Living with the lamas
Favourite anecdotes of laughter and insight
Photo credit: ‘Little monks’ by Chan Kwok-Hung
I have offered you some fairly weighty posts recently, so I thought that this week I would share some gentle but insightful tales of life with Tibetan lamas.
The first of these happened recently when a lama, who I won’t name for reasons that will become apparent, was offering teachings at a centre I know quite well. During lunch break he found that he’d left his reading glasses under the teaching throne where he’d spent the morning teaching. He returned to the temple to fetch them.
A number of students were sitting on their temple cushions or chairs reading. One especially diligent young man was performing full length prostrations at the front of the temple before the very large statue of Shakyamuni Buddha. Seeing this, the lama ducked behind his teaching throne, and reached for a few grains of rice from one of the offering bowls behind it. As the young man touched his forehead to the ground, the lama threw the rice grains onto the back of his head.
Bewildered by the head tickle, the young man brushed at his hair as he continued his prostrations.
The next time he went down, the lama did the same thing. The young man responded in the same way.
And so it continued, until the prostrator, glancing at his hand as he brushed his hair, realised he was being bombarded with rice. At which point the lama stepped out from behind the teaching throne to reveal himself. Both lama and student enjoyed a good laugh!
Insight: It was just a minute out of a summer’s afternoon. Without searching through notes, I can remember nothing else that the lama taught us that day. But I do remember the glorious irreverence of the rice-throwing.
Was there a playfully-delivered message in there? I can’t speak for the young man, but I can speak for myself: there is a time to practice, I felt the lama was saying, and a time to relax. A time to meditate and a time to eat. By all means do full-length prostrations in front of the Buddha if you wish. But don’t take it all too seriously!
Geshe Acharya Thubten Loden in the garden of the Tibetan Buddhist Society, Melbourne, Australia
Late one morning, about 100 students were sitting in the temple of the Tibetan Buddhist Society in Melbourne. A short distance away, in the TBS kitchen, the head chef was half an hour from serving them vegetable tagine. Which was when he made the horrifying discovery: he had no lemons!
The recipe called for them. He believed they had been purchased. But after several thorough and increasingly frantic searches of the pantry it became clear that there wasn’t a lemon to be found!
His stress levels were going through the roof when just at the ‘wrong’ moment in strolled Geshe Thubten Loden, the centre’s spiritual director. A no-nonsense Tibetan who had built up the Tibetan Buddhist Society from scratch, everyone knew that Geshe-la liked to run a tight ship. Seeing the consternation the chef - who was a devoted student - didn’t even try hiding, he asked what the problem was. The chef told him the unhappy news.
Glancing at the simmering pots of tagine, bowls of couscous and assorted salads, Geshe-la shrugged with a light smile: “No lemon,” he said in his somewhat broken English, “death not happening.”
Since then, the phrase has become something of a rejoinder, whether in the kitchen or outside it, whenever a similar apparant catastrophe looms.
Insight: this is a classic ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff - and it’s all small stuff’ message. We all have a tendency to be reactive when things don’t go to plan and stress-levels spike sharply. But as Geshe-la so aptly sums up: “No lemon, death not happening.”
Lama Zong Rinpoche
Lama Zong Rinpoche was a highly-regarded lama in Tibet. He had the reputation of being somewhat severe and stern, with an impeccable knowledge of rituals. He was also renowned for 'many actions of powerful magic, as a result of which the most marvelous, indescribable signs occurred.'
After the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959, Lama Zong Rinpoche was invited to be the founding principal of the Tibetan Teachers Training Program. As his reputation spread to countries outside India, he made three trips to many Western countries - even late in life he was fascinated by Western technology and how things worked.
It was on the last of his visits to USA and Canada in 1983, towards the end of his stay, when he was being driven down the road by a couple students that Lama Zong Rinpoche asked to make an unscheduled stop. He had just spotted a toy shop!
Somewhat mystifed, they pulled over and accompanied Lama Zong into the store, where he took time and care choosing a variety of child’s toys. Perhaps he had great nephews and neices, his students wondered? Or students with young children who he wanted to treat?
Toys purchased and back in the car they asked him who he was planning to give the toys to. To which he replied that they weren’t gifts, as such, but for the use of his future incarnation.
The following year he died. In due course, his reincarnation was identified and enthroned as the 4th Zong Rinpoche - and enjoyed playing with the toys that he had bought in his previous incarnation a few years earlier. The 4th Zong Rinpoche is currently fully engaged in the study of Sutra and Tantra at Gaden Shartse Monastic University in India.
The present 4th Zong Rinpoche Tenzin Wangdak
Insight: Rebirth really is a thing, and if you’re a great practitioner you can even choose the toys for your future self!
Continuing the theme of news from Dharma centres around the world, through the ROKPA Support Network in Harare, which you support with your subscription to this newsletter, I am very pleased to update you on some very happy developments going on in Africa - not a continent traditionally associated with Tibetan Buddhism, but where great things are happening.
Among these, six Congolese children are currently studying at Thrangu Sekhar Retreat Centre in Nepal with Khen Lhabu Rinpoche, and it is hoped they will eventually return to Africa to teach those who speak their own language.
African novices studying at Thangu Sekhar Retreat Centre in Nepal
Ten of the Congolese sangha also recently visited India and had the great good fortune to have an interview with the Dalai Lama!
Meeting the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala
And we’ve just heard that the first ever Kaygyu ordination in the DRC – and probably in sub-Saharan Africa – has taken place in Lubumbashi.
Ordination in Lubumbashi
Akong Rinpoche (who, sadly, died in 2013) founder of ROKPA and a number of African centres, would be so happy to see this development. Bringing the Dharma to Africa was an important focus for him.
If you have a tale to tell about your Buddhist lama, please feel free to share it in the Comment section or Reply to this email if you’d like me to include it in a future post. As a group, we have members belonging to many different sanghas, and it’s always wonderful to hear inspiring stories from other centres!
Dear David Michie ... I have bought and read all you books and am rereading now The Claw of Attachment. I cannot thank you enough from deeply within my heart and soul! My spirituality was born and nourished in Catholicism by some wonderful nuns who educated me but I left the church for 40 years and though I eventually returned to it, I brought with me the wisdom of many other traditions: Native American, 12 step programs, New Age thinkers. Buddhism remained very foreign to me, before YOU came along. Now ... at 81 ... I delight in what I have learned from you and HHC! Bless you with all my heart ... and please keep writing!!!!
Another generous helping of "Dharma Tonic"........and always just when I need it most. Thank you David.