Our FBA Podcast today is a wonderfully entertaining talk on Perfect Vision titled: “Welsh Bats, A Vajrasattva Drugs Mule and Spanish Insight.” Here Vajrin tells a story of a wide ranging journey, including his early days at the Bristol Buddhist Centre in Long Ashton; his time as a junior doctor working in Africa; travels through India and Tibet; a visit to an Everest base camp and finally to ordination at a retreat centre high in the Spanish sierras. Along the way he manages to acquire a splendid Vajrasattva rupa and overcoming considerable obstacles, brings it home, thereby establishing a life-long association with this powerful bodhisattva of purification.
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Welsh Bats, A Vajrasattva Drugs Mule and Spanish Insight
(upbeat music) This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for Your Life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you and happy listening. - So my brief was to have a look at what glimpses of perfect vision I may have had early on and kind of what glimpses I might have kept on having, which have kept me coming here, which has sort of kept me involved. And I just thought that if I was going to do it, you were going to do it as well. And also it's lovely to sort of take in everyone that way. Glymph is a perfect vision. It's a bit of a difficult thing to talk to. So I kind of thought about it. Well, these are kind of shadows of glimpses of perfect vision. Or I suppose the things which have inspired me in my practice and have kept me coming back here. I was up there because I came here as, or not to this centre, but I came to a Bristol Buddhist centre in Long Ashton back in February. Nope, early in that I think. The end of 1982, the beginning of 1983, when I was a medical student. And in those years, I was a bit of a hippie. So before I actually went on the wards, I kind of had hair out here. I had pierced air and I just wore wild things. And I guess I'm just going to be recorded. I'm going to be careful what I say. Anyway, I did the sort of things which Higgies did. (audience laughing) And I was involved in... I was a Zionist, would you believe it? I was brought up Jewish. I wasn't a kind of Zionist in the sense of kind of sort of grabbing land off the Palestinians. But much more in those days, there was this kind of agrarian socialism and the kibbutz movement. And it was very much... Well, I sort of was brought up in this community where young people were interested in going out there and settling on the land and working on the land. And it was very sort of agrarian socialist. And there was a word, actually, which we used to use called hevra, and it kind of meant the spirit of community and sharing. I was very involved in it up until I went to Bristol Medical School. And the year before I'd been to Israel and I'd spent a year on a big chunk of time on the kibbutz. And it didn't really fit my ideals, as it often is. I was out there, I'm wanting to find this hevra or what I would now call sanger, the sense of community and sharing. And also a spirituality, which I think wasn't pro... which might have been, but wasn't present. So I was in Bristol University. I was into dope, it's recorded now. Girls. And I sort of had this kind of sense of disappointment that I hadn't sort of found that thing that I was looking for. And I did yoga in the university union on a regular basis and was very keen on it. And that was good fun. And I saw a sign in the university union, which then learned to meditate. And in small print, it had kind of Bristol Buddhist center or something along those lines. And there's an order meant called Tejananda. He was leading classes at that stage. In the university union and then the Catholic chaplaincy. And I went along there and I learned to the mindfulness of breathing and the matter of harmony. I kind of thought it rather odd. I liked the meditation a lot. I didn't really like the ritual and I certainly wasn't interested in religion. But nevertheless, something drew me. And it was also a sense of unsatisfactoriness with the life which I had held up until that point. Not pain as such, but just unsatisfactoriness. And I remember either reading or listening to a talk from Ergen Sanger-Achter-Panti in Long Ashton. And it was about the three lecturers. It was about impermanence in substantiality and unsatisfactoriness. And it was kind of sort of, it turned me. I just thought, it's very hard to express. But I don't know if you've ever had this feeling of when you hear something or you have a notion of something that you somehow know it to be always true, but you weren't able to put it into words yourself. So I just heard these three words, impermanence, insubstantiality and unsatisfactoriness. I thought, that's it. Whatever it is that's describing what my existential experience was. And it kind of kept me going. So I carried on with a yoga. I think I went on a retreat in Padmalaoka. I also went to India as a medical student to Poona, which is where Karina has activities all over India, but that was a big central place for it at the time. And they agreed, they bought some land at the time, which they were going to build a Vihara, and there's now a very big beautiful centre there now. But that's age, it was just land. And it was a Shanti, a Shanti town, on the outskirts of quite a big city, not that far from Mumbai or Bombay. And there was a doctor out there, English doctor, who was within the order, Virabhadra, and a nurse called Palma Shuri. And I went out there as a medical student. And that was an interesting experience and a kind of rude awakening to what India was like. I also got involved in other retreats, a sort of winter retreats in Padmalaoka, and I went to Viharaoka. And at this point in time, I had thought that my previous life, unsatisfactory as it was, I decided that I was going to dispense with that. And so I gave up all those drugs, alcohol, and everything. I had probably, at that stage, been in a set of relationships of serial monogamy. And I was probably identifying myself, or as I know, I think a lot of us do, where you sort of say I feel a bit empty inside, what can fulfil it? And it would be somebody, a partner, somehow that sort of missing thing. And I'd obviously reached a point, or at least I hope I had in my maturity, where I thought this is not working. And so for the first time, since I've been a young teenager, I'd made a decision and said, I'm not going to be looking for a partner at all. I'm going to sort of stop all that process, which you can do as a kind of a teenager in your early 20s. And I decided I was going to meditate, you're on retreat, I did all of that. So I went to a retreat centre in North Wales, called Viharaoka, which many of you may know, or certainly will have heard about. And I thought, great, everything's sorted. I know I'm going, I'm going to be on retreat. It was, I've done some retreats already, so I was used to it. I had some quite good experience in meditation. And there I was, in Viharaoka, in North Wales, absolutely beautiful area. Fantastic conditions for meditation, except for the sheep. Sheep are very noisy. That's also good for meditation as well, working with the noise of sheep. But anyway, it was very, very good conditions, and lovely people. And I was there sitting on my cushion, and it was pretty hardcore, I remember it. It used to be like, triple sit, breakfast, double sit. I think it's a bit easier now, unless you deliberately sort of go on an intense meditation retreat. I just kind of remember the thing, it was quite sore legs and bum. Anyway, so I was sitting there, hoping to have good meditations, and I sort of had a taste of it. And I was flooded with one image after another of all these previous girlfriends. And it was a nightmare. (laughing) And what it was, it was basically about this process of being turned down and being rejected. And it kept on cropping up, and it would kind of be what almost like a bit of video footage, sort of this flashback. So I'd be sitting there doing the mindfulness or the matter. And then this image would crop up, and it would be this image of rejection. And you have the opportunity to talk to people and retreat, you know, about yours. And I was sort of like, this was happening. And they just sort of said, well, just sort of treat it as a hindrance, and handle the recording limits, sort of various ways of handling hindrances, as I'm showing you now. So this happened repeatedly. And it got me down a lot. And I remember that someone had said at that time, if you have a hindrance, and you can't do anything else with it, then go for refuge with that hindrance. So in other words, you stop trying to sort it, but you just say that the hindrance is there, and you go for refuge. If you like, you just say, well, this is me, this is how I am. And so I remember in this process of this, it felt like it had a difficult time, going for refuge with this problem. And interestingly, it just vanished. And I then remember sitting, and sitting very well, and being quite concentrated. And in the evening, after I would sometimes sit on after the end of the poo-jour, and sit on afterwards, I'd come out, and everyone had gone to bed. And I'll tell you this now. My childhood, actually, wasn't a very happy childhood. I hit a band point when I was a band. How old was I? Nine or 10, 10 years old. My mother was away from home, and there were lots of problems. And I had quite a lot of suicidal ideation. Not, I never actually acted upon it. And I think it's probably not that uncommon for children, sometimes older, sometimes young teenage, to go through this. And you just think life is so awful. And it's interesting how that kind of can leave a mark. But anyway, so I'd had this experience in vodka. And I was sitting outside, and I had a cup of hot cocoa. I only had a drink, cocoa or hot chocolate, when I'm on retreat. I only had one in the evening, at the end of the evening. Now, I'm a bit of a night owl. I don't need that much sleep. Everyone goes off to sleep at 10 o'clock. I'm like, "What am I gonna do for the next few hours?" So there I am with my cocoa. Sitting outside in vodka. And on a step, and it was a sort of fairly balmy evening, I think it must have been in the summer. And there were just these bats flying around. And I can't really express it other than to tell you. But I just remember having this feeling that all things change. And that whatever experience you have, and whatever script you write for yourself, it's not necessarily true. Or even if it were true at the time, things can change. And with, if you like, that knowledge of impermanence, which is, I guess, what it was, I just remember thinking that I could never, ever have any thoughts of suicidal thoughts ever again. Just, and it just struck me as a kind of sort of, quite a beautiful experience, haven't it, sort of? Yes, anyway. So that's the Welsh bats. That's the Welsh bats. So you've had one of the three. So, where next? I qualified as a doctor in '85. I became a mitterer in the same year. I carried on going on retreat to Pamaloka. And whilst I was away on retreat, I was faced with more demons. This was the demons of ritual in Depugia. I don't like, I do like ritual impugia now, but I didn't like ritual impugia then. I really liked the meditation, and I really liked the ethics, and I liked the philosophy of Buddhism. But I did find the devotion and the ritual really quite difficult. And I would be away on retreat, enjoying it on one level, deeply, and on another level, wanting to run a mile. I can remember sitting in a puja in Pamaloka, thinking, what am I doing here? This is really, really nuts. I'm wanting to go, but not going, kind of sticking with it. And that particular puja, and also the introduction, was the introduction of one of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, Vadrasattva. And Vadrasattva, it was interesting what my memory of it was back in the early eight, in the mid eighties, was described as a youthful figure, and also being described as the Buddha behind the Buddha. And I really liked that somehow, because I knew that there was a Buddha, but I didn't want it, and this is me, and I'm sure you're all very different, I didn't want it to be a historical Buddha somehow, which was born in time, and something happened, and that was somehow, to me, that was too religious. I wanted it somehow to be the Buddha behind the Buddha, something a bit more ineffable. I mean, I'd sort of, I'd been brought up as a scientist, and it was just my way of somehow wanting something spiritual, but being able to encapsulate it for me to be able to handle. And what was interesting was, is that Vadrasattva, who was described as this sort of 16-year-old youth, somehow, not in a mean way at all, but was mocking me. He, if he is a he, saw me as I was, and also kind of knew that the limits of my understanding and my perception were very limited, and he wasn't kind of mocking me at all in enough, but he kind of, he had my number, he kind of knew who he was, he knew my limitations. And yet he was also very caring, very odd one, I said, I don't believe in ritual devotion, but I'm sort of describing this from very early. I had this quite strong sense of Vadrasattva in that way, and I really had such a strong affinity with Vadrasattva ever since, and it's sort of, it's been like a very good marriage, really, because as the relationship has gone on, I've sort of famed out more and more about Vadrasattva, which I really like, and I'm gonna, that comes on a bit further on. So anyway, so there's this image of Vadrasattva, and I sort of, I just, I kind of, again, if you like, I almost go for refuge with my irritation of ritual and pooja, but I carry on. I learned a bit more about Vadrasattva, I learned that Vadrasattva was associated with purification, which I've really come to see that as being very important. I didn't think I did then, but I knew it was associated with that. Confession, which I reacted against, brought up Jewish, not Catholic, but again, what is this confession thing? But again, I've sort of, I've come to appreciate that a lot. And also death, and I've had two deaths in my own family, sister and my mother, from quite, quite young, and also working in hospital, and I worked in Africa for a couple of years in Zimbabwe, and I sort of saw the AIDS crisis when I was out there. And sometimes when I would do a morning round in Harari, Zimbabwe, just during the round alone, five people would die. I knew to arrive at the bedside, and said they were already dead. I sort of remember, at that stage, I was sort of a mittro, and sort of quite involved in the Dharma, and I would recite, I'd do a Vadrasattva mantra in my head on the water, and just, you know, somehow you can do it, just seem right. So, in 1988, I'd been a junior doctor for two to three years, and a junior doctor for two to three years, I had taken this exam, called Mentorship of the Royal College of Physicians, NRCP, and I failed it. The last exam I'd failed was when I was 11 years old, and it was a hell of a shock. It's a professional exam, and they actually, they fail, you know, in those days, only about 20% of those who took it perhaps. So it wasn't that unusual to fail it, but nevertheless, I kind of saw myself as hard-working studious, so I failed it, and then four months later, I immediately went in for the retake, and I went in, I did the exam, everything was awful in the exam. I just thought, "Oh, no, I failed at a game." And I had this gap between jobs, they had this senior house officer post, they're like six month post, where you move, and it just so happened, there was a two month, two and a bit month gap, and friends had been to Everest area, the southern Kumbra Valley in Nepal, and they described, just came by themselves, they described going there, saying these tea huts on the way, and walking up towards Everest Base Camp, on this beautiful peak called Kalapital, which overlooks Everest. So I thought, "Okay, I'm gonna do that." So I went there to drown my sorrows, feeling that I just failed this exam again. By myself, my partner and I had agreed to break up, we'd been together, actually, since I first got involved in Long Ashton Days, called Kathy, she's actually my wife now, so we didn't break up. And the reason why we were going to break up was because I decided I didn't want children, and Kathy wanted children, it was just a, it was an agreed thing. We weren't getting on particularly, we weren't getting on badly. Anyway, so I was out there, walking up in the Himalayas, passing all these tremendous gampas, these wonderful Tibetan Monasteries from the Enigma part tradition, and these Marni walls. I'm walking by myself, and sometimes with people, I met on the way, climbing higher and higher and higher up towards Everest Base Camp. And as I sort of went up, for whatever reason, I changed my mind. And I decided that I didn't want to be a dad after all. So I think I sent a letter, and I changed my mind, and I'd like to be a dad. I don't know why I just did. So that was interesting. And I went up to Everest Base Camp, stayed there, and stayed in the area for a while, and other sort of other areas, looking over Everest, then came back down again. Went to say, had sort of final three, four days in Catman do, and went on a spending spree, as one does, it's kind of, you know, if you're a Buddhist, there's so many fantastic tankers and rupees, and I was getting presents for people and things. And I got very low on money, and once I was sort of going around the back streets of the Tamil area in Catman do, I saw Vajrasattva. And this Vajrasattva stood out, like no other reaper I'd seen before. It was a sort of bronze alloy of some kind, quite a dark alloy, and it was completely different from the other images of Vajrasattva, which I'd seen, which in that area are often painted, and you've probably seen them yourself, but some of them are just kind of just one color only. And it was beautifully crafted by somebody who I felt was an artist, and somehow it captured the spirit of Vajrasattva, with sort of a slightly sort of curved body at an incline, a very beautiful face, and held in the right hand, the Vajra, of which my name, I'm Vajra means he who wields the Vajra, he who wields truth, or he who wields the diamond thunderbolt. He had it, and this Vajra you could take off. It wasn't the kind of, so it was a movable Vajra, and there was a movable bell as well, which also was interesting. And this reaper was about quite expensive, from the, I was a junior doctor at the time, I can't know what it was, but it was a relatively lot of money for me. And I had that amount of money, and they more, and I knew that I needed money to live for the next day, probably the next two days, and so I went to him, and I bid him on it, as you all did, I bid him on it. And in this back, in the shop in the back, normally they're up for it, they came, but he would not shift on it. He gave me the prize, and he said, no, that's the prize. And I said, look, I'm being completely straight with you, I would really, really like this reaper, but this is all the money which I have. And he said, I'm sorry, that's the prize. So I went away, and I came back the following day, so I'm still interested, and he said, that's fine, but that's, and he wouldn't change on the prize. And I just thought, what do I do? So what I did was, is I bought the reaper. I bought the reaper, left me with no money to speak of. I was very pleased I bought the reaper, packed my bag, went off to the airport, but ride in the airport with my reaper and everything, airport tax. I hadn't thought, I didn't have it at all. And the kind of the immigration people sort of said, you can't go, and the airplanes are out of Kathmandu, they weren't that frequent, maybe there was one a day. And I had worked to go back for, I paid for the ticket, I was at risk of losing the ticket. And I got crossed, which achieved nothing at all. And I found somebody in the queue, he was the last, he was a white guy from England, from the Lake District, who sold outward band type clothes. And I sort of said to him, I said, "Look, all this has happened." And he looked at me as if I was kind of, you know, a standard beggar using a ruse. And so I said to him, "Well look, I'll give you my credit card, "if you can sort of lend me." And it was about seven pounds the airport tax. And he eventually agreed, and I got on the plane, came back, and I thought, "Phew, I'm fine." So, went through Bangladesh on the way back, then arrived back in Heathrow. And in Heathrow, I never stopped by immigration, by customs. But for whatever reason, I was looking smelly and hairy, and by myself, single male, having come through Dhaka, Bangladesh. So they stopped me. And they unpacked everything. They opened my wash bag, they took the soap out, they broke the soap in half. They wanted to know what I was doing, where I'd been, et cetera. And they came across my Vadro Setvarupa. And they said, "I'm sorry, sir, we need to take this off." So they took the Vadro Setvarupa away, and they came back, and they said, "Our X-rays won't penetrate it." Our X-rays won't penetrate it. I'm afraid we need to drill holes in it. So, what could I do, what could I say? I don't know, I kind of sort of, I was quite chilled about it for whatever reason. So he drilled holes in the base, not actually, in the base, looking for heroin. And for those of you who know anything about Vadro Setvar, what Vadro Setvar does, and this was given to me as a sardina when I was ordained, what Vadro Setvar does at a certain point, associated with the mantra, is issuing from him, issuing from his heart, full's nectar, nectar of purification, which is wide. Okay, so I kind of had this, my, my own rupa, with holes in the bottom. Kind of imagining heroin pouring out through these holes, but of course there was no heroin there at all. And actually, interestingly, he was quite apologetic afterwards, 'cause I think I said, you know, I'm a Buddhist, and he said, "Look, I've got to do this." So anyway, he let me through, and I came back with my Vadro Setvarupa, which is sort of still on my shrine. Anyway, that's my second point, the Vadro Setvar drug meal. So, we're next. I need to fast forward in time quite a lot. So, I had, I part, oh, I've got to tell you, when I was in Kathmandu, I went to the post office, got a letter, an error grab, an on it, it said my name, M-R-C-P, I know that I actually passed. So I passed the exam, and then I went on, and I trained in various things. I did infection, tropical medicine, HIV medicine for a while. I worked in Africa for a while. And with my family, I was offered another job in tropical medicine, which was my love at the time, particularly TB. But we had three children at that stage, and my wife very sensitive, he said, actually this is, it was the Gambia, it was West Africa, this is not the place to bring out children. So I had to rethink, I rethought, and I retrained in respiratory medicine in chest medicine, which I then trained in London. Before I moved, around about that, that was interesting actually, around about that time, what had happened was, is I desperately wanted to carry on in tuberculosis, because I'd done quite a lot of research in Africa, and then I'd done three years doing a PhD on TB vaccine design, and I loved it. And I was making my way as an academic, and I was offered this five year fellowship in West Africa, and Kathy said, actually this is not good for the family. And I kind of looked at everything going on in my life, and this was the point having been a mixture in what was then the FWA for many years. I was sort of saying, well, what, why do we make the decisions which we do? And it was interesting that at this point, for whatever reason, I was beginning to let go of ambition, and I saw quite a lot of my friends, and I'd since seen them, you sort of carried on on that, that pathway, is that one can be drawn into, almost kind of enticed into this kind of world where you feel good about yourself, because you're such and such a person, but you hold such and such a position. And it's interesting, I would say that my contact with the Dharma, and understanding about impermanence, insubstantiality, and unsatisfactoriness, helps me at that point to actually know I'm going to leave that behind, and I'm actually going to be a dad, and I'm going to be a jobbing doctor, which is what I do now. Most of my work is, it's very basic, sort of dealing with emphysema, asthma, lung cancer. So, at that stage, I asked to join the order. It was 1999, I was in the North London Centre, and somebody who'd just been ordained said to me, "Have you thought about asking?" And I kind of said, "Well, to be honest, "I don't really think that I'm up to it, "I don't really think I'm worthy enough." And he said, "Well, what is it you think "that's missing?" And I also came up with all this stuff. And then he said, "Well, I would say "that the actual process of asking "will help you resolve some of those issues." So I asked, and it was very moving. I said, just like I could just come back from Butterfield, and I said, "In Butterfield," I said, "It was like the darmic equivalent "of a proposal of marriage." Because it's kind of, you're not actually yet married, but it's so much about the intention, and it's kind of what can hold a lot of people back. So it was kind of very, well, very moving for me, and kind of opened lots of stuff up when I did ask. And I actually wasn't ordained for another seven years, another seven, eight years. But anyway, I came here, I came to Bristol, back to Bristol, where I first got involved. I was working then in the hospital in Bath, in the Royal United Hospital, and I joined a going for a refuge group, and later on, we ended up calling ourselves the Dama Bums, which is sort of slightly ironic, was the Dama Bums. They were kind of 1950s, poet beatniks, who were kind of free and independent. And actually, if you know us at all, we're not like that at all, we're kind of, or middle-aged or older, we're kind of lots of ties and jobs and stuff. But never let, what we were, what we were old, I was the youngest, we were old, so we were bums in that sense. We were bums in that. And so then, we went through together the ordination process, and we said to the ordination team in Norfolk, in Pamoloka, we said, we would love to be ordained together. And what we would like is that when you think the last of five of us are ready, please would you then ordain us as a group. I know you were up for this, they thought it was a good idea. So time went by, not that long actually, maybe another 18 months, when they decided whoever was the last to be ready, I don't know, they then said fine. And they, we organized two weeks in Spain, in the Maine's Ordination Retreat Center, where normally men would go for the long retreat. But because we were married with kids, with dependents, and we had jobs and we couldn't get time off jobs, they said they would do us as a job lot in two weeks. Okay, so it wasn't that, there was eight years leading up to it, it was it. But anyway, so we went out there with our preceptors, and this is my last glimpse, my last sort of glimpse at, or shadow the glimpse of perfect vision. So I've always loved meditation, and meditation is I think what drives me, and I sort of, I feel very comfortable meditating. And I have had, I think quite strong meditation experience, certainly in the early years, kind of less so now, but I sort of have memories of that. And even now, I can still, if I sit for long enough, I can still get quite concentrated. So there I was, again, in ideal conditions, it wasn't girls this time. And again, in ideal conditions, in this beautiful, beautiful environment, sitting, and the sitting was going quite well. I was well concentrated, we were learning different meditations, I was doing the six element practice, which I kind of knew of, but I'd never really done. We had quite a long period of silence in the middle, and things were fine, but it was interesting that somehow there was some block, or somehow it wasn't quite working, it was okay, but there was something missing. And I would do this thing where I can sort of say, well, let's just sit on and see what happens. So again, in the evening, I would sit on, and I might have done this for more than one night. And so I sat on, and I had my glimpse, my shadow of a glimpse. And actually, it was very simple, and it doesn't sound very profound, but it felt terribly profound to me at the time. And it was this, is that there is no point whatsoever in all this meditation, unless it's to help people. And it was kind of sort of, as if a floodgates opened, and I just sort of thought that, what, maybe wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, that my sole purpose for all of this, for all my Dharma activity and Dharma practice, was really about being in the world and about my interaction with people. And I don't mean it in a kind of, in an altruistic sense, it just kind of felt that it was about interacting with the world somehow and with beings. I need to finish off with a poem. It's on my iPhone. I did have, I did have a different poem, but I really wanted to read this poem. I heard this poem actually, just in Butterfield, Jayaraja did at the end of his talk, and I loved it so much, so I just thought that it was very appropriate. What today's it, it's not in there. What am I doing here? It's just being emailed to me by Sajlila. Okay. So this is a poem from Manjusra, and it's called Holy. Like many, on the spiritual path, I can get hung up on high-faluting metaphysics, but the real test is when I'm sitting alone in my car at the traffic lights. Where am I when the signal does its star turn from red to green via yellow? These are, of course, all symbolic colors, especially to a Buddhist. The red of infinites, green of lightning, quick compassion. Yellow of inner riches, but as the engine, Mrs. Abit, is this what I dwell upon? All is my mind unseen, racing forward to the supermarket, or cursing the pedestrians for being so pedestrian, or thinking about nothing at all except its own gloom. Yet, Blake said, "Everything that lives is holy," and that includes myself serving time at the traffic lights, lost out of you of those who think better of me than I do. We hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate, and thank you. (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) [BLANK_AUDIO]