Geshe la and I recently returned from the Rime Buddhist Center in Kansas City where Geshe la gave a series of teachings on the Six Paramitas. Lama Stanford and his wife, Mary, hosted us at their home and were extremely generous with their time and their hospitality. The sangha at the Rime Center was equally receptive to Geshe la and his teachings, and we hope that we will be able to continue our friendship in the future. Lama Stanford has overseen the growth of the Rime Center, and his advice and counsel have already proven very useful as we contemplate our own future here in Fayetteville. Aside from teachings on Friday and Saturday and a brief dharma talk on Sunday, Geshe la also taught the children's class at the Rime Center on Sunday morning, and that too was a wonderful experience. Have a look at the photo album.
On another note--Geshe la and Rinzin la are moving into their new house this week. If you'd like to help them in any way, please give them a call. We're excited about this new house since it will have an extra bedroom for visitors as well as a larger living room and dining area.
The new book that we're starting is based on the Buddhist Wheel of Life (left), an ancient symbol of Buddhist iconography, and one that tradition claims the Buddha himself designed. In fact, it was orginally recommended that this picture appear at the entry-way to every monastery and nunnery, so important and central is its subject matter. Many commentators believe that the whole of Buddhist philosophy is contained within it, represented pictorially so that even those who were unable to read philosophy would have a coherent, reliable, and authoritative "text" to study. As an object of our daily sightlines, it is arresting; as an image of analysis, it repays constant attention; and as an object of meditation, it is profound.
As we become familiar with its essential design, we should realize that, much like a mandala, its imagery progresses logically from the center to the outer area, and from the outer area to the innermost image. The story told in either direction is important, and central to our growing understanding of the Wheel's subtlety. To begin our examination, it is helpful to visit a website with the mouse-over function that explains each part individually. We can then begin to familiarize ourselves with its overall design and its individual segments. There are many such sites available, but this one seems to work well for our purposes.
Note: the directions "right" and "left" are typically given from the deity's or the central figure's perspective.
For those of you who might never have witnessed a full-scale Tibetan debate, I include the following video. While there are many such videos available, this one captures the atmosphere of the debates I saw this summer: noisy, pointed, rambunctious, a kind of intellectual free-for-all. I include it here because it's well for us to remember that this is the very system in which Geshe la was educated.
And by the way, I found the following video as well. Those of you in the Fayetteville area and certainly in the San Antonio area might recognize this gentleman:
Matthieu Ricard, a Frenchman and one of the more well-known Tibetan monks in the world, has become a kind of spokesman for the logical art of happiness. He began his career in the sciences, and his reverence for the logical has never left him. He visited Arkansas several years ago, and his speech was well received by all who attended. One of the members of our group recently found the following video of Ricard online, and I post it here because it does offer such a clear and logical analysis of happiness--what it is, and how it can be obtained. Also, some of you might like to know that Ricard's father, Jean-Francois Revel, was a famous French philosopher, and together, father and son authored a wonderfu book entitled The Monk and the Philosopher. A series of dialogues between these two extraordinarily talented men, the book ultimately represents a reasoned, nuanced, and loving conversation between East and West. If you haven't read this book, and you're interested in the subject, I'd recommend it without hesitation.
In the meantime, when you've got twenty minutes, have a look at this video:
For those of you in the Fayetteville area: last week Geshe la and I met with How Kuff, a long-time resident of Red Star, Arkansas, and now a novelist. In 1999, How and his wife toured Tibet on a bicycle, and now he has written a novel that takes place in Tibet, Changing History. How will read from his book on Saturday, January 19, 7:00 p.m. at Nightbird Books. How has an exciting story to tell, and I hope that some of you will be able to attend this reading.
Some of you in the meditation group might remember that Geshe la passed out a brief summary of the Six Perfections before we left for the break. I had planned to write something on them earlier, but my reading on Gandhi intervened. I'll try to post something on the Perfections in the future, and I'll let you know when I'm done.
For those of you in the Fayetteville community: a previous posting mistakenly announced that Geshe la & Rinzin la would return in time for meditation on Sunday, January 6. They won't. So we'll meet for the first time in the new year on January 13, and we'll have the new books for sale.
My holidays were productive, but not always in the ways that I would have imagined. I spent a good deal of time in rooms like the one pictured to the left. You know the drill--impersonal, clean, too cold or too hot, odd beeps, ucomfortable chairs, and the interminable waiting for the doctor . . . my mother was addressing a few health problems of a potentially severe nature, another person in my life was diagnosed with cancer, and I was reading again the book I'd recommended earlier, What Makes You Not a Buddhist. The passage that struck me as I sat by the hospital bed waiting for my mother's doctor to arrive concerned the Buddha's revelation about his family, about all families, and in fact about the family that he'd left in order to gain this realization. Here's the passage, from p. 42 of the book:
As his meditation deepened, Siddhartha began to see the essentially illusory quality of all phenomena, and with this understanding he looked back upon his former life at the palace, the parties and peacock gardens, his friends and family. He saw that the so-called family is like a guesthouse or hotel where different travelers have checked in and temporarily bonded. Eventually this conglomeration of beings disperses--at the time of death, if not sooner. While together, the group may develop a connection that involves trust, responsibility, love, and shared measures of success and failure, from which all sorts of dramas arise.
The family as guest house or hotel, a "conglomeration of beings . . . " How much sense this makes! And how logical it is! But it's equally difficult to internalize its essential lessons, to convert the intellectual force of the argument into an intuitive reaction against our continual struggle for permanence at the social or family level. As I watched my mother recover from the anesthesia, I realized that had things not gone well for her--as one day they won't, as they won't for all of us--then she would pass out of this guest house alone, just as she'd entered it.
Of course we all "know" this. But analyzing just how we know it reveals many things. First, knowing that we are born and will die alone is a way of conceptualizing this fact, and by so conceptualizing it, hiding it away from our intuitive, heart-knowledge, the reservoir of information on which we model our behavior. We might know that we are going to die, but we certainly spend a great deal of our time acting as if we won't, busily attaching ourselves to people, places, things, and events, all in a concerted effort to avoid what's imminent. Second, knowing that we will die is the first step on the path to fully responding to our deaths productively, through meditation and study, but it's a very difficult path to follow, and American culture does nothing to make following it any easier. Third, and finally, transforming ourselves in the face of our mortality is a task that is ultimately done alone, by our own methods, our own disciplines, and our own strategies. Teachers can't do it for us, families can't carry us there, countries can't facilitate our passage to this place.
A Buddhist monk, Tenzin Sherab, comments on his own work with the dying:
All we can do, I suppose, is to learn what we can from qualified teachers wherever they may reside, share what we've learned when we feel qualified to share it, and minute by minute, hour by hour, remind ourselves of our life in the guest-house.
For those of you who live in the Fayetteville area, Geshe la and Rinzin la are due to return on Saturday, January 5, after a long bus ride from Alabama, and as of now are planning to hold meditation on Sunday, January 6. Same time, same place as usual. We have also received copies of the next book we will be reading, The Meaning of Life by the Dalai Lama, and we will have these available for purchase on Sunday. Price TBA.
I hope that your break has been restful. The New Year certainly looks promising. Several new projects on the board, and of course the Non-Violence class as well. I hope to see many of you on Sunday.
Who We Are, What We Do, and Where We Do It
We are a diverse group of individuals of all ages from all backgrounds who simply have an interest in what Geshe Dorjee and his fellow monks have to teach us. We meet every Sunday at Dramis Hardwood Floors (see directions below) at 11:00 a.m. for meditation, instruction, and discussion. Typically, we are finished betweeen 12:30 and 1:00 p.m. Some of us are Buddhists, some of us are not, and all are welcome. You may bring a cushion if you have one, but we provide cushions for those who do not.
The Dalai Lama: The Meaning of Life The book that we read during 2008 (the third one with Geshe la), THE MEANING OF LIFE, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, which addresses the 12 links of dependent origination and other issues.
Ven Lobsang Gyatso: The Four Noble Truths The first book we read together, and a detailed--at times, overly detailed--treatment of the founding platform of all Buddhist philosophy and practice.
The Dalai Lama: Stages of Meditation The second book we read with Geshe la. It's actually the second part of a three-part work by Kamalashila, an Indian monk and scholar from the 8th century. The Dalai Lama has supplied copious commentary to Kamalashila's translated text.
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Geshe la and I recently returned from the Rime Buddhist Center in Kansas City where Geshe la gave a series of teachings on the Six Paramitas. Lama Stanford and his wife, Mary, hosted us at their home and were extremely generous with their time and their hospitality. The sangha at the Rime Center was equally receptive to Geshe la and his teachings, and we hope that we will be able to continue our friendship in the future. Lama Stanford has overseen the growth of the Rime Center, and his advice and counsel have already proven very useful as we contemplate our own future here in Fayetteville. Aside from teachings on Friday and Saturday and a brief dharma talk on Sunday, Geshe la also taught the children's class at the Rime Center on Sunday morning, and that too was a wonderful experience. Have a look at the photo album. 
