In the beginning…[an alternative]

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In 1987, I was in Sydney University studying and working my last months at KFC, Sri Punjab-an Indian Restaurant at Bondi, David Jones and numerous other odd jobs before the grand plan to launch myself into the world of take-overs; mergers & acquisitions and stocks & bonds. Gordon Gekko was everyone’s hero and “Greed is Good” was the new credo.
You know, I can very sincerely say to anyone out there, that there was a time in and around 1987 when I, together with hundreds of immediate friends and friends’ friends, truly, honestly and genuinely thought that we had successfully ran the gauntlet and was now en route to being able to secure happiness. We didn’t have money and it wasn’t money per se that we were pursuing. We just wanted to be successful as was expected of us.
What was success? Well,we didn’t know. But it was went something like this – land a job in the Big 5, or the Top 3. Success was being part of a think-thank that strategized to tear apart companies and selling the worn out parts for more than ten times the sum of their worth.  Then it was selling paper against paper and as long as you keep passing the paper you made money. “Junk” was good as was “greed”.
We could not define Success but we Identified it as wearing large stripes and double cuffs with loud trouser braces. We identified as having things to have, and nice people to be around and exotic places to go. In our minds, success bought happiness. And so we bought and we bought and yet success did not deliver happiness.
Somewhere across the globe, another man around my age was humbling himself before a Buddha asking to give away the rest of whatever little he had. In fact he always wanted to give it all away. He had come from a wealthy-ish family but he had chosen poverty not because he liked to be poor but because he refused to be distracted by what riches had to offer.
He could have easily had all that we were pursuing aimlessly. But instead he went on to live in a cow shed and ate make believe food… for a long time. And trained and be ready. So, somewhere in the invisible cosmos our axis crossed. I raced upwards to the hill tops and he seemingly raced downwards to the gully, I wouldn’t have known why.
Today, I know why. Because he knew the gully is where we would all end up after hurling ourselves off the hills we climb whether we realize it or not and whether we deny it or not. And he got ready.
Where were you in 1987 and what were you doing?

 

A Water Hazard?

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Golf courses are designed by sadists. Why else would anyone make it a point to ruin a golfer’s round by building sand traps and watery deaths around the green, knowing full well that the occasional golfer has no chance of landing on the green as we see the professionals do with remarkable ease on TV.

I remember the first time I was allowed on to the course. Sure enough my ball plunged into the pond at the first available opportunity. I looked at my caddy and said, “I was a club short”. He didn’t even look at me and from the corner of my eye I could see that he had already prepared the replacement ball. And as he walked away he just murmured “Nope…you were an ego too long”. And that statement came to define my golfing career for the last twenty years. A lot of pond visitations.

Sometimes they call it a water hazard, but it’s only really a hazard if you focus on what was lost into the pond and not what sometimes comes out of it. And what sometimes rises out of these muddy and filthy waters is the beautiful sight of lotus flowers, sprouting as if to deny the slush its intent to make all around it ugly and unwelcoming.

In my books the sight of a lotus, pure and clean breaching the surface of muddy waters…cannot be considered a hazard. This is especially so when we consider some of the characters of a lotus. Its petals are clean. A lotus is always calm in its demeanor. Its stalk bends easily but does not break easily. It is beauty that rises out of the murky depths. It defies its conditions.

In Buddhism the lotus is a symbol of purity and something divine. In one of the Sutras, it is said, ‘the spirit of the best of men is spotless, like the new lotus in the muddy water which does not adhere to it’.

I becomes more than just a nice quote when you read stories like this: ” I CHOSE to be poor…” Be inspired!

Dear Icebergs, Sorry to hear about Global Warming. Ain’t Karma a bitch? Love, The Titanic

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I can’t describe in spiritual terms what practicing real Dharma is supposed to feel like. “Good” would be a gross generalization. And I doubt if Dharma is supposed to feel good all the time if it is intended as the supreme antidote to the wicked ways I, we, have lived our lives. There is a saying “The Truth Hurts” and that being the case, if the practice of dharma forces us to acknowledge the Truth, isn’t it supposed to hurt a little if not a lot?

The truth of Dharma have to force its way out from a lifeless concrete of an identity we have assumed, and along the way, break apart the many layers of dead skin, calluses that still hide unhealed wounds, and caked blood from the lives we have taken? No, we may not have taken a human life but how many human spirits have we destroyed? How many hearts have we plundered, dreams annexed and innocence poisoned? Exactly how many souls have we broken in the wake of our delusions of conquest? And what about the lives of animals that we have caused to be killed so we can feast on their flesh? I don’t know about you but I have blood on my hands and I go to meet my judge, stained and tainted.

I have always thought of myself and indeed looked at myself in my physical form. But that is not really “me”…it is only a temporary vessel. When I see myself void of this body, I only see a piece of charred “thing” not fit for anything but the funeral pyre.  When I peel away the layers of self proclaimed victories and success, I see a vacuous soul, frightened of its own shadow. No, shadows for I wore many masks and became so many different persons and forgot who I am supposed to be.

I think as we get older, the practice of Dharma becomes harder.  Dharma when we are young is a fantastic journey of discovering our true nature. All that we can be.  When we are old, it is about overcoming the past and confronting ourselves.  And that is not easy for we are escaping from a past that we are still very much living in the present. If there is one thing I would like to tell the young, it is that which I have just said. Get Dharma into your blood stream, your mind stream and every stream you have. Just get it in.

Practicing Dharma when we are almost done with this samsaric life, and when we are done fooling ourselves, is digging ourselves out of the hole we dug ourselves into looking for fool’s gold. Now we try to dig out just to catch a glimpse of the clear blue sky.

Nevertheless, it is never too late and amidst the fear and panic that comes with recognizing how severely we have cocked up our life, there is this calm that comes only from the resolve to sin no more. A calm that comes from hearing our Guru’s voice that tells us that we live many lives and death is not the end of it. A calm that comes from knowing that we finally have the courage, borrowed as it may be from our Guru,  to be fugitives of our delusions no more.

A calm that comes from knowing that in the very end we learned to be responsible for ourselves. And when we assume responsibility we stop letting our Guru down. And we stop letting ourselves down. The calm that makes us to close our eyes and feel the noose of our negative karma wrap itself around our neck, as we whisper to ourselves ‘May I suffer  so that others in similar situations may not suffer. May I suffer so that they are free”.

Karma is just. Karma is fair. Karma needs no reason, nor permission. Karma needs no judge to affect it. Karma needs no alibi. Karma is true to its mandate. Karma is loyal. Karma is us.

Times’s running out.

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Nothing stays static. There’s a time for everything and there is a most approproate action and thought for each given space in time. That “space of time” does not last forever and it shifts with changing conditions and as the minutes roll by. The “window in time” is merely a transient and very temporary densification of elements that do not exist on their own. Elements that co-dependently come together to create that unique opportunity for us to do what the universe approves of, at that time.

It is completely a mistake to think that we will have time enough to grab an opportunity, to speak our peace, to strike with a particular action and to correct a thought before it crystalizes. Time is endless, but the perfect combination of time and opportunity is not. The sands of the open desert terrain understands how quickly everything changes with the imperious wind. I imagine life too, is like that. Opportunities are similar…Transient. Evanescent.  Impermanent.  Passing.

Sadly, we spend a lot of the time given to us chasing that, which has already passed. And even more, lamenting what we missed, whilst passing over new opportunities that the right time provides. We want to have time to do everything, especially that which we personally enjoy doing whilst expecting that window of time to be still, and be there for us to return to do what we must, what we need to after we have consumed more than enough time to do what we like.

We wait for time to furnish us with perfect conditions not realizing that there are none – only perfect time to make something good out of IMPERFECT conditions. Therein lies the irony. In waiting, we run of that which is supposed to be endless. Time.

One Wish

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Photo courtesy of Kwan Yee

Once on a very hot day when I was still a child, someone asked if I could have one wish, what would that one wish be? My one wish then was simply to have a nice delicious ice-cream.

Then I got a bit older and I thought I should start to think a bit smarter. Someone asked if I could have one wish, what would that one wish be? I answered that my one wish was to have a whole ice-cream factory so that I can have ice-cream whenever I wanted.

I went to school and got educated and became even smarter with the ways of the world. Someone asked what my one wish would be. For me then, the one wish was to have 1 Billion dollars so I can buy a big ice-cream factory and lots of other candy factories and goodies supermarkets.

And then, after some time in life’s battle grounds, winning some and losing more, someone asked, if I could have one wish, what would that wish be? I answered that my wish was to have 3 new wishes, so that I can spend one wish on getting an ice-cream factory, the second wish on getting 1 Billion dollars, and the third wish, to have yet another 3 new wishes.

And so, it was in pursuit of this magical formula that I spent virtually all my growing years and life became a never ending chase of wish after wish. Because I always had more wishes than I had those wishes being granted, I was always left wanting. The more clever I got, the less my wishes became true.

I even forgot the purest joy a kid feels having an ice-cream on a hot day. I forgot to stop along the way and enjoy a simple ice-cream.

And now, if someone were to come along and offer to grant me one wish, do you know what that wish would be? My only wish now and forever more, is to attain a state where I no longer have the desire and the longing to have even a single wish.

It has been a long time since that hot day when I was asked as a child what my one wish was. That hot day came and went without memory. The wish for the ice-cream passed. The wish to have the other things too, passed. Everything passes…. Nothing stays. Not even the reasons why we wanted those wishes to come true.

The way we live our lives…what a foolish drama.

Almost…but not quite

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When I was a child, I lived in an ‘Almost World’
I could almost touch the mantle shelf, tie shoelaces by myself
Sleep at night without a light…almost but not quite.

In my teens my Almost World gushed in with tempestuous tides
Almost in love a hundred times, wrote poems that almost rhymed,
Holding hands, staying out all night…almost but not quite.

Then you came into my life and my Almost World seemed complete
A cottage with picket fence, a fairytale, grasping You by my side
I almost had it all, wrong or right…almost but not quite.

Soon, on the last turn of the leg, I shall return to my Almost World
I will almost touch the old mantle shelf and tie shoelaces by myself,
Sleep at night without a light…almost but not quite.

["Almost" is a poem inspired by Smingle, through whose wisdom I learned the meaningless-ness of most of life's mundane pursuits. How life in samsara leaves us always wanting and never satisfied. We are perpetually in a state of being almost happy but never quite so. And so the Buddha came to teach the Four Noble Truths ]

Letting Go

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A forest that is choked by its own thorns and thistles can only see the wild forest fire as a blessing. After everything is ravaged to the ground, new life grows from amongst the charred snags. In fact, what is new lies on the other side of the door that you must close to what is old.

Do not lament the loss of what has no value to mankind. Do not grieve the loss of that which does nothing to nurture your humanity, compassion and love. Look and see that the scorched earth is fertile ground to seed a new beginning.

Connected By Pain

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Photo courtesy of Kwan Yee

A broken heart yields a number of things. Usually out of that broken heart comes fear, acrimony, anxiety, anguish, shame and blame.And we focus on these “rougher” emotions that are negative. They are more tangible and therefore easier to latch on to.But out of the same brokenness comes something else as well. Mixed in all that toxic effluvium is also a practical lesson in “tenderness” and “vulnerability” which helps us to connect with other beings’ sorrow through a mutual understanding of pain. Through our pain, we understand how others also suffer.

Only when I recall the aching tenderness of the grieving heart filled with sadness do I feel like I fully understand and grasp Compassion. It goes beyond empathy.

How the Bodhisattvas live with this piercing pain all day long, year after year, lifetime after lifetime is remarkable.

See you soon, Justin.

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Photo courtesy of Fang C. Chang

Early this morning, I learned that my friend Justin Ripley had passed away. He just collapsed and died on the way to the hospital.

Justin was one the first few people I met at Tsem Ladrang and he made an impression on me as being a truly nice person. A lot of people we meet in life are nice but with Justin, I felt it was from the core.

After that, and for over a year, EVERYTIME I meet him, he would smile, ask “how ya, bro” and would ask without fail if I wanted something to eat, something to drink of if there’s anything I would like.

I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with Justin but every time I ran into him I was always happy to see him. I regard him as a friend. I have had friends pass away before but this time I am more affected than I thought I would be. Since this morning I have been wondering why I feel such a great loss, and why I am so sad.

You see, Justin Ripley is one of those truly good guys. He was extremely unassuming, quiet, not at all demanding. He doesn’t impose on you and he doesn’t shout to be heard, he doesn’t whinge and whine. But when you log into Rinpoche’s Personal Blog a lot of his work is there. But he doesn’t boast about it. When you go to the Ladrang kitchen, he is there always with a smile and offering something in his quiet and gentle way.

When he was alive, he hardly even showed up on the radar not because he didn’t have presence ; his presence was always unmistaken-able,  but because he doesn’t demand to be seen or heard. And yet when he is no more around, he leaves such a big hole in so many people’s hearts. That is when you realize how his goodness have quietly left an indelible mark on your life. Justin was that kind of quiet goodness and I will miss him.

Not many can come into our world, do what they must, make a beautiful impression in so many ways, and then leave…without a fuss. As if they do not want anyone else to endure prolonged sufferings.

Neither have I met a real person whom so many friends long to meet again in the next rebirth. Not because of their celebrity status, not because they were a pop icon, but because in a fast and harsh world, you cannot get enough of people like Justin Ripley.

Justin spent the last years on his life serving Rinpoche and doing Dharma work. He was 37 years old yesterday.

I hope to see you soon Justin, and Thank You.

[A bit about Justin Ripley]:

Justin and Joy

Justin with Rinpoche

Justin Cooks

Justin and Rinpoche’s Blog

Justin rescues a baby bird

The Perfect Love Poem ~ Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

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There is a beautiful snow peaked mountain

With peaceful clouds wrapped round her shoulders.

The surrounding air is filled with love and peace.

What is going to be is what is,

That is love.

There is no fear of leaping into the immeasurable space of love.

Fall in love?

Or, are you in love?

Such questions cannot be answered,

Because in this peace of an all-pervading presence,

No one is in and no one is falling in.

No one is possessed by another.

I see a beautiful playground

Which some may call heaven,

Others may regard it as a trap of hell.

But, I, Chögyam, don’t care.

In the playground beautiful Dakinis are holding hand drums, flutes and bells.

Some of them, who are dancing, hold naked flames, water, a nightingale,

Or the whole globe of earth with the galaxies around it.

These Dakinis may perform their dance of death or birth or sickness,

I am still completely intoxicated, in love.

And with this love, I watch them circle.

This performance is all pervading and universal,

So the sonorous sound of mantra is heard

As a beautiful song from the Dakinis.

Among them, there is one dakini with a single eye,

And turquoise hair blown gently by the wind.

She sends a song of love and the song goes like this:

HUM HUM HUM

If there is no joy of Mahamudra in the form,

If there is no joy of Mahamudra in the speech,

If there is no joy of Mahamudra in the mind,

How would you understand

That we Dakinis are the mother, sister, maid and wife.

And she shouts with such penetrating voice, saying

Come, come, come

HUM HUM HUM

Join the EH and VAM circle.

Then I knew I must surrender to the dance

And join the circle of Dakinis.

Like the confluence of two rivers,

EH the feminine and VAM the male,

Meeting in the circle of the Dance.

Unexpectedly, as I opened myself to love, I was accepted.

So there is no questioning, no hesitation,

I am completely immersed in the all-powerful, the joyous Dakini mandala.

And here I found unwavering conviction that love is universal.

Five chakras of one’s body filled with love,

Love without question, love without possessions.

This loving is the pattern of Mahamudra, universal love.

So I dance with the eighty Siddhas and two thousand aspects of Dakinis,

And I will dance bearing the burden of the cross.

No one has forsaken me.

It is such a joyous love dance, my partner and I united.

So the clear, peaceful mountain air

Gently blows the clouds,

A beautiful silk scarf wrapped round.

The Himalayas with their high snow peaks are dancing,

Joining my rhythm in the dance,

Joining with the stillness, the most dignified movement of them all.

- Chögyam Trungpa, 6 August 1969

Audio Link To Poem: Chogyam Trungpa Perfect Love Poem

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The Perfect Love Poem is one of my absolute favourites. I read the poem and take ‘Love’ to be the state of Enlightenment  and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche tells us of it’s captivating beauty and tells us not to fear it.  In fact, Fear is not in our natural state of mind. Enlightenment is, and it is therefore attainable.

The “beautiful playground” that some call heaven and others regard as hell, are our perceptions of things being Good or Bad; Right or Wrong and so on. When we are locked into our perceptions, we develop a particular mindset and from there we cast judgements. We create our own reality from the way we think and make our judgements. We are not free of our closed-mindedness. A enlightened being like Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and indeed most highly attained Gurus do not care for such fixed perceptions.

Seeing the Dakinis dance imply that we are already where they live…in Kechara, in Paradise, and the performance being all pervading and universal says to me that no one is excluded from this ‘Love’…this state of being Enlightened. It is open to everyone.

The songs sound like Mantras, the words that resonates in our minds revealing the Truth and takes us home where we find our mother, sister, maid and wife.

Before, we just watched, learning to accept and then we surrender ourselves to the Truth and when we “join the circle of Dakinis”, we now become involved in our path to Enlightenment. And then, we awaken “unexpectedly”.

The poem end as it begins…with the sheer beauty that an Enlightened mind sees in everything, i.e. Love.