Worth The Trip

The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche paramita practice calendar made October exertion month, and by the most auspicious coincidence, precisely the time my own Rinpoche was a mere hundreds instead of the more normal thousands of miles—and oceans —away. So I made the enormous effort to go see him for the weekend he went public. And, as it turned out, so did dozens of others. Here’s to them, and to everyone who goes the extra mile to get to the Dharma.

In “namtar” (spiritual biographies), talks and texts of commentary, we are continually reminded of the long, perilous journeys seekers of the Buddha’s truth were forced to endure to pick up a kernel or two of it. Great gurus were made by great hardships crossing the Himalayas, or in the case of Atisha around the year 1,000 A.D., crossing the Bay of Bengal to get to Sumatra. Not long after that, the remarkable yogi Rechungpa trekked from Tibet to India in the desperate throes of leprosy, fueled by dogged determination, and consequently brought back to the Vajrayana the practice of Vajrapani. The late Tulku Urgyen in his juicy memoir Blazing Splendor reminds us that even in the 20th Century, devout Khampas on pilgrimage to Lhasa or Tsurphu endlessly confronted bandits, burst bridges, worn horses and dwindled food supplies, yet they persevered. And right on the turn of the millennium, His Holiness Karmapa escaped Chinese captivity in order to get authentic teaching by slogging through snowdrifts at night and riding ponies down the steep escarpments of sacred Nepalese valleys.

Framed in this grand perspective, four hours, a flat tire and a speeding ticket on the unnerving I-5 plus one hour in enervating LA freeway traffic and another madly dodging the absurdly dodgy drivers on the freeways around San Francisco Bay does not look like suffering. Especially when the reward was two days of teaching and a talk on how Dharma can help you surf the heavy waves of these troubled times.

Still, only gumption gets you going to an unknown city where you must push your way through a puzzling and poorly marked maze of speedways, nest in a generic motel and scratch alien territory for decent, safe food, all in order to grab a seat in a strange space where mostly strangers who seem to know each other are packed in like sardines and lines for the toilet are long. Nobody ever talks about this sometimes disconcerting and spooky experience. So it was immensely gratifying for Rinpoche to open his remarks by acknowledging how everyone crammed into that room had deflected the abundant, glitzy distractions of Los Angeles, including a beach that was probably an easier place to be in the abnormally high heat of that mid October weekend. He thanked us for this amazing choice of coming to hear Dharma, because we didn’t have to.

According to what I heard and overheard, what people didn't have to endure to be there included two other flat tires and a delayed flight. Those who came by air constantly had to find rides and those who had cars had to find parking places good for at least three hours. One woman drove alone more than a day and parked herself in a bare bones off-ramp motel to be at this gathering where she knew absolutely no one. There was no food within walking distance except McDonald's or scary prepacked salad at a low-grade supermarket, and no GPS guidance toward a real meal. One couple drove six hours each way and stayed only two hours because they had to get back. One couple drove eight hours each way to stay slightly more than 24, due to pressures from work. Every effort was made, as some Dharma defenders like to say, to be here now.

The reward was a “head” start on surviving these desperate times. Rinpoche advised those of us who had bothered to be there to rely on aspiration prayers, particularly the Verses of the Eight Noble Auspicious Ones by the late Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche. Other students had reported back on its astonishingly positive effect, and if that wasn’t convincing enough there was, as always, the ancient story of the dog’s tooth actually becoming a Buddha relic because the old woman on whom it had been foisted off steadfastly believed in it to have that kind of power.

For those still skeptical of aspiration prayers or those who wanted a two-pronged putsch, Rinpoche recommended relying on the boomerang karma known as merit: being generously charitable to others inevitably brings good fortune back at you. What goes round comes round. And of course the third way was the Lojong slogan loosely translated as: remembering emptiness is the best protection. That is to say, never lose the view of Mahamudra in which impermanence is peripheral vision and emptiness the center of attention. Nothing is really happening and even if you think it is, it's all going to change to yet another happening in a second. Don't get sucked in and hooked.

In other words, just getting there and back didn't do it for the paramita practice. Any which way you went, exertion definitely had to extend way beyond October. But then, Dzogchen Ponlop says exertion really means overcoming your laziness to find joy in the Dharma


~Sandy Garson
"Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"

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