways. Some momentous personal event suddenly helps us to view the world and our place within it in a totally new light, thereby, bringing into focus, the mystery of death.

Giving our attention to this huge 'unknown' which we call death can help us to open another door into the even greater mysterious cavern of, what we call, our life, which in turn, can point us at last, towards the greatest of all mysteries; that of our awareness.


Awareness is always present and yet remains unnoticed, 
unheeded and unappreciated.

During the coming weeks, we will be posting some excerpts from the book; 
Who Lives? Who Dies? What We Need to Know Before We Go
This is intended to give a snapshot of one woman's endeavour to fathom this mystery. 

We are all 'called' but we don't always listen to and heed that call. Life swallows us up with its unending round of distractions and it monopolises almost all of our 'attention' all of the time. 

May the following articles inspire readers to look past their usual preoccupations, even if only for a moment. It takes courage to use this precious life to do what is most meaningful and yet this is our true birthright. 

May you be inspired to take some steps towards embarking on your own journey into the heart of being.

In the first place it is important to know what a 'human being' can be in the highest sense. These days the focus is on people who do not know 'who and what they really are.' We see endless examples of this in the fame and adoration given to politicians, sports stars, actors, and musicians etc. But what does it mean to encounter someone who has crossed that invisible threshold and become so much more...?

My father was a Polish Catholic, my mother, loosely affiliated with the Anglican Church. Neither faith made a very strong impression on me in younger days, although I felt a deep love and respect for the Christ figure and for the simplicity and integrity with which he had lived his life.

In my twenties, I met a Tibetan Lama of high standing (the late Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche) and was profoundly impressed. I had never encountered such a powerful human being before. This was not a worldly type of ‘power,’ it was something far more mysterious. This person, who was already nearing his eighties by the time I came along, had the sort of ‘presence’ that just automatically, ‘stopped the mind.’

I could not understand what was happening when I was near him in those early days, but at the time that seemed unimportant. When I came within his orbit, I felt as though I was merging into something so much larger. It took a long while to even begin to comprehend, intellectually, what I felt immediately and instinctively in my heart.

In the presence of such a being, the opportunity for a radical shift in one’s focus becomes entirely possible. In the years that followed, I met a number of other highly realized Tibetan Lamas in the Vajrayana Buddhist traditions. All had been trained in the old school way in Tibet prior to the Chinese occupation of 1959 and all had undergone long periods of retreat in various remote caves and sacred locations in and around Tibet.

Each of these teachers had given up comfort, ease, family, and friends in order to find ‘truth.’ They had given up ‘everything’ in order to attain the highest goal. These days it is rare for such things to happen.

Although my teachers have been primarily Buddhist, I consider each one as having gone, entirely beyond the confines of their particular religious creed.

Their power sprang from the source of their own pure and deep experience and that is something shared by all who have recognised their true nature and achieved a measure of stability in that, no matter what tradition, religion or creed they may be affiliated with.

Truth, which is vast and eternally relevant yet changeless, is beyond any mind made creed or religion.

Let us meet in the eternal truth of what is here and now!

Excerpt from the Preamble:  Who Lives? Who Dies?