Saga Dawa

About two weeks ago, my Tibetan heart daughter, stunningly beautiful and just as stunningly pious, took up the cause of reminding me that we're now back in Saga Dawa, Buddhism holiest month. Supposedly, in this fourth month of the Tibetan lunar calendar, which usually coincides nicely with our elegant month of June, Shakyamuni Buddha was born in Lumbini, got enlightened at Bodh Gaya and later passed into parinirvana, which is to say he died as we know it.  

Devoting an entire month to remembering --and of course trying to emulate --the accomplishments of that Buddha, particularly after everyone else has given him one day in May, seems to be uniquely Tibetan. I don't really know why, but I like suspecting this comes from the Mongolian/Siberian shamanism that inflects Tibet's version of Buddhism. In all those icy, isolated geographical areas, June is the burst of life after the long thaw, the onset of possibilities as formerly frozen dynamic energies finally spring into play. Tibetan Buddhism, like Mongolian shamanism and the Bon religion it birthed, is all about harnessing energies. 

Believe that or not, it is said that during Saga Dawa any act of merit you perform will be gigantically enlarged, any Dharma practice you do will be infinitely and perhaps instantly beneficial, and on the Internet, when you Google saga dawa, it's said that now is the time to visit what parts of Tibet you can get into because you'll see wildly colorful celebrations. Every tour company is on it. But then so are the lamas: two who are my friends texted me to do more practice this month because that will be especially beneficial.

Of course along with doing good, as my heart daughter was reminding me, you have to be good. Extra very good like the Buddha himself. You have to love all beings enough to not just be vegan before six, as the trendy campaign puts it, but after six too because bad karmic actions are going to be just as multiplied as virtuous ones. So for this whole month, you cannot touch eggs, meat, fish, fowl, or even dairy. (Not surprisingly, as I learned being in Mongolia in June, this is the month in those frozen countries when the animals they depend upon for milk have given birth and need their milk for the babies.)

My Tibetan heart daughter was, as usual, going at Saga Dawa purity with gusto, suddenly surviving only on lentils and tofu and black coffee. Suddenly feeling weak, possibly sick. The next phone call was about worry. After all, she is responsible essentially for two jobs plus charity endeavors and handling the affairs of her large family. On a good day she doesn't get much sleep and now in the humid heat of an early New York summer, she was doing all that she relentlessly does between complex subway trips on tofu and lentils. Weak after only a week, three weeks to go.

So there's where the rub met the load: how to be a devout Buddhist in modern times? How to be a Tibetan Buddhist outside Tibet? And there's where me and my big mouth, wrinkled by age, opened as the voice of America. I heard myself heatedly telling her Tibetan self that she wasn't some monk sitting comfortably on a cushion in a remote Himalayan monastery with nothing to do on lentils and rice but sit there and pray. She was a full blooded New Yorker full tilt in fifth gear on the F train. Accommodations had to be made for circumstances. After all, no Tibetan Rinpoche is a fundamentalist fanatic. Buddhism is not Islam. The beauty of this path is that all its guides right up to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and His Holiness Karmapa are exemplars of the practical. They are realists who say: "If you can do this, great, if not, well try it incrementally or make it an aspiration." 

I couldn't believe I struck with such force at her stringent piety, so the next morning when I remembered the lamas telling me to do more practice, I went to my altar to ask forgiveness. I told Chenrezig I was only trying to liberate that stubborn woman from suffering. I asked Guru Rinpoche to excuse my culture clash. I was only pushing flexibility, a case by case basis for the rules. Then I had to go to my work...in the kitchen where as "guest chef" I was preparing all the food for a sold out fundraising dinner. The immediate work I had to do was make rhubarb sauce for all the...chicken I needed to cook. Right in the middle of Saga Dawa, spring chicken and spring lamb for 64.  What to do?

I went back to my altar and did the confession mantra three times to ask for forgiveness for having to do this job. On the bright side, I confessed, I was going it gratis as my contribution to a worthy charitable cause that would benefit a geographical community and the livelihoods of farmers who lived in it and needed to make a go. The meat was not about me and my appetite.  I hadn't meant to cause harm. Maybe I could minimize the damage I was doing if I promised to only eat pasta and salads, yogurt and cheese while working on this venture. Would that be okay?

I went back to the kitchen, grabbed the pot handle and was watching the rhubarb finally congeal into sauce when I realized the whole point of Saga Dawa, like the whole point of Dharma, is to make us keenly aware of what we are doing, of what choices we have to make and how we make them. Certainly this extended period, a whole month with no escape, emphasizes our behavior patterns more clearly than three days might. I would have to handle and cook all that meat, but I could confess to Vajrasattva that I was sorry for the predicament, sorry for the loss of life and ready to eat spaghetti more often. In fact I worried so much about the bad karma, I have actually started doing more formal practice every day. 

Two days ago, before she had to board a plane for an emergency trip to India where her father is dying, my heart daughter texted me that she ate a bowl of mulligatawny soup and is feeling much better, thank you.  So I suppose all we can do is try. A friend of mine once said that's why the Rinpoches call what we do "practice."





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