Blown Away

I had just launched a cheery fund raising campaign to buy 108 apple trees for the consecration of a new monastery in Vancouver when a major earthquake bobbled eastern Tibet, bringing down the original from which it and others sprang, like seeds blown out of a pod. Only two of the complex's dozen buildings were standing, cracked and listing. Between 23 and 60 monks were reported dead, for sure most of them young ones studying at that moment with the great khenpo (master teacher) who perished with them. More than twice as many were injured, with few left to help. A friend in Brazil sent a front-page photo showing six Chinese soldiers in orange epaulets and camouflage straining to get through rubble carrying an enormous gilded statue of the Buddha. The sight was more sickening than all the devastation in its background because there was no caption, no way to think they were not looting.

After all, this tragedy took place in occupied Tibet, and involved an ancient religious sanctuary. In the fifty years since Rinpoche fled from it--with the Red Army shooting at his horse, the Chinese have made immaculately clear the last thing they want, right down there with AIDS and opium war, is the spread or survival of Tibetan Buddhism. Chinese spies have been all over this monastery, thick as flies, so that in the past fifty years of Rinpoche’s exile, the monks who kept it alive were continually caught in a cat and mouse game. Absolutely nothing could be achieved, not even building a primary school for Tibetan kids, without shrewd stealth, which the Buddha would probably have labeled “skillful means.”

The earthquake seemed more skillful though. By so instantly demolishing the study halls, retreat houses and dormitories the monks had managed to erect, it scored big for China.

I know these last two months have been crowded with other major disrupting eruptions in Haiti, Chile, Baja and Taiwan, plus a minor one under the sea of Sumatra, where the killer tsunami was launched several years ago. When the Earth decides it’s a little too stiff or weary being too long in the same position, it shifts, inadvertently throwing us off its back like bugs or bags. Perhaps it merely sighs in exasperation, heaving its shoulders a second, which is all it takes to dislodge us. Whatever. Right now it seems to be reacting to the whip of our faster and faster pace. Everything is blowing up at once.

The ancients would’ve said Earth is angry at the burden of bearing us. It is trying to molt or shed us for drilling deeply to remove her guts and core, for scarring her face, drying up the pools of her eyes and cutting off all the greenery that was her hair. The ancients would’ve wanted to appease and make amends. They would've tried every sacrifice they could think of, but we oh so smart moderns don't sacrifice a whit. We just move on to drilling for more homegrown oil or stemming its disrupting eruption, and complaining about the high cost of not being entitled to fly through spumes of volcanic ash. Our news cycle moves on, blowing off other people's disasters with a what me worry shrug?

I had a stake in what was at stake in this upheaval so I worried. I shifted gears from lightheartedly selling apple trees to heavy-heartedly trying to raise attention and ammunition for relief and rescue. Tibetan sources reported the death toll officially provided by Chinese officials was far lower than what eyewitnesses were counting. Newspaper reports seemed to imply official body counts did not include dead monks, which is to say they didn't count. Certainly no public news source mentioned the significant number of dead at Thrangu monastery, although it probably had the largest collection of corpses in any single collapse.

Another photo came from the Brazilian newspaper showing Chinese flags planted in the rubble, blowing in the wind. All newspapers breathlessly reported the current Han emperor Hu Jintao was cutting short a business trip to Brazil to hurry home and help, not once mentioning this is the man who rose to pre-eminence by satisfactorily overseeing the genocide in this very place, the man with the blood of at least two million Tibetans on his manicured hands.

All newspapers printed the trumped up photo op arranged during Hu's nanosecond in the area. No newspaper asked when or how this coldblooded killer so suddenly got religion. Instead they filled their column inches with the obvious: China had refused to allow the monk-in-chief, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, to be a comfort to his devastated people. Although it never picked up the story, the Dalai Lama reported to the Tibetan community in exile that China was so not kidding about how non grata his persona is, it had even forced the International Red Cross to refuse his financial contributions not only to the victims of this earthquake but to those of the one in Szechuan two years ago.

His Holiness urged free Tibetans to take up the slack and flood their kinsmen with enough help to rise again. Eighty five percent of the area had been demolished, and pictures came two days later showing the homeless covered with new fallen snow. They could’ve been the family of the monk who calls me “mother.” He phoned from Kathmandu to say they had lost everything but their lives, could I please help?

Many others connected to that monastery mobilized into a world wide web with astonishing speed. Eyewitness accounts by cell phone were transcribed into emails, photos and You Tube videos--the main one from Al-Jazeera-- were circulated, thank you letters from Rinpoche translated. Fundraisers were hastily arranged; dedicated bank accounts announced. These continual computer messages were crisscrossed with perfunctory newspaper reports, hinting that Chinese rescuers bused in droves were merely milling around smoking and chatting, motivated only by photo ops to use their equipment and show how heroically they were helping the pitiful Tibetans. The New York Times reported Buddhist monks, a river of maroon flowing into the region from monasteries in the surround, actually did the grueling digging and gory body hunts—tirelessly, and with no concern for themselves as they shoveled. But it wouldn’t show a monastery collapsed. It only went on to report the Chinese government abruptly ordered all monks to leave the area instantly and dropped the story as though it too had been kicked out. There has been no coverage since.

My teacher Thrangu Rinpoche whose name is eponymous with the d monastery that was blown away was distraught at so great a loss so late in his life (78), especially because the rebuilding of his historic home was a major legacy to Dharma. But the truer legacy, his unassailable equanimity, his unimpeachable greatness as a teacher and a Rinpoche (precious vessel who embodies the Dharma), revealed itself brightly in the letter he composed to the survivors. “We have been struck by an earthquake in our homeland and in particular at our Thrangu Monastery. The monastic college, retreat center, temple, and dormitories have all been destroyed. Many monks were killed. Many others have been injured and faced with great hardship. Despite this, when we comfort ourselves, we must remember that no one did anything to harm us, nor did we do anything wrong. Instead this is just the way the world is—it is a natural disaster. …

“This is of course a terrible event for us, but as the Bhagavan Buddha taught in the True Dharma, the characteristic of this samsaric world is that the end of birth is death, the end of meeting is parting, the end of gathering is using up, and the end of building is falling down. There is nothing that will not meet one of these four ends, he said. This is just the way this world of ours naturally is. This is nothing that anyone else has done to cause us problems, nor is there anything that someone has done wrong to cause this. It just happened naturally.

“The monastery has been destroyed, but in general, sometimes things wax, and sometimes they wane. Since this is just the characteristic of samsara, if we do not let ourselves get discouraged, it is not necessarily bad. We and others just need to do the best we can.”

Rinpoche has always said the best we can do in the face of disaster is to pour forth positive energy as fast and forcefully as possible to at least slow the flow of so much man-made or natural negativity. So I stayed at the computer, faithfully relaying what came in from around the globe out again, either urging others to help or assuring others we were helping with urgency. I was substituting massive activity for money I did not have in mass to give so I didn't feel so helpless.

Rinpoche's closest Dharma brother from that home in Tibet, the aged Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, lost an elderly sister in this quake. But he retained the presence of mind to have disciples at his exile monastery in Woodstock, New York, send out a poignant reminder that an earthquake destroyed Thrangu monastery 245 years ago. “The Venerable Thrangu Rinpoche was away at Tsurphu Monastery (seat of the Karmapa) and left two of the principal reborn teachers, Traleg Rinpoche and Tulku Lodro Nyima, to receive grain from the harvest to supply the monastery for the upcoming winter. Although this time it was Traleg Rinpoche's turn to go, he decided instead to send Tulku Lodro Nyima. Then a few days later in a casual conversation, Traleg Rinpoche asked his attendant: ‘Which is better, one person dying, or 100 people?' The attendant said, 'Only one person is better than one hundred people, of course.’

“Tulku Lodro Nyima and his party arrived at a hilltop on the other side of a valley, overlooking the monastery when the earthquake struck. At the request of Traleg Rinpoche, a special puja was being held in the main shrine building, and all of the lamas participating survived. But Traleg Rinpoche was in his quarters, and did not survive.

"Because of the destruction, monks went to Tsurphu to ask His Holiness, the 13th Karmapa, if they should move Thrangu monastery to a safer area. His Holiness said no, that the lineage had been maintained at that spot for a long time, and the main temple was still standing. Because of this, His Holiness named the monastery "Victorious from the Obstacles of the Four Elements." He further stated there would be great Dharma coming from Thrangu Monastery, and not to move it.”

The omniscient Karmapa of course saw the future correctly. Although Chinese Revolutionaries demolished the monastery like that earlier earthquake did, its precious Dharma vessels Thrangu Rinpoche, Traleg Rinpoche and Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche survived to spread the Buddha’s teaching around the planet. Traleg Rinpoche rooted in Australia with shoots in Massachusetts. Khenpo Karthar rooted in upstate New York sending tendrils to Colorado. Thrangu Rinpoche built thriving monasteries and centers in India, Nepal, Bhutan, Germany, England, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia (where the currently Lodro Nyima Rinpoche was teaching when the earthquake struck) and the United States where two brick and mortar centers have arisen out of two dozen organized groups. So thanks to their scramble after the Chinese cracked Tibet open, hundreds of thousands of us have been relieved and rescued from our own suffering by the wisdom stored on this afflicted property.

Almost immediately Rinpoche sent word that the handful of monks living in his Dharma Centers in the West and Southeast Asia, safe with foreign passports, were to pack up what supplies they could and go to Tibet to supervise survival. He asked the rest of us to support them in any way we could as fast as we could, and amazingly in less than a week, our American lama had a pile of water purification equipment and a surprising wad of cash. I don’t know whether or not Rinpoche got the New York Times article I sent so he would know the Chinese were busily throwing monks out, blowing off their exquisite help. I just know he was not going to give up. “Sometimes people might think that temples and monasteries are not all that important,” he wrote to us. “However, there are both transient sentient beings and the lasting external environment. With sentient beings, there might be many for a while, including great scholars and meditators. Great lamas might appear. There may be many members of the Sangha, but just as water flows downstream, fifty, sixty, seventy, or eighty years later they will all pass away and a new generation will come. When this happens, even if there were a strong lineage of Dharma in the previous generation, we do not really know whether that lineage would continue in the next.

“The way that the lineage can continue from generation to generation is to have a good, stable outer environment. When there is the external environment of a monastery with a shrine, retreat center, and monastic college, then due to that place, the Sangha, great lamas, and great meditators might pass away but the continuity of their activity will remain present there.

“This is why restoring monasteries is crucial. If the monasteries fall into ruins, the environment declines as well and the inhabitants gradually disappear. Buddhism would not be able to remain long in this world. But if a monastery continues to exist, the great lamas and masters can perform vast activity for the Dharma during their entire lives. A group of students will gather; the lamas will teach the students; and they will practice. Thus gradually the students will spend the first part of their lives studying and practicing the Dharma and the latter part upholding, protecting, and spreading Buddhism. When that generation comes to its end, a new generation can continue that work, upholding, protecting, and spreading the teachings, which can thus remain. This is why temples and the Sangha are so very important.”

In other words, three strikes but we are not out. Two of the monks who took off were hard at work preparing the opening this summer of new monasteries in the West, one with lots of apples for this teacher.

~Sandy Garson"Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
http://www.sandygarson.com
http://yoursinthedharma.blogspot.com/

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IN CHARM'S WAY

At this moment when the planet is writhing in the pain of mass starvation, financial upheaval and morale meltdown, His Holiness the 17^th Karmapa was miraculously released from his cage in India like a genie from a bottle. When finally, after years, he got that precious visa to America, nobody knew his visit would follow first the Olympic Torch that lit up the excruciatingly bad behavior of the Chinese inside Tibet, and then the aftermath of a monstrous cyclone and matching earthquake which, like some mad plastic surgeon, changed the face of Asia. His timing was so impeccable, he flew out of India as about five million Asian refugees were adding their muddy misery to the world’s reservoir of wretchedness.    

Was it coincidence that his Holiness’ burst of freedom coincided with thunderous cracks and cascades crumbling bits of the totalitarian cement suffocating Burma, stifling China? That he put his face in front of ours when China closed off all vision of Tibet?

It also came at the moment word went out that the masterminds of Mid-East violence had decided to turn their swords into Dow shares, for happiness was not hatching out of their havoc; perhaps they had misinterpreted Islam? While he crossed America, California officially declared it was not okay to make war on people who love each other; a Texas Bushman very publicly atoned for abetting politically motivated wrecks, lies and warscapes; the Supreme Court served up justice to those abused by corporate employers; Sex and The City came to the conclusion that caring about others beats designer labels.

This huge swing of the see-saw looked a lot like Superman was out of the phone booth and on the tipping point of the moral fulcrum. His Holiness Karmapa, 17^th in an unbroken 800-year-old lineage, is indeed supposed to be the superhuman who smites suffering. But as Peter Pan warns the Darling children about the magical Tinkerbell, you have to believe. Remember that famous scene where Tinkerbell is dying, and will survive only if enough people believe she has the power to light their way? Other characters plead with the audience to keep her alive by shouting, "I believe in fairies," and clapping, a joyful noise designed to make a passive audience newly active in the unfolding story. Transcendent power depends on willingness to concede that something grander than humdrum can transpire. Without aspiration, the heavenly won't happen on Earth any time soon.

It was not hard to want to clap and shout when Karmapa appeared. His Holiness was graced, as is often the case, by a halo of rainbows. I had just left his ceremonies at Woodstock, N.Y. and was driving over the Massachusetts border to Boston airport when two breathtakingly enormous and vivid ones miraculously arched across the sky, forcing me to swerve to a stop in the breakdown lane. I stared in awe and involuntarily shouted: “Emaho!” It turns out, from photos posted on the official visit blog, he was walking that very minute on the roof of his monastery with huge rainbows framing him. I heard there were others along the Hudson the day before, and saw photos of the ones the day after over his head in New Jersey.

His Holiness was also framed everywhere by a phalanx of protectors. He moved surrounded to the max by layer upon layer of no–nonsense body and security guards from the State Department, the Tibetan Government and the Buddhist brigades. He is dangerous because his special sacredness is the only thing both the Chinese government and His Holiness the Dalai Lama have ever agreed upon. He is already legendary for a miraculous midnight, midwinter escape from Chinese guards at his fortress/monastery north of Lhasa. At age 14, on the New Year’s eve of the millennium, he fled for his life and spent a week in secret and disguise crossing Tibet and the Himalayas by jeep, horseback and foot—his own divinations having told him it would be a go. He incredibly burst into our world simultaneous with a whole new century, the Asian one.

His Holiness does not wear blue leotards and bright red cape, only the maroon robes of a Tibetan monk. But he does possess a reportedly magical black hat and some of his predecessors have proved adept at gravity-defying tricks that dazzled emperors of China. He told us at Woodstock how as a nomadic boy, he managed to extinguish a potentially deadly hillside fire with the force of his prayers, causing his relatives to suspect he was some guru’s incarnation. Karmapa literally means embodiment of the activity of all buddhas-- the title was bestowed long before a Mongolian king created the Dalai Lama—and he is consequently supposed to be able to see the past and future as clearly as the ground under his human feet. His purpose in incarnating on Earth is to show with a human body--the most direct way to make the point-- what wisdom and unconditional compassion for others looks like.

His Holiness makes it look so good, some people seeing him in New York took to calling him His Hottiness. Twenty-two-year-old Orgyen Trinley Dorje is easily six-feet tall with the physique of an athlete and the face of a Hollywood heartthrob (lusciously full features and creamy skin). His high cheekbones and fuzz cut make him a sensation in sunglasses. I think he has been blessed with this awesome rock star presence because magnetism is supposed to be one hallmark of a genuine Buddha. People are automatically attracted, ready to listen, even serve.

Security forces were busy warding off his magnetic attraction, making people listen to “Get back!” “Open your purse.” “No cameras!” “No photo ID, no entry.” Sadly, here in Samsara high hopes serve up huge fears, so the perils of his power set off lots of alarm. His Holiness is in essence a Buddhist monk, yet he is in reality an embarrassment to the Chinese, an obstacle to the weasly Bhutanese rival for his crown, a flashpoint for Tibetans. Although he is thoroughly spiritual and artistic, he is seen as the likely successor to the more political Dalai Lama. His every move had to be cordoned, controlled, and painstakingly choreographed out of intense fear that he would be stabbed, shot or, worse, poisoned by an innocent looking cookie. Only the pre-chosen vetted could get him a glass of water. In San Francisco, his black SUV had both a police escort and tail.

His Holiness took birth to help all humans find happiness, yet one condition of his visa seems to have been no media mention, no headlines—no inflaming the infectious attraction. Word of his visit had to spread by mouth, email, and the intuition known as the Tibetan telegraph. The Colorado venue was sold out in almost seconds. Twenty-eight hundred people crowded into a Seattle theater on a Saturday morning, more than seven hundred invited guests made their way to Woodstock, NY mountain top on a chilling rainy Wednesday. Despite the secrecy surrounding his flash touchdown in San Francisco, dozens and dozens of Tibetans, spiffed up in traditional finery, lined the sidewalk to get a glimpse of him. For a Buddhist, his coming was the rapture. It definitely created lots of happiness.

The street mobs and packed audiences were composed of true believers, but the Dharma Karmapa embodies is a red alert, an all points bulletin that this 22-year-old Tibetan was whatever anybody wanted him to be. Because we only see what we know enough to look for, his reflection in the mind’s eye varied from viewer to viewer, in the way he looks to the Chinese like a traitor while he seems a savior to us. Some saw the Karmapa as a hotly handsome twenty-two year old or at least an energetic young man exuberant from the novelty of freedom. Others noticed a reserve, dignity and intelligence that was preternatural for a male of so few years. Some saw only the fuss his extraordinariness was causing. Who knows if other drivers even saw those Mass. Pike rainbows and if they did, what thoughts they had of them.

Karmapa’s noble presence and graceful command of it inspired many people to see him as hope for humanity, and to stop everything to serve voluntarily, like feudal vassals to the lord of their manor. Dozens of Dharma students donated time, money, energy and even an airplane to keep his visit flowing, ordinary people like my goddaughter Tashi who served on his personal care staff in Manhattan, and Steve who got up at dawn several days in a row to ferry lamas across the Catskills from an outlying dormitory to Karmapa’s monastery, then waited until dark to take them back. People like Damtsig who tirelessly gave five full days she needed for her job and children to clean and cook for His Holiness’ one-hour visit to a San Francisco monastery, and the male nurse Greg who took vacation days and flew at his own expense to Seattle to stand guard for a day.

Believers generously set up a blog so everyone could follow in his footsteps via daily posts of words and photos; videos were rushed to You Tube. All this selflessness was His Holiness bringing Dharma to life. Every which way they could, people passionately exchanged themselves not just for this one other, but for all the others who would benefit from his teaching and the radiance of his holy presence. The enormous possibility he represents must have really resonated, for he certainly got a lot of hits on You Tube.

So many gave so much so Karmapa could have a little happiness of his own. It had been his lifelong aspiration to come to America, he said over and again. Perhaps he felt born with a connection because the previous Karmapa died here, right in the heartland of the country. I heard him exclaim how joyful he was at actually being here, feeling free for the first time. And that was before he ate cheesecake, went to Disneyland, and spoke to a large audience of his most affluent and ardent supporters in their native Chinese.

Of course some people only saw themselves in all of this. Karmapa’s American sojourn ignited noxious explosions of ego in some of the most pious looking Buddhists I ever saw. They asked not what they could do for Karmapa, but what he could do for them. Not just exiled Tibetans who bitterly complained that Karmapa had time to go to Disneyland but not accept a khata and bless them. (Tibetans have been known to injuriously mob high lamas they worship to get personal blessings, so security was charged with keeping them at bay.) I watched mind training flee minds as so-called dharma students who did not lift one pinky to participate in the preparations planted themselves in front and center seats saved for volunteers and benefactors. With hands full of dirty dishes, I watched them stampeding to stuff themselves with what had been Karmapa’s feast, so that those who had spent two days preparing and were struggling to clean up didn’t get a crumb.

A few days later in Seattle, according to the blog post, Karmapa said we have experienced in the West so many external advancements and technological benefits, but also a corresponding increase of fear and suffering in people's minds. This is related to our inability to cherish others -- our pattern of clinging solely to our own concerns, the habitual "me and mine" mentality. If we are not aware of how our happiness depends upon others and we do not work to benefit others, we end up with a society full of people who think only about themselves and act in ways that cause harm to themselves and those around them.

His Holiness also spoke of how the world we live in is getting smaller and smaller due to technology and globalization, so individual actions have a much greater effect on the global village, the whole of humanity. Consequently, people can no longer afford to cling to their particular views or self-centric identities -- not even the limited notion of "being a Buddhist." We need to think in larger terms. In other words, what needs to be supersized in all this shrinking is our mind.

At every stop, His Holiness expressed giddy but profound gratitude to everyone who helped make his first visit to America possible.Then in the end, he said he didn't quite realize how truly happy he was until someone showed him photographs from his tour, and he saw that he was smiling in many of them. The Karmapa said this surprised him, as he does not normally smile a great deal. Indeed an International Herald Tribune reporter recently referred to him in Dharamsala as stubbornly solemn, even downright dour. His Holiness went on to say his happiness during his travels in America came from the fact that everyone around him was also happy and smiling -- a further illustration of his teaching that our happiness depends upon others.

Each time he said his dream to visit America had now miraculously come true, Karmapa also generously dedicated to others--the Buddhist way of sharing-- his good fortune. “This is the result of my unwavering aspiration,” he explained, “and it can happen as well to you, if you believe strongly that it can. I wish for every one of you that your own dreams and aspirations quickly come true.” Inevitably everybody gasped and clapped, drawn into the action with that joyful noise of wanting to believe.

~Sandy Garson
"Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
http://www.sandygarson.com
http://yoursinthedharma.blogspot.com/

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
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Yours In The Dharma 2001-2008, Sandy Garson © 2001-2008 Sandy Garson
All rights Reserved