Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, a Tibetan scholar, Vajrayana master, and author of hundreds of books and commentaries on the dharma, died on June 4 at Thrangu Tashi Yangtse Monastery in Nepal. He was 91.

According to a statement on Thrangu Rinpoche’s website:

On June 4, the full moon day of the fourth Tibetan month, Saga Dawa—the sacred anniversary of the Buddha Shakyamuni, our incomparably kind teacher, passing into parinirvana—Rinpoche decided that he had completed his activity for this life. At 1:30 pm, he lay down in the same posture as the Buddha Shakyamuni had lain in when passing into parinirvana and then displayed the appearance of his mind dissolving into the undefiled, luminous dharma expanse and passing into peace. Immediately, Kyabje Lodrö Nyima Rinpoche offered Rinpoche a reminder of the tukdam meditation. 

Thrangu Rinpoche, whose full title is The Very Venerable Ninth Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, was one of the highest lamas in the Karma Kagyu tradition, one of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism, headed by the 17th Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje (one of two claimants to the title). His legacy includes establishing monasteries, nunneries, and other Buddhist organizations throughout the East and West, as well as preserving key Tibetan texts following China’s invasion of Tibet. He also served as the 17th Karmapa’s personal tutor.

Born in Ralungda, a small village in eastern Tibet, in 1933, Thrangu Rinpoche was identified as a tulku, or the reincarnation of an enlightened teacher, when he was 2 years old. At the age of 5 he went to live at Thrangu Monastery. His studies at the then newly established monastic college focused on the writings of Mikyö Dorje, the 8th Karmapa, and other masters in the Karma Kagyu lineage, according to a biography published by Thrangu Rinpoche’s publishing house, Namo Buddha Publications. 

In 1958, Thrangu Rinpoche fled Tibet, fearing persecution from the People’s Republic of China, which had been occupying the area since the beginning of the decade and repressing Tibetans’ freedom, religion, and other ways of life. Thrangu Rinpoche’s group, which included Khenpo Karthar, Traleg Rinpoche, Zuru Tulku, and other monks from Thrangu Monastery, survived a treacherous, monthslong journey on horseback toward Lhasa, often going hungry and eating snow to stay hydrated. In March 1959, they continued traveling toward India, and spent more than a month at the Bhutanese border before being granted permission to cross into India. Thrangu Rinpoche was just one of an estimated 80,000 Tibetans who fled to India in the late fifties and early sixties.  

In the 1960s, Thrangu Rinpoche passed his geshe exams. (The geshe degree is often equated as a monastic doctorate degree, and training for these exams can take some two decades of study.) Following the successful completion of his exams, Thrangu Rinpoche was named abbot of Rumtek Monastery in the Indian state of Sikkim, and also the Nalanda Institute for Higher Buddhist Studies. 

In the mid-seventies, Thrangu Rinpoche began teaching in the West, and eventually founded monasteries, nunneries, and dharma centers in Tibet, Nepal, India, Bhutan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Canada, and throughout the United States and Europe. Notable projects include building a monastery, and later monastic college, at Namo Buddha in Nepal (Thrangu Tashi Yangtse Monastery); a nunnery near Swayambhunath, Nepal (Thrangu Tara Abbey); and the Vajra Vidya Institute in Sarnath, India, close to the site where the Buddha gave his first sermon, at Deer Park. There are nearly 1,000 monks and nuns in Thrangu Rinpoche’s sangha who are offered equal opportunities to study, according to his website. (Women were first allowed to take the geshema, or doctorate, exams in 2012.) Thrangu Rinpoche established Thrangu Monastery Canada in Richmond, British Columbia, in 2010, which is his North American seat, and Crestone, Colorado’s Vajra Vidya Retreat Center in 2001. 

He also worked to rebuild Thrangu Monastery, where he spent his early years before fleeing Tibet, first following its destruction in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and then following a massive earthquake in 2010 that destroyed the complex again and killed dozens of monks.

Thrangu Rinpoche was known for making complex teachings accessible for students and preserving Tibetan texts nearly lost during the Chinese invasion. He published extensively, authoring hundreds of commentaries. His books include The Mahamudra Lineage Prayer: A Guide to Practice; Advice from a Yogi: An Explanation of a Tibetan Classic on What Is Most Important (read an excerpt here); Tilopa’s Wisdom: His Life and Teachings on the Ganges Mahamudra; Naropa’s Wisdom: His Life and Teachings on Mahamudra; and Vivid Awareness: The Mind Instructions of Khenpo Gangshar.

Thrangu Rinpoche’s humanitarian projects include the building of a boarding school for 500 students from remote Himalayan villages in Kathmandu. In 2021, as Nepalese people suffered from COVID-19, as well as  floods and landslides, monks and volunteers from Thrangu Monastery donated 200 oxygen concentrators to the Nepalese government and distributed nonperishable food packages to families in need in Kathmandu’s slums and other areas.

Thrangu Media’s Facebook page contains details about ceremonies honoring Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche. 

As is traditional, there will be forty-nine days of practice, and His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa has instructed us to begin with the Akshobya practice. A mandala of the Buddha Akshobhya has been arranged in the main shrine hall of Namo Buddha’s Thrangu Tashi Yangtse Monastery with many offerings and pictures of our precious guru, and over four hundred monastics are practicing the puja, headed by the Venerable Zuri Rinpoche, Venerable Lodro Nyima Rinpoche, Choje Lama Wangchuk, and Venerable Tulku Damcho Rinpoche.

In addition, on the evening of June 8th, monks and students gathered online and in person with His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa and the Gyalwang Drukpa to recite aspirations, including the “The Short Vajradhara Prayer,” “Calling the Guru from Afar,” and prayers for Rinpoche’s swift rebirth. This puja will continue daily until the forty-ninth day after Rinpoche’s parinirvana.

The post In Remembrance: Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche (1933-2023) appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

At the turn of the millennium, Ivonne Prieto Rose was practicing law in northern California and Christopher Rose was studying literature at Pomona College. Now known as Karma Yeshe Chödrön and Karma Zopa Jigme, respectively, the two have since spent three years in retreat, received authorization as teaching lamas in the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, and cofounded the Prajna Fire online sangha—all as a married couple.

They met in Kathmandu while studying at the Rigpe Dorje Institute (RDI), an international program rooted in traditional Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, meditation, and translation. Though they both came to RDI looking to deepen their Buddhist practice, neither one anticipated finding both a life path and a life partner.

“I was a lawyer in Silicon Valley right around when the tech bubble was mushrooming and about to implode. When I had a chance to leave that position, I figured I’d take a year or two off and study in Asia—I had just encountered the Tibetan buddhadharma a couple of years before, and I was in that stage where I just couldn’t get enough of it,” said Yeshe.

Zopa, a New Mexico native, was exposed to Buddhism at a young age through Lama Karma Dorje’s residency in Santa Fe. He met several Tibetan lamas and took refuge with Kyabje Bokar Rinpoche (who would become Prajna Fire’s root guru), but he didn’t get serious about the dharma until graduating from college in 2000. “My parents got me a plane ticket to Asia to go on a pilgrimage, and that kind of just hooked me—it really wasn’t my initial plan.”

After hitting it off at RDI, the two planned a three-year retreat together—together but separate, that is. “We were so looking forward to separate male and female wings and being in retreat as individuals,” Zopa said.

Yeshe added that as a married couple “you end up with each being half of a couple all the time. So it was a nice idea to not be that for a little while.”

But apparently karma had other plans. Vajra Vidya Retreat Center only had one wing and a total of five retreatants, and when the pair drew numbers for rooms, they wound up next door to each other. They ended up happily working closely together throughout the retreat and jokingly called themselves the “Dharma Marines” because they took their work so seriously.

In 2016, soon after completing the three-year retreat, Yeshe and Zopa founded Prajna Fire as “an offering of gratitude and respect to their teachers and a portal for Western students to access time-tested methods for studying and practicing the buddhadharma.” Through a variety of channels, Prajna Fire seeks to balance “traditional methods for cultivating experiential understanding of buddhadharma with a modern inflection”—the gray area that many contemporary Western teachers must navigate.

Yeshe describes their teaching style as an “integrative” approach—a shorthand adaptation of their Kagyu background that emphasizes “listening, contemplating, and meditating” as a practice framework. “It’s a way of bringing the dharma from out there somewhere into your head and then down into your heart, where it becomes almost like the operating system for your life. . . . When you get down to the nitty gritty, it’s about teaching us how to have this inner dialogue with the Buddha and the lineage masters so that we can examine our own assumptions.”

♦

Visit prajnafire.com to access their calendar, teachings library, podcasts, and other features.

The post Meet a Teacher: Karma Yeshe Chödrön and Karma Zopa Jigme appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, a leading figure of Tibetan Buddhism in the US, died early in the morning on Sunday, October 6, at the age of 95. (According to the Tibetan lunar calendar, he was 96.) Karthar Rinpoche was the abbot of Karma Triyana Dharmachakra (KTD), a monastery in the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism near Woodstock, New York, since its founding in 1978. The influential teacher died at his home in Delaware County, NY.

Karthar Rinpoche’s passing came after he spent the weekend at two hospitals receiving treatment for blocked blood vessels, according to a statement released Sunday by KTD board member Sandy Hu on behalf of Lama Karma Drodhul, KTD’s president and Karthar Rinpoche’s nephew. “For the next three days, Rinpoche will remain in meditative absorption without disturbance,” Karma Drodhul’s message continued, referring to a traditional Tibetan Buddhist practice for entering the bardo, the intermediate state between death and rebirth.

Born in 1924 in Kham, a region in east Tibet, Karthar Rinpoche completed rigorous monastic study and training in his teenage and early adult years at Thrangu Monastery, where he became acquainted with the tulku [a reincarnate teacher] Thrangu Rinpoche, among other high lamas. In 1958, he fled his increasingly dangerous, Chinese-occupied homeland for safety elsewhere. A year later, he and thousands of other refugees arrived in northeastern India, where he helped to preserve his lineage’s tradition at a time of substantial transition.

When the 16th Karmapa Rangjung Rigpe Dorje made his first world tour in 1974 and decided that he would establish a North American headquarters for his lineage, he tapped Karthar Rinpoche, with the support of administrator Tenzin Chonyi and teacher Bardor Tulku Rinpoche, to be its head figure. Four years later, KTD found its home in New York’s Catskill Mountains. Offering both extensive programming for weekend retreatants as well as deep immersion in a traditional Tibetan Buddhist practice community, KTD has since become an anchor of Tibetan Buddhist activity in the West. In addition, dozens of smaller practice centers in urban communities nationwide that were founded after visits by KTD’s high lamas, each called Karma Thegsum Chöling (KTC), offer meditation guidance and Buddhist teachings for practitioners of all experience levels.

The timing of Karthar Rinpoche’s death, though a sudden reminder of impermanence for many, was uncanny. Born the same year as his guru, the 16th Karmapa, Karthar Rinpoche also passed on the same lunar date as the 16th Karmapa did in 1981—the eighth day of the ninth lunar month. 

Thrangu Media, Khenchen Thangru Rinpoche’s primary PR page on Facebook, shared Thrangu Rinpoche’s request that his monasteries in Nepal and India conduct a special puja [prayer] ceremony in light of Karthar Rinpoche’s death.

Traleg Khandro, wife of the late Tibetan Buddhist teacher Traleg Rinpoche, paid her own respects via a Facebook post. “What a magnificent life you have led,” she wrote. “You created the most remarkable seat in America for His Holiness The 17th Karmapa, to which I and so many will be eternally grateful . . . This is what a devoted and meaningful life full of conviction, faith, resilience, and determination to serve the dharma and humanity looks like.”

“Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche and I worked together for over thirty years since KTD was founded,” read a message from Bardor Tulku Rinpoche. “Therefore, we spent much time together and I am very sad to hear of his passing. We will conduct practices in his honor at KPL [Kunzang Palchen Ling].”

More dedications are likely in the days and weeks ahead. Until further notice, Lama Karma Drodhul has advised Karthar Rinpoche’s students to practice guru yoga, and to “meditate on mixing their minds with Rinpoche’s mind with the aspiration to always be with him life after life.”

Read more about Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche’s life, and the legacy that he leaves, here. 

The post Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, Anchor of Tibetan Buddhism in the West, Dies appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

It’s natural to be disappointed that you haven’t been able to vanquish your own worst faults. But do you have to continue feeling that way? The teachings of lojong say: No, you don’t have to continue feeling that way! In fact, you can use the mistakes you make to propel yourself further along the path.

Lojong, which means “mind training” in Tibetan, is the term for a set of meditations and daily life disciplines that tame and transform our mental afflictions, simultaneously uprooting the source of our suffering—our ego-fixation. The practice set consists of 59 aphorisms written by the 12th-century Tibetan saint Chekhawa Yeshe Dorje; they’re also known as the Seven Points of Mind Training.

Every one of us has ego-fixation. The Buddha’s teaching about this goes all the way back to the second of his four noble truths—that the cause of suffering is clinging and fixation, and the greatest of these is fixation on our concept of self. Once we conceive of it, seeing it as a solid and separate entity, we spend all of our time trying to protect and gratify it. Fixation is the engine that makes it “go.”

But beyond the self, we can cling to anything— people, possessions, situations, ideas—and sometimes we may feel as though we’ll never gain control over ourselves. When we make a mistake as a result of attachment, we often beat ourselves up about it. Oh, there I go again, we may think. I can’t believe I lost my temper. That’s what I do, anyway. But then I remember something my teacher, Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, taught me—my favorite lojong slogan:

Three objects, three poisons, three seeds of virtue.

In a 19th-century commentary on the lojong teachings, the Tibetan master Jamgon Kongtrul (1813–1899) explains that the three poisons are attachment, aversion, and ignorance, which are always arising in the mind in response to the three objects: things you like, things you don’t like, and things you’re indifferent toward.

To take control of these poisons, Kongtrul says, we should notice them “as soon as they arise.” We may not actually be able to notice them as soon as they arise, but perhaps we can catch them after five minutes, or even two weeks down the road. Whenever it occurs, the moment you notice it, take hold of that mental affliction with your attention and purposefully turn it into an aspiration. It’s as though you see the mental affliction as raw material, the way a potter would view clay. You don’t see clay as a problem; you see it as an opportunity to create something.

It’s as though you see the mental affliction as a raw material, the way a potter would view clay.

So if your emotional state is upsetting, try to step outside of it— even if it’s just for an instant—and say, “I am angry,” “I am jealous,” “I am competitive,” or “I am attached.” Whatever it is that you’re feeling, recognize it. In that instant of separation and acknowledgment, you can use a formula Kongtrul offered and say, “May my mental affliction contain the mental affliction of all sentient beings.” You use your imagination to recognize that there are other people on the planet at this very moment feeling just like you feel. You are no longer alone.

Furthermore, you’re no longer feeding the engine of the mental affliction with words like, “I am angry. I am bad,” or “That person is bad.” You’ve taken the energy away from those stories, allowing that energy to turn into something else—an aspiration for positive change.

You do that by moving to the next step in Kongtrul’s formula, paraphrased here for brevity:

By my working with this moment of mental affliction, may I and all sentient beings be freed from this mental affliction.

That’s powerful stuff. We aspire—just by stepping outside our affliction, engaging it, and working with it—to accrue for ourselves (and all beings!) the seed of virtue to be free from this mental affliction.

The final part of Kongtrul’s formula takes our aspiration higher:

Through this, may we all become buddhas, the complete freedom from mental affliction.

The whole process may seem cumbersome at first, but with practice it will become second nature and give us a new way to view what we think of as faults and failings.

Kongtrul’s technique allows us to take the energy away from our mental afflictions and transform that energy into an aspiration for goodness: May I be good, may all things be good, and may all beings be free.

We’ve made a conscious turn away from feeding our mental affliction and taken ourselves somewhere else. We’ve taken that thing that was dark and unworkable and turned it into something light and workable. That moment is my favorite moment. Even in my own feelings of disappointment with myself, I know that Kongtrul’s method will work. I know it will work. I’ve used it again and again. Of course, there are days when I’m so upset about something I don’t want to use it. But I have to. Because that’s the way to sanity.

You can even use this method without full sincerity, through gritted teeth. Any way you use it will create a momentum of change within you.

This technique can also be used to generate compassion for yourself. “May my mistake, this thing I just goofed up on, contain the mistakes of all sentient beings, and by working through this feeling of mistake, may I and all sentient beings be free of it. May we all become buddhas.”

For me, this unhooks the feeling of “I’ve been practicing for so many years but I can’t get on top of my anger.” If you have anger, it’s not the end of everything. You don’t have to stop practicing because you’re angry. Use the formula, take hold of the anger, and turn it into an aspiration. Don’t sit there and feel bad that you’re not further along in your practice. Do something with that feeling instead. 

♦

Watch Lama Kathy Wesley’s January 2019 Dharma Talk series, “Buddhism’s Alchemy of Emotion,” at tricycle.org/dharmatalks.

The post Your Mistakes Are Progress appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

This South American city has long been prized for its Belle Epoque architecture, narrow streets, numerous bookstores—more per person in 2013 than any other city in the world—and coffee shop culture. And though you wouldn’t mistake it for Bodhgaya, Buenos Aires has seen a sizeable increase in Buddhist residents from Asian countries since the 1980s. Today, the city is home to about 5,000 immigrant Buddhists and 25,000 converts. The renowned writer Jorge Luis Borges, a Buenos Aires native, was one of many Argentinians who have been drawn to the dharma. If you find yourself in the city of Porteños (as the residents of this port city are known), here is our guide for the Buddhist traveler.

1| Tzong Kuan Temple

Though Argentina’s only Chinatown spans but a few city streets in the upscale Belgrano neighborhood, you can’t miss its giant red-roofed archway. Barrio Chino is home to more than 100 businesses, and the neighborhood can see 15,000 visitors a weekend. Be sure to look up the Templo Budista Tzong Kuan, which is home to a large gold Buddha and a robust congregation of 500. Montañeses 2175
tzongkuan.org

2| Furaibo

This recreation of an ancient Japanese temple sits in one of Buenos Aires’s oldest homes, complete with Zen gardens on the grounds. Furaibo offers acupuncture and other traditional health treatments, holds classic tea ceremonies, and is home to a cozy, vegan-friendly restaurant.
Adolfo Alsina 429
furaiboba.com.ar

3| Soka Gakkai Internacionale de la Argentina

The Nichiren organization‘s chapter here features an auditorium designed by the renowned Italian-Argentine architect Clorindo Testa.
Donado 2150
sgiar.org.ar

4| Templo Budista Fo Guang Shan

Established in 1992 to serve local Chinese and Taiwanese Buddhists, Fo Guang Shan later expanded—especially after the temple’s current master, Bhikshuni Chueh Kae, translated religious texts into Spanish and began offering courses in meditation, martial arts, and yoga. FGS is also a popular option for vegetarian cuisine (contact them 24 hours in advance to book a spot for their prix fixe lunch) and hosts vegetarian cooking workshops on a regular basis.
Crámer 1733;
facebook.com/FGSArgentina

5| Jardín Japonés

This tranquil public park run by the Japanese Argentine Cultural Foundation boasts one of the largest Japanese gardens outside of Japan, as well as many smaller gardens, koi ponds, and a teahouse. You can also attend courses here in Japanese arts and talks on topics such as nutrition and hand reflexology.
Av. Casares 2966
jardinjapones.org.ar

6| Vipassana Buenos Aires – Anumodana Argentina

Founded by Buenos Aires native Eduardo Torres Astigueta, this meditation community holds intimate weekly practices in Palermo and Flores, close to tourist hotspots.
Aranguren 2314 and Arévalo y Niceto Vega
vipassanabuenosaires.com

7| Zen Deshimaru Buddhist Association

Visit this Buenos Aires dojo for sitting meditation (twice a day Tuesday through Friday, in the mornings Saturday and Sunday). They also teach hatha yoga and Japanese calligraphy.
Gurruchaga 365
zen-deshimaru.com/en/ dojos/buenos-aires-zen-dojo

8| Kagyu Tekchen Chöling Institute

Established in 1983, this is the first Tibetan Buddhist center in all of Latin America. You can practice walking meditation under the watchful eye of its stupa from 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., Monday through Thursday.
Av. Melian 2338
ktcarg2.weebly.com

The post The Buddhist Traveler in: Buenos Aires appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Two prominent Tibetan Buddhist leaders—Ogyen Trinley Dorje and Thaye Dorje, who are rival claimants to the title of 17th Karmapa, head of the Karma Kagyu lineage—met for the first time in the beginning of October, according to a joint statement from both figures released on October 11. The move signifies a major event in both Karmapas’ efforts to resolve a sectarian divide more than three decades old.

The rift began after the passing of the 16th Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje (1924–1981), when two Karma Kagyu lineage holders identified and enthroned different successors. The 14th Shamar Rinpoche (1952–2014), who bore what many regard as the second-ranking title in the history of the lineage, recognized Thaye Dorje, while Tai Situ Rinpoche, 64, another high-ranking lama, recognized Ogyen Trinley Dorje. In the years that followed, both Karmapas assumed their titles as prominent figures lined up to support the opposing claims. His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, several prominent Kagyu teachers, and the People’s Republic of China recognized Ogyen Trinley Dorje, while many other high-profile lamas backed Thaye Dorje, arguing that the authority over succession lies entirely with Shamar Rinpoche. Thereafter, a previously unified sangha split into two, and opposing loyalties caused tension, resentment, and even speculations of criminal activity.

But the two Karmapas’ meeting earlier this week in rural France could signal the start of a new chapter.

According to the joint statement, the Karmapas hoped to establish a personal relationship and to discuss the future of the roughly 900-year-old Karma Kagyu lineage. They talked about ways that they could heal the divisions that have formed within the sangha [community] and were optimistic about developing a strong individual connection.

“This undertaking is critically important for the future of the Karma Kagyu lineage,” Karmapas Ogyen Trinley Dorje, 33, and Thaye Dorje, 35, wrote, “as well as for the future of Tibetan Buddhism and the benefit of all sentient beings.”

The Karmapas’ momentous meeting was not entirely unexpected. In March, Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje spoke in earnest about his wish to resolve the sectarian divide through a video recording aired at the Kagyu Monlam, an annual multi-day prayer ceremony held in Bodhgaya, India. He insisted that inter-lineage reconciliation could be possible, but that he could not be alone in striving for it. In June, Tricycle asked Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje in Queens, New York, about his efforts to resolve the schism. Unable to offer specific details, he nonetheless confirmed that plans were in the works. The recent meeting in France might be the culmination of those plans.

There is a long way to go before the two-Karmapa conundrum can be entirely resolved. For now, the debate over who will hold the unofficial seat-in-exile at Rumtek Monastery, in Sikkim, India, persists. But the Karmapas’ first meeting may indicate a non-divisive future on the horizon.

“We both had this wish for many years,” the Karmapas wrote in their statement. “We are gratified that [it] has now been fulfilled.”

Many students in the greater Kagyu community rejoiced on Thursday after hearing the news. Justin von Bujdoss, executive director of chaplaincy and wellness for the New York City Department of Correction, wrote to Tricycle:

The mind of the Karmapas is no different than the mind of all of the buddhas of the three times and ten directions, which of course is no different from our own mind.

I pray that we can come together as one unified family and that the lineage that began with [the 11th-century Buddhist master] Tilopa can continue to bring benefit for countless beings. 

“It’s a dream come true,” said Achi Tsepal, who served as the 16th Karmapa’s personal secretary and translator during his travels to the US in the 1970s. When the sangha is split, Tsepal told Tricycle, the doors are opened to conflict over power, money, and politics, ultimately sacrificing the integrity of the lineage’s Buddhist teachings and practice. Tsepal sees the duo’s union as the herald of a centralized, cohesive Karma Kagyu to come—a lineage in which there will be only one successor, the 18th Karmapa.

Read Ogyen Trinley Dorje and Thaye Dorje’s full joint statement here.

The post Karmapas Unite appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

On the first day of Losar, the Tibetan Lunar New Year celebration, the February sky hangs low and leaden over Columbus, Ohio. A steady downpour of icy rain has bogged down traffic, and members of Columbus Karma Thegsum Chöling are trickling in for what was supposed to be an 8 a.m. prayer retreat. They take off their wet boots and assemble in the basement of Congregation Tifereth Israel, a synagogue whose members have hosted the group since shortly after an arsonist’s trash bin fire in 2016 incinerated the 19th-century wood frame church that had been the group’s home for 26 years.

The fluorescent-lit room is outfitted with meditation cushions, thangkas, and long, low tables where students unpack ritual instruments and take prayer books out of yellow silk wrappings. A shrine is piled with Losar offerings, most traditional, some not: every item of food brought into Tifereth Israel must be kosher, so next to the tormas [ritual statues] and water bowls are stacks of packaged matzo, Kedem tea biscuits, and a bottle of Manischewitz Concord Grape wine.

One of the last to arrive, a few minutes past eight, is Lama Kathy Wesley, Columbus KTC’s resident teacher and a group member since its inception in 1977, when she was 23. Wesley, a third-generation Columbusite, is tall, with short, graying brown hair, wire-rim glasses and a wide grin. She wears a version of Tibetan robes designed for lay lamas and sensible shoes. “So sorry I’m late! Traffic!” she announces, shaking the rain off her parka. “But good for all of you for coming! The Tibetans say that what you do on Losar, you do for the rest of the year. So by coming to practice you’re getting a great start!”

Related: Meet a Sangha: Columbus Karma Thegsum Chöling

By taking part in this Losar retreat, the members of Columbus KTC are furthering a process that has unfolded, and continues to unfold, across the country and all over the world. The transplantation of a practice tradition that speaks to the human condition, from ancient central Asia to a basement room in Ohio, led by a woman with a quintessentially American style, is really nothing out of the ordinary. It is happening for a perfectly mundane reason: people face the same suffering and turbulence of mind, and have the same desire for lasting happiness, wherever they are, and throughout time. Granted, this group, and this lama, have the privilege of representing the original point of contact between the Karma Kagyu tradition and the Midwest. And the roots of that hybrid are growing ever deeper.

Wesley’s entrance is a taste of the kind of unfettered enthusiasm I will come to recognize as her M.O. That morning, and at all the gatherings I witness where Lama Kathy is in attendance, she seems to be the happiest person in the room. She has a gentle, welcoming authority and a penchant for goofiness that infuses her teaching, which often involves explaining each step of a practice and its significance, as she does with the morning’s Green Tara invocation. Later that weekend, in the course of a refuge ceremony, she turns to the rows of Buddha and deity statues, waves at them and, in a cartoonish voice, squeaks, “Hi! These are your new friends!” Turning back to the refuge takers, she adds, “They really are your friends. They represent your own potential for buddhahood. What could be better?”

Wesley’s sense of humor and lack of pretense, even when describing arcane Vajrayana practices, has been an effective vehicle for presenting the dharma. It works because it is grounded in 40 years of intensive religious practice that began when she first encountered her teacher, Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, in 1977. Khenpo Rinpoche, a  scholar and meditation adept in the Karma Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, came to the United States in 1976 at the behest of the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa to help establish a center in upstate New York, near Woodstock. At the age of 94, he is still the head resident lama at the monastery, Karma Triyana Dharmachakra (KTD), and has been widely recognized for decades as an awakened master.

Their meeting was one of those seemingly preordained flukes that often mark the beginning of lifelong student-teacher relationships. At the time, Wesley had recently graduated from Ohio State with a degree in journalism and was working as a rookie reporter at the Newark Advocate, the local paper for a town about 45 minutes east of Columbus. While casting around for story ideas one day, she saw an ad for a lecture by a Tibetan lama and decided to cover it.

Khenpo Rinpoche had been invited to Newark by a resident Buddhist couple who’d met the 16th Karmapa in New York in 1975. The story goes that when the late Karmapa learned the couple was from near Columbus, he decided it must be an auspicious place to teach the dharma because its name suggested another major meeting of worlds: Columbus’s “discovery” of America. The Karmapa didn’t end up visiting until much later, but he sent his emissary, Khenpo Rinpoche, the very next year.

Wesley describes seeing Khenpo Rinpoche for the first time as “a total upheaval. Here was this incredibly wise and compassionate person with a gentle but powerful strength that you could just feel. I suddenly knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.” After interviewing him for the paper, Wesley asked some of her own questions about meditation and felt an instant recognition of his answers about the dharma. “People cry when they meet Khenpo Rinpoche. It’s a thing. I cried when I met him, too.” Two months later, she took refuge as a Tibetan Buddhist and became a founding member of Columbus KTC, the first of what are now 24 affiliate centers in the United States.

That sense of recognition, says Wesley, was both surprising and not—religion had always attracted her. Her father, an auto mechanic, and her mother, a part-time clerk at a drugstore, had raised Wesley as a Catholic, and she attended parochial schools. “I was a happy Catholic. I loved going to church and praying.” But by the time she got to college, her faith couldn’t satisfy her interior questioning and a growing need to find peace. “The church was a karmic seed for which I’m very grateful,” she says. “Who knows: maybe if I’d met a good Jesuit priest, like the current Pope, who could have helped me live my best life, I might still be a Catholic.”

Related: From Catholic to Chemist to Buddhist Missionary

In the beginning, KTC was a loose and revolving group of five to ten people, convening in living rooms to study, meditate, and chant together. Under Khenpo Rinpoche’s direction, Wesley began the Karma Kagyu tradition’s form of Ngondro, a set of preliminary practices that require the completion of hundreds of thousands of prostrations, prayers, and mandala offerings: it took her five years to finish. As the group grew, to 15 and then 20, Khenpo Rinpoche asked her to teach meditation. By 1990, with Wesley as administrative director, KTC consisted of 30 regular members and was ready for a permanent home, so KTC purchased the church in West Columbus.

In 1993, Khenpo Rinpoche inaugurated the first traditional Tibetan three-year retreat in the US, at a specially-built hermitage called Karme Ling in Delhi, New York. For Wesley, there was no question that she would undertake the retreat, in spite of the fact that she worked full-time and was married. “I’m one of those people who doesn’t realize I can’t do something, so I do it.” Wesley’s husband of 45 years, Michael, a US Postal Service employee at the time, gave his blessing. “Marriage is a choice you make every day, even several times a day,” says Wesley. “Mike was willing to keep making that choice.”

Though the three-year retreat was a new project for KTD, Khenpo Rinpoche made sure it cleaved as closely as possible to the thousand-year-old traditions on which it was based. “Basically, we lived like monks and nuns, except with no interruptions,” says Wesley. “We were in our rooms for ten hours a day, practicing.” And every night of those three years, the retreatants slept sitting upright in the traditional Tibetan meditation box. Summing it all up, she says, the experience “taught me how to practice for the rest of my life. It taught me that the only thing I have is my mind, and that the state of my mind in the present moment is what matters.”

“It was very intense,” recalls Jemi Steele, a teacher in Colorado Springs who was part of that first group. “But there was a lot of humor, and when one person was having a hard time, the others would support her.” (Men and women lived and practiced in separate quarters.) Steele remembers that Wesley’s playfulness—wearing striped socks to pujas, hanging a picture of Mr. Rogers in her room, singing show tunes—was a great energizer. “Kathy was always bursting into that song from the show Kismet—“Stranger in Paradise.” She was game for anything. Rinpoche would put things on our plate and we had to figure them out. And Kathy would say, ‘OK! Let’s figure this out!’ She had a very can-do spirit.”

When she finished the retreat, Khenpo Rinpoche asked her to assume the role of resident teacher for Columbus KTC and gave her three rules to follow. “First he told me, ‘If someone asks you something and you don’t know the answer, tell them ‘I don’t know but I’ll find out.’ Don’t ever forget those three magic words: I don’t know.’” In Wesley’s earliest days of teaching, that meant countless letters to Rinpoche, and countless letters back. “I became a recitation device—repeating what Rinpoche taught me. The more I repeated it, the more it stayed inside.”

The second and third rules were “Don’t put on airs; be natural.” Check. And “Stay with the list.” The list was a roster of topics and texts that still form the curriculum for study at KTC. The responsibilities that lay ahead were daunting, says Wesley, “but I thought, if Rinpoche had confidence in me, if he knew I could do it, then I could do it. I’m not an enlightened being, therefore it’s not going to be easy and I’m going to make mistakes.” An assistant to Khenpo Rinpoche offered some parting advice that Wesley quotes to herself daily: “‘You’re not a big deal. The dharma is a big deal.’ That was huge for me. I live by that.”

Every convert dharma group is a study in syncretism. Each has its own blend of regionalism and orthodoxy, shaped in turn by the style and personality of its leader and core members. Columbus KTC is no different (and for the time being, part of that syncretism is a kosher altar). It doesn’t take long to see how Wesley’s accessibility and plainspokenness have made Columbus KTC the way it is today. And because the center is currently homeless, Wesley’s engagement with her students and the structure she imposes are more important than ever. “What makes this place work is that there’s a very clear path for students to follow and they get a lot of support,” said Eric Weinberg, who runs the group’s prison dharma program and sits on its board. “That, and the fact that Kathy has this great big heart.”

Weinberg’s introduction to KTC ten years ago was emblematic of Wesley’s approach to new students. After decades of meditation and practice in a series of traditions, from Christian mysticism to Kundalini, Weinberg dead-ended. “I was just incredibly unhappy. My wife could see it, my kids could see it. I was in a box and I didn’t know how to get out. I needed lineage, bad.” After attending a retreat taught by Tai Situ Rinpoche, a Tibetan master in the Kagyu lineage who was visiting Columbus, Weinberg decided to look into KTC. He called and left a message, asking to talk with someone about meditation, “but I didn’t really expect a reply,” he recalls. “Kathy called me right back. I told her all about my practices and what I’d done in the past. She said, ‘Well, I don’t know anything about any of that, but I think I can help you. There’s just one catch: you’ll have to start from the beginning.’”

The beginning at Columbus KTC is a graduated introduction to the Buddha’s teachings as interpreted by the Kagyu lineage, with lots of scaffolding built in. New students are paired with a mentor, who meets them outside the regular weekly services and meditation classes and helps them read through their first Kagyu dharma book (Weinberg is one of those mentors). “We usually start with basic shamatha [concentration practice], but we have to meet people where they are,” says Wesley. “Sometimes a person comes through the door and we’re chanting ‘Om mani padme hum,’ the mantra of universal compassion, and they’re like, ‘Wow. This is fantastic.’ It’s like a karmic peg for that person. So we let them go with that. You have to have the flexibility to help people where their interests are.” Wesley will even make house calls, to give instructions for such practices as the Medicine Buddha mantra, a healing visualization, or tonglen, a technique for spreading compassion.

Of the myriad practices in her personal repertoire, the bookend to her daily rituals is shrine practice. “That act of tending at the beginning and the end of the day is a powerful symbol of one’s commitment to oneself,” Wesley explains. “It’s a commitment to a type of spiritual self-care. That gives you confidence in your self-worth. You’re making offerings to the Buddha in front of you, but really the offerings nurture the Buddha that’s inside of you. When I took refuge, Rinpoche said that’s how you begin and end your day—with shrine tending. So I teach it to everybody who takes refuge.”

A hallmark of Tibetan Buddhist compassion practice is identification with other beings—anyone you encounter could have been your mother, your brother, your child, so whatever they’re going through is relevant to you. Wesley often quotes an aphorism from Khenpo Rinpoche: “People don’t come to the dharma because they’re having a good time. They come because they’re struggling.” To help a student “get at that struggle,” she says, “I try to find the question behind the question. Sometimes someone is asking a super-technical question about some philosophical point of dharma, but what they’re really saying is ‘I’m afraid. I’m afraid that bad things are going to happen to me or that my bad habits are going to get the better of me.’” Once that inner question is articulated, “we work collaboratively. We’re going to go after that thing because if we don’t, it’s going to stay in your way.”

Her own struggles, the ones that brought her to dharma practice 41 years ago, are the same ones she grapples with now: “Anxiety and my emotions. I still get bowled over by my emotions. I’m quick to lose my temper.” It’s hard to picture Wesley getting snarky, but it happens, she admits, “when someone says or does something dismissive, or that suggests that I’m stupid. It brings me right back to that playground in sixth grade.” On one occasion she felt provoked and said something “too harsh” to a student, and the memory of that still torments her. “I told Khenpo Rinpoche what I’d done, and he told me, ‘Don’t ever do that again. Be patient and be a good listener.’ My role is primarily as a listener, and I was trained as a listener, but I needed to hear that.”

Still, a lot changes in four decades of practice. “What’s different now,” Wesley says, “is that I have learned that my emotions really are clouds in front of the sun, and they don’t define me. They’ve become more workable.” She credits, as much as anything, working with the lojong slogans, the 59 brief mind-training aphorisms that date back to 12th-century Tibet. “They taught me that I could get out of my own way and have a more constructive relationship with my emotions.I don’t have to feel terrorized and hopeless because of them. I still have my moments, but I have tools.” And they’re the same tools she shares with her students, in Columbus; at KTD, where she is a frequent guest teacher; and at the many KTC centers around the country where she is invited to teach each month.

Wesley and her husband still live in Newark, which, like Columbus, is a rustbelt town finding its way forward from deindustrialization and the Great Recession. Its greatest claim to fame—greater even than a former industrial headquarters in the shape of a giant picnic basket—is the extraordinary Newark Earthworks. These ceremonial mounds were built by the Hopewell civilization between 100 and 500 CE and are believed to have been the largest earthen enclosures in the world, though no one knows exactly how their makers used them.

When I visit Wesley’s home in a neighborhood of modest one-story houses, she greets me with her signature humor: “Welcome to the 1950s!” The place does have a retro air, furnished as it is with abundant knickknacks, Wesley’s favorite recliner, and a multitude of taped-up notes bearing reminders she writes to herself. The only evidence that a Buddhist lama lives there, apart from tables covered in books and papers related to KTC business, is Wesley’s shrine room. The converted bedroom is a touchstone place where she practices each morning and night before a china-cupboard-turned-altar.

Reclining in her chair and swinging an orange prayer wheel on a Saturday afternoon, she recounts the details of the fire that destroyed the physical home of Columbus KTC. It was a profound teaching in impermanence and generosity. Wesley was giving a course in Mexico that week when she received an email saying there’d been a “serious fire” at the center, and by the time she reached KTC’s director, Kim Miracle, all Miracle could say was “It’s gone.” “Thangkas were vaporized, the statues scorched, and 40 years’ worth of books and recorded teachings were destroyed,” Wesley remembers. But as often seems to happen when a sacred site is destroyed, certain precious objects remained miraculously intact: the blue-and-yellow Karma Kagyu flag that flew from the church steeple was unscathed, even though the roof had erupted in flames.

“There was that pang of loss,” says Wesley, “but almost instantly all the silver linings began to appear.” Namely, an outpouring of hospitality and support. “We didn’t realize how many people were interested in what we were doing, or how many friends we had,” says Wesley. The Mayor of Columbus called the next day to offer his regrets and assistance, and within a few days, an ad hoc community of supporters organized an interfaith prayer meeting that drew 150 people in the parking lot of the burned center. “I was borne up by this outpouring of good will.”

Another silver lining was the word from Khenpo Rinpoche that KTC should construct a new center on the site of the old one. That means a purpose built facility, designed by a pro bono architect, that Wesley and her board hope will serve as spiritual touchstone on the city’s west side. They are dedicated to helping the historically troubled and underinvested area whose residents are now threatened by the displacement that comes with gentrification. They will continue their long tradition of offering free meditation classes and other services. But before KTC can break ground, the group needs to raise enough money to build—they are still more than $600,000 from their goal—and for now, Wesley must function as a development director and real estate developer, in addition to teaching the dharma.

On the way out of Newark, I stop to see the Hopewell Mounds. Following Wesley’s directions, I come upon an all-but-hidden parking lot, empty, at the end of a quiet residential street, leading to a lookout platform. The icy rain is still falling, and a golf course undulates over and around the earthworks, so at first sight, the mounds don’t even register. Suddenly, though, they take shape in my field of vision, like enormous, prehistoric beasts that had been camouflaged until this moment by their own stillness. They form long ridges and a mysterious hexagon; they are immense and beautiful and alive.

Lama Kathy had urged me to see the Hopewell Mounds. Everything is impermanent— everything arises and passes away—“but the mounds are still there, and they’re really cool!” she said. It dawns on me as I look out over the golf course, encrusted with frost, that there’s a fitting symmetry in the fact that Lama Kathy and Columbus KTC emerged in the same region as these structures. They each embody a syncretism: an ancient religion, layered with a new culture’s ideas and artifacts, which will someday disintegrate and pass away. And like those mounds, the Buddha’s teachings are something enduring that shapes us, if we slow down enough to take them in. We’re not a big deal, Wesley would say, but the dharma is.

The post Old Tibet Meets the American Midwest appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Ogyen Trinley Dorje, one of two claimants to the title of the 17th Karmapa, presided over the ninth North American Kagyu Monlam on June 6–9 in New York City, the first time the prominent Buddhist leader has led the Tibetan Buddhist prayer festival outside of India. The Karmapa—the head of the Karma Kagyu lineage and one of the most important spiritual leaders in Tibetan Buddhism—shook things up at the Queens event, placing women in leadership roles they’ve never been allowed to hold and revealing that he is working to bridge a sectarian divide that has vexed his school.

Each winter, thousands attend the annual Kagyu Monlam in Bodhgaya, India, to chant and pray for world peace as well as receive teachings and empowerments, and over the past 15 years the Kagyu school has established satellite monlams for adherents across the globe. Due to health issues, Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje was absent from the 35th Kagyu Monlam in March this year, the first time he has missed the Bodhgaya-based monlam since he began presiding over it in 2001. He has been temporarily living in the United States since October 2017 for medical care and rest.

When asked about his health during an interview at the Queens monlam on June 8, the Karmapa told Tricycle, “I’m OK. It’s not always very good, but not bad.”

“I’m still alive,” he added with a chuckle.

The monlam, hosted by the Danang Foundation at York College and attended by an estimated crowd of 1,200 laypeople and monastics from around the world, came at an interesting time in the Kagyu school. In March, the Karmapa delivered a special message to the 35th Kagyu Monlam via video in which he opened up about his personal struggles to fulfill his leadership responsibilities and his wish to resolve the sectarian split in the Karma Kagyu school. The divide dates to the period after the 16th Karmapa’s death in 1981, when some lamas identified Ogyen Trinley Dorje as the 17th Karmapa and others recognized Karmapa Trinley Thaye Dorje, resulting in bitter quarreling and even lawsuits.

Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje told Tricycle that he felt it was the right time to talk about the issue and that there “needs to be leadership,” continuing, “I suppose in a sense I would have felt unable to make such frank remarks about this had I been in Bodhgaya . . . somehow I found it easier to speak about this from here.”

When asked about addressing the sectarian dispute, he said, “I am in the process of enacting plans to resolve this. But because these processes or plans are not completed yet, I don’t want to be too specific. The point is everyone needs to work together. Now, I take responsibility. But I can’t do this entirely alone. I need both sides to come together.”

Related: Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje Calls for Community Reevaluation

The Queens monlam made history in other ways, too. The Karmapa selected three nuns to be the first women to hold the key roles of umzay, or chant leaders, a decision consistent with his focus on gender equality within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and nuns’ education and empowerment. The 2018 Kagyu Monlam in Bodhgaya featured both monks and nuns as chant leaders, but this was the first monlam in the Karma Kagyu lineage where all the chant leaders were women. Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje told Tricycle, “[This monlam] is very special because . . . we’ve brought 14 Bhutanese nuns,” three of whom were the chant leaders. The nuns also performed on June 10 at the Marme Monlam, a musical show and lantern ceremony for peace attended by approximately 2,500 people at Madison Square Garden, where they chanted a song by the beloved Tibetan saint Milarepa and performed a short chöd ritual [tantric ego-cutting practice]. The Karmapa said in the past that nuns could only be chant leaders in their nunneries, but “now [the nuns] are upgrading.” He continued, “It’s important to provide opportunities for them to increase their confidence and especially opportunities for female monastics to assume leadership positions.”

Michele Martin, a longtime translator for the Karmapa, said that the Karmapa has been steadily elevating nuns to roles they have previously been barred from, including lama dancers and co-umzays at the Bodhgaya Monlam. “He’s been kind of moving it gradually, so that people can slowly accept the nuns coming up and their new positions,” she said. “They’ve just done a fantastic job. They have hardly missed a syllable.”

The head chant leader, Tsunma Khyechok Palmo, was helped by assistant chant leaders Tsunma Kuenga Drolma and Tsunma Tsultrim Drolma, all from Karma Drubdey Nunnery in central Bhutan. Khyechok Palmo had been one of the chant leaders at the 35th Kagyu Monlam in Bodhgaya earlier this year. Of her first visit to the United States, she said, “It is good to be here practicing with the Western people. I am enjoying it. We all share the same one universe.”

Related: Recently, Under the Bodhi Tree

The monlam also focused on social responsibility. Excess food that was not served to attendees was donated to a local Queens food bank, organizers said. The Karmapa has made protection of the environment one of his signature issues, and in keeping with his work on that topic, all plates, cups, and flatware were biodegradable, only vegetarian food was served, and the theme of one segment of the Marme Monlam show was “The Power of Nature.”

The New York monlam was similar to its Indian counterpart, but with some distinctive American influences. Tibetan and American children played together in fields outside the tent, and the sound of Tibetan chanting was occasionally punctuated by pop music blasting from a passing car or the wail of police and ambulance sirens. About 30 New York Police Department officers stationed around the area for security were offered cups of chai tea along with participants and posed for a photo with the Karmapa at the end of the monlam.

The monlam was attended by many Tibetan laypeople living in New York City, monks and nuns from North American Kagyu centers, Western practitioners, and followers from mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Its location was selected in part because of its proximity to the Karmapa’s North American seat, Karma Triyana Dharmachakra in Woodstock and to the Danang Foundation in Queens, a charitable organization which is led by one of the organizers of the Karmapa’s daring 2000 escape from Tibet, Lama Tsewang Rinpoche. 

The prayer festival was a treat to practitioners from New York City’s large Tibetan population, many of whom reside in the Jackson Heights neighborhoods of Queens and have a large community center in nearby Woodside. 

Tashi Drolma, 24, who grew up in Tibet and moved to America about five years ago, said that the Marme Monlam show helped her reconnect with her culture.

“Being here and hearing these singers from Tibet makes me very emotional. I remember these songs from when I was young, growing up in Tibet. This event reunites Tibetan people from Tibet and Tibetan people from around the world. We all come together in happiness.” She added, “It is beautiful that there are not only Tibetan people here, but all people who practice Tibetan Buddhism have come together to practice the religion.”

Correction (6/19): A previous version of this article claimed that this was the first monlam where all the chant leaders were women. This is not the case. Nuns in the Drukpa lineage have been the exclusive chant masters of the monlam known as Zangchod Boom for years.

The post A Karmapa in Queens appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The 17th Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje recently delivered what some might consider an unusual message to his followers. In a YouTube video uploaded in early March, the prominent Tibetan Buddhist religious leader openly expressed his life-long struggle to meet the demands that come with his leadership role—saying, “I have been depressed”—as well as his wish to dissolve sectarian sentiments within his lineage.

“Many people think to themselves that being the Karmapa is some incredible thing, but for me, that hasn’t happened,” said Ogyen Trinley Dorje, 32, one of two claimants to the title of the 17th Karmapa, the head of the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism.

His message, published with English translation in a 37-minute YouTube video on March 9, was first screened at the conclusion of the seven-day Kagyu Monlam, an annual prayer ceremony in Bodh Gaya, India, attended by thousands of the Karmapa’s students from across the globe. A regular presider over the Monlam ceremonies, this year the Karmapa sent his video from the US, where he has resided over the past six months for rest and medical purposes.

The Karmapa shared his disappointment with the disorganized education he had growing up in both Tibet and India, where he fled to escape Chinese control in 2000. Contrary to the lives of past Karmapas, Ogyen Trinley Dorje said, he has been separated from the primary teachers of his tradition.

“I never really felt that I had any freedom of my own,” he said of his youth at Tsurphu Monastery, the seat of the Karmapa in Tibet, where he lived under close supervision at all times.

As the Karmapa noted, questions have arisen lately as to why he has remained in the US, though he assertively denied any intention for personal benefit or “insidious plans.” He also acknowledged a history of rocky relations with the Indian government, who at one point suggested that the Karmapa might be a Chinese spy. The Karmapa reflected on how these accusations add to the unending pressure he feels to embody the carefully curated lifestyle many expect to see from a living Karmapa—a figure traditionally seen as an incarnation of Chenrezig, the enlightened bodhisattva of compassion.

“When other people look at what I’ve tried to do, they take it as a matter of course. But on my own part, I’ve had to give up a lot,” he said. “None of it has been easy. If those around me do not believe in me, then there is no reason to pretend and keep going, so for that reason, I have been depressed.”

Related: Time for Radical Change in How We Raise Our Tulkus

In a moment of sharp address, the Karmapa’s special Monlam message took a critical stance on an internal sectarian rift that occured after the passing of the 16th Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, in 1981. In search of his reincarnation, two Karma Kagyu lineage holders, Shamar Rinpoche and Tai Situ Rinpoche, identified and enthroned two different successors. Ever since, the historically singular lineage of Karmapas has experienced substantial sectarian divide.

“Our teachings—the Kamtsang [another name for the Karma Kagyu lineage]—are the same, our guru is the same, the color of our hats is the same. But if despite this we continue to cling to our own factions—no matter how right we are—we will have such bias to our own side [that] we will work to win for ourselves and to defeat the others. Taking this on would be a complete mistake; there would be nothing good about it,” the Karmapa said.

He insisted that reconciliation is possible, though he must not be alone while striving for it.

Seeking both sectarian resolution as well as space to focus on being an “ordinary dharma practitioner,” the Karmapa called upon his sangha for a greater communal effort in embodying the Buddhist teachings as the lineage looks to its future.

“A single pillar can’t hold up a whole building, can it?” the Karmapa asked.

See the Karmapa’s full message here:

The post Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje Calls for Community Reevaluation appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Developing a meditation practice can seem daunting, especially at the beginning, when we’re unsure about what having a meditation practice even means. It took me awhile to find a sense of confidence in what I was doing; perhaps more important than the confidence, though, was learning how to be comfortable.

My first teacher, a Sikkimese Buddhist nun, once likened the development of a meditation practice to being an expectant mother. “Now that you’ve taken the time to begin this process,” she explained, “you must learn to take care of and protect your practice, to nurture it, and to maintain the necessary conditions for its growth. You should think of yourself as pregnant—you need to apply that same level of care.” Even at that early stage, her advice made immediate practical sense. And now, two decades later, her words resound with a wisdom that captures the way in which maintaining a practice becomes a life’s work.

The 12th-century Tibetan meditation teacher Gampopa suggested in his work “The Precious Garland of the Supreme Path” that when our practice begins to coalesce we ought to protect it as we would our own eyes. It is during this embryonic stage of practice that we experience moments of vulnerability and tenderness, ripe with the potential to develop a deeper connection to practice.

When I was at this stage in developing my practice, I was introduced to a meditation instruction known as Tilopa’s Six Nails. Tilopa was a mahasiddha, a great adept, who likely lived in the region of present-day West Bengal, India, and Bangladesh around the turn of the 11th century. Little is known about his life, but traditional biographies tell us that he was a cowherd and showed a natural inclination for meditation and mystical experiences. Over the course of his life he became a very experienced meditator with a profound understanding of the mind. Like many of the other famed mahasiddhas from the Indian subcontinent, Tilopa was instrumental in creating and refining core spiritual practices that later spread throughout the Himalayan region—the Six Nails teaching, also known as Tilopa’s Six Words of Advice, is one of his best-known instructions:

Don’t recall. Let go of what has passed.
Don’t imagine. Let go of what may come.
Don’t think. Let go of what is happening now.
Don’t examine. Don’t try to figure anything out.
Don’t control. Don’t try to make anything happen.
Rest. Relax, right now, and rest.

—trans. Ken McLeod

At its heart, this meditation instruction is about using simple awareness to allow what is happening in the present moment to take place. It’s almost as if Tilopa is trying to point a finger at what the experience of meditation is all about. These six very short lines of instruction not only show us how to settle—or, as is sometimes said, how to “place the mind”—but also highlight all that we as meditators need to be careful of as we cultivate our practice. Tilopa is showing us how we can nurture our practice while simultaneously deepening its meaning, that the two are not mutually exclusive, and that when we find ourselves craving complexity, sometimes we are best served by simplicity.

DON’T RECALL.
LET GO OF WHAT HAS PASSED.

This instruction, especially in the beginning, is simple. It’s almost too simple. Let go of what has passed. Don’t chase after past experiences—easy, right? One might think so, yet when we sit down and begin a meditation session, what happens? What do we experience? Often we are faced with a natural cascading replay of the experiences that we had earlier in the day. If it’s not from earlier today, then it’s from yesterday, or earlier in the week, or before that. The mind can be a busy place, especially when we are early on in developing a relationship with the way it manifests. Sometimes when we are bored, rebellious, or tired, we find ourselves replaying experiences from the past that we feel are significant because they bolster our sense of self-importance. In a similar way we may have a habit of recalling ourselves as not good enough, broken, or without worth. Key to this instruction, though, is gaining a better understanding of how our relationship to the past affects us right now.

DON’T IMAGINE.
LET GO OF WHAT MAY COME.

This instruction is similar to the one about letting go of the past, but now we are invited to not think about what may come in the future. This means not getting distracted by thoughts of chores, meals to make, tasks to accomplish, goals to achieve, or any myriad of things we are convinced we must remember. Sometimes these arise as thoughts or mental images, and sometimes they arise as what I like to call “thought-chains”—mental narratives that, if we are not careful, will run their course throughout the duration of the meditation session. Just as we define ourselves in relation to the past, we also tend to seek particular outcomes for the future. Here Tilopa is asking us to gently let this go.

DON’T THINK.
LET GO OF WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW.

Sometimes our own brilliant mind can be an impediment. The desire to know exactly what we are experiencing is very natural: sometimes we want to codify our experience in practice as either good or bad, and at other times we want to distract ourselves with an endless play of thought activity. Tilopa is suggesting we turn the inner television off and just experience. A Zen Buddhist instruction is similar to this point: “When you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” What Tilopa is suggesting is that we cut away labeling and reactivity in relationship to whatever is arising—thoughts, emotions, or physical sensations. Try not to worry about what is happening right now. Instead, let it arise naturally, without judgment.

DON’T EXAMINE.
DON’T TRY TO FIGURE ANYTHING OUT.

Sometimes in Buddhist practice one is advised to be wary of engaging in overly intellectual practice. This is not to say that the Buddhist tradition is anti-intellectual, but rather that it’s easy to substitute descriptions from books for experiences gained in meditation. Practically speaking, this may take shape in our practice when we try to assess our own meditative development based upon what we have studied. Such assessments can create a subtle shift in the experience of meditation from an openness to whatever may arise to an experience that is objectified and studied. In the previous instruction, “thinking” pertains to mental activity in a general sense; in this instruction, “examining” has more to do with an analysis of what is going on, whether one is making progress, and whether the experience fits into one’s larger idea of what meditation is “supposed” to be all about. It is also worth noting that once an assessment or diagnosis occurs, we create the ground for subsequent reactions and so perpetuate our distraction.

Here Tilopa is highlighting the importance of making sure that our experience remains that which is experienced, not something that we study. He isn’t worried about how much you have read or whether you are literate; he is pointing out the importance of letting analysis evaporate to give space for direct experience to occur.

DON’T CONTROL. DON’T TRY TO MAKE ANYTHING HAPPEN.

In some meditation texts, meditators are advised not to fabricate any experience within their practice. That’s what this instruction is all about. Think of sitting on a beach and watching the waves come and go, the flatness of the horizon, and the way the clouds appear. Can you control them? Can you make the salt air different? What would happen if we approached meditation the same way? Here we are faced with putting down the desire to induce change in our experience of practice. This can be challenging when we don’t feel like remaining present, when we want to be distracted, or when we want to push back. But here Tilopa is gently reminding us that actively manipulating what arises in meditation is not the experience we seek to develop.

REST. RELAX, RIGHT NOW, AND REST.

Relax. Practice isn’t about being intense; it’s about coming back to ease—letting the mind and body settle into an experience that holds the seeds of expansiveness. In order to have a clearer sense of what the mind is like, we need to become comfortable letting ourselves, and our mind, rest with ease. Often it isn’t until we fall out of connection with this experience that we feel the need to do something. Maybe we begin chasing after thoughts, examining what is happening, or playing with everything that the mind seems to contain.

Sometimes during a meditation session we feel awkward, as though we need to do something, or as though we need to keep thinking about some particular thing, or else our ability to have a sharp, agile mind will disappear. (That’s not going to happen.) It’s hard to rest, especially given the busy pace that our lives often take. Two other instructions may help convey the sense of rest that Tilopa is getting at: Rest like a bee stuck in honey. Rest like a laborer sitting down at the end of a day of hard work. Try to let your mind settle with an ease born of natural relaxation.

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In the Tibetan tradition we often talk about meditation as familiarizing ourselves with the mind. This is a way of saying that with each practice session we get to know what is actually going on with greater clarity. Tilopa’s six instructions, which can be applied in a number of ways, are particularly effective in aiding this process. They can be read or chanted before a meditation session, and if you are struggling with one particular instruction you can even focus an entire meditation session on that particular one. Later, once you have developed a more personal relationship to the six instructions, they should be considered akin to a set of boundaries that together allow the experience of mind to take place in a direct, fresh, and uncontrived way. To move in this direction, it will help to minimize how much you study or read about this kind of meditation. Indeed, my first teacher advised me not to read too much about instructions like these. “If you must read,” she told me, “try to read and then instantly forget. Too much knowledge of the path can make meditation much harder than it needs to be.”

As is true for many meditation instructions, it can take time for them to feel natural and integrated into our experience. That’s OK. Developing a practice takes time. It’s natural to want to jump to the end result, but that isn’t possible. The great mystery of cultivating a meditation practice might be the path itself—how it twists and turns; the work we must put into it along the way—yet the result is worth the effort. Over the course of repeated practice, with the kind of gentle care that my teacher taught me and that Gampopa shared with his students, mind becomes less of a mystery and more of a canvas upon which the wealth of our existence is displayed.

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