(upbeat music) - This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you and happy listening. - My first contact with other Buddhists was about this time of year in 1971. And it was at Samyaling, which at that time, I think it was probably the only Tibetan Buddhist center in Europe. And I went up there, just having finished university in a complete state, a complete nervous wreck. I just remember having panic attacks on the train up and learnt from the teacher out there who was called Akong Rinpoche. I had a meeting with him because I was in such a state, I was very highly motivated, and I told him I'd come to meditate. And he took me at my word. And he asked me if I'd done any meditation before. So I said, "Well, I've done some transcendental meditation." It was popular way back then. The Beatles had been practicing it. And I kind of thought that he'd say, "Ugh, nasty Hindu practice." And here's a proper, proper Buddhist one. But he didn't do that at all. He was very open-minded. And he just said, "Well, if you've been initiated into this practice, just do that. And if you find that it doesn't really work for you, I'll give you something else." But he said, "Okay, let's start in. Tomorrow you can do four hours of this meditation." I've been used to doing about 20 minutes a day, or perhaps 20 minutes morning in the evening of this transcendental meditation. So all right, do four hours tomorrow. And then the next day do four hours. And then after that, just add on an hour a day. (audience laughing) So I did four hours. Four hours. Five hours. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. 11. 12. Now I couldn't possibly meditate for 12 hours a day, but, you know, I just wasn't in a fit state at all. But I was sort of slumped against the shrine removal for eventually 12 hours a day. And I had all kinds of experiences, both good and bad. But I've always been really grateful, 'cause I was in a real state. And after three weeks of doing that, I was in much less of a state. So I've always held great gratitude for I couldn't remember shape for taking me seriously. Now, while I was at Summeling on that occasion, I met Mr. Wright. No, not like that. I met Eric Wright, who was later to become Daumachery Mungala, who was the first person to tell me about the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. And living in London, knowing that Summeling was way, way on the borders of Scotland. And knowing that I really needed some other people to meditate with. At the beginning of 1973, I came along to the F.W.B.O. and I got more involved with it. And eventually, I began to feel quite split because I got this connection to Tibetan Buddhism. But now I was making stronger and stronger connections with the Order. And eventually, I felt I was coming to a crossroads and I really needed to commit myself one way or the other. And Banto was a way on sabbatical at this time, but I wrote to him. And as a result of that, it was arranged that I would go and spend a couple of days with him in the cottage that he was staying in in Norfolk. And I went up there and I, well, you have to understand just how, ah, dear, just what it was like being Versantra in 1973. (audience laughing) It's hard even for me to conceive what it was like being Versantra in 1973. Yeah, I had a head full of books that I'd read about amazing yogis who could levitate and all sorts of things. So this is Sanger Aksheta person was, you know, he'd been practicing for many years. So I really expected that he ought to be able to read my mind. Yeah, he was any kind of a Buddhist teacher at all. He definitely ought to be telepathic. So if you want to spend a thoroughly uncomfortable two days, spend it with someone who you think can probably read your every thought. (audience laughing) But even though it was really uncomfortable, at the same time I did get a lot from Bante, not the sort of magical, mystical things that I expected, just a lot of common sense. So eventually I was more or less decided, but I was going to throw in my lot with the FWBO. 'Cause I thought Bante is a Westerner. He understands my conditioning, which is a great help. But at the same time, he's had a lot of teachers in the Tibetan tradition. So, you know, well, have the best of both worlds. But I wasn't quite sure how far Bante's training in Tibetan tradition is gone. So I just have one question, which was sort of decisive for me. And that question was, what was going to happen in the future? I didn't think it was going to be very far in the future. When people in the FWBO became ready for sort of advanced practices, like Tomo, sort of psychic heat and the six yogas of Naropa and things like that, I was thinking, you know, we take nearly five years to be ready for that kind of thing. But so what was going to happen? And Bante was quite clear in what he said. He said, yes, all those advanced practices like Tomo will all be available in the FWBO when people are ready for them. (audience laughs) So it was on the basis of that. (audience laughs) Quite literally, it was on the basis of that that I finally plumped for the FWBO. And was duly ordained in 1974. So I'm now going to sort of follow through a bit more about my connections with Tibetan Buddhism. Some of you will have heard some of this before, but never mind. So our story then goes forwards to 1978. And in 1978, I'm working away on the London Buddhist Center. I'm not really cut out to be a builder and laborer. It has to be said and I'm acutely unhappy. So as well, it's very weary doing all this building work. Although underneath that, I'm very fulfilled. I think it's my first experience of being acutely unhappy, but also really not wanting to be anywhere else because I really believed that the London Buddhist Center was going to be a sort of beacon of Dharma and meditation in London for many years to come. Anyway, there was a point where I was working away on this old fire station which had had a fire in it. And I spent about three days at one point just working in one of these sort of smoke blackened rooms. It was like it's a little retreat in the dark and it's working away and getting the sit off and clearing it up. And sometime during that time, those three days, I had a very strong, let's call it an image of a red darkening figure. And she was dancing above the skyscrapers in New York. And it really affected me very deeply. And I wrote a poem called "The Red Darkening" appears in New York as a result. And I gave Bante a copy of it. And if you read it, I'm really embarrassed about it. It's certainly no great shakes as poetry. But you can feel that there's an awful lot of energy in there somewhere. And Bante took it and sort of ran with it as it were. He read it in two or three poetry readings that he was doing around that time. Anyway, I just carried on doing the practices that I had been doing. But as the years went by, this figure of Vajrayogani began to take over, who's actually started using her elbows to edge out whatever other figure I was supposed to be meditating on. And I just watched this process happen. And I'm quite sort of, I can fairly sound quite steady with meditation. I don't sort of just jump in in new directions easily unless I'm sure it's something really sort of deep in the value there. But eventually, in 1987, I'd moved to Grachiloka to live. And I had lots of time for meditation. And this process was carrying on more and more and more. So Bante came out for the 1987 men's ordination course that I was leading. And at a certain point during the course, I asked him if he had a practice, a sardina of Vajrayogani, expecting him to say, yes, I got good money in Kalimpong. I've got one in a folder. And when I get back to Papaloka, I'll send it to you. But to my surprise, he said, no, he didn't have a sardina of Vajrayogani. But he'd be quite happy for me to do the practice. And there were places in England where perhaps I could go and maybe get one on the weekend. But he wasn't sure how much it would be worth, as it were, sort of spiritually. So why didn't I write to Dada Rinpoche and ask him? It hadn't occurred to me to do something like that. But that was what Bante suggested, so that was what I did. I wrote a long letter to Dada Rinpoche saying, hello, you don't know me, but I'm the member of the Western Buddhist order and introducing myself and explaining. And then asking him if he could take what I suspected was going to be caught a lot of time and trouble to help me out with this practice. So I waited, which he had to in those days, quite a long time. And eventually I got a letter back from Rinpoche. I don't know what it was about it. I mean, it was this sort of meta just somehow came out of the sort of cheap Indian paper that it was written on. Very, very warm and welcoming, saying that, yes, he'd be delighted to help me. He was very pleased to be in contact with him, Sengraachta's disciples. But that, unfortunately, because he'd been ill when he was in the Tantric College, he'd never done the retreat, which technically allowed him to give the initiation of Adriogini. Although, of course, he said, of course, I do the practice every day. Now, personally, I wasn't particularly worried about the technicalities. Somebody like Dada Rinpoche had been doing that practice probably every day for the last 40 years or something. That would have been good enough for me. But he was very much within his Gelug tradition, following that tradition. So he said, I can't give the initiation. But never mind, here's what we'll do. Here are the names of two other llamas. Go and see one of them, say that I sent you, get them to give you the initiation, and then come and see me in India, and I'll explain the practice to you. The only problem was I didn't know where these llamas were. I mean, I just had these two names. We hadn't heard of them. Banti hadn't heard of them. Nobody that I knew of had heard of them. So I wrote back to Dada Rinpoche and got a reply from Jampil Kalden, his secretary, saying, Rinpoche thinks that it will be easier for you to find them. So that wasn't terribly helpful. So I asked around, and eventually Loca Bandu, who was at that time at the LBC, he found out where they were, and he sent me the two addresses. And one of them was in Germany, and the other was in New York. And I thought, ooh, spooky, eh? So next time I saw Bante, I said my family's two llamas, and one of them's in Germany and the others in New York. And you remember that poem that I wrote, that I gave you, that you read in some poetry readings. So which one do you think I should go and see? To which Bante, being Bante, replied, Germany is nearer. [LAUGHTER] Bante is not someone to be presented with fait accompli by omens or anything else. So I did what my guru told me, and I wrote to the lama in Germany, who was called Dada Rinpoche, which is about D-A-G-Y-A-B at Danglyab. It's pronounced Dada, it's a big chunk of Eastern Tibet. But him saying, hello, you don't know me, but can you help me out? And again, got a very warm card back, saying that he'd be very happy to help me. But this was a serious thing that we were doing, and that he felt that I ought to get to know him first to make sure that I wanted him to give me the initiation. And that sort of struck me, in a way, because Dada Rinpoche had recommended him, so that was good enough for me. And anyway, I thought it was-- if I'd been in Dada Rinpoche's position, I would have been more likely saying, I think I ought to get to know you to see with you already for the initiation. But it's actually quite typical of Dada Rinpoche, that he put it that way around. So I went to Germany and met Dada Rinpoche, who I really like from the first time I saw him. Very warm, very, very warm, man. And we got on well. So he agreed to give me the initiation. And I then had to go to Menorca for something, some other initiation, which you need technically before you can have the Vadviogany initiation. Then I went to Germany again for the Vadviogany initiation. And finally, I was almost there. And I just then had to go to India to see Dada Rinpoche, to have it all explained to me. But then I had to wait for a while, because my father had cancer and was seriously ill. But at a certain point, it seemed like he was better for a while, at least. So I went to India with Artidashin, my friend from Grichiloka. And we went up to Kalimpong. And I went to the IGBCI schools, for a very full heart. Only to discover that Dada Rinpoche had had a stroke the day before. So he wasn't going to be explaining anything to anybody. And I just spent time sitting by his bed just doing white tara mantras for him. And it's funny. I thought it was if I still really met him, even though he never said a word to me. But then, anyway, so he wasn't going to be explaining the practice. So I then traveled on with Artidashin. Then my father died back in England. I came back from India to England. And then I heard that Dada Rinpoche had died. His period of two weeks, I had those two deaths. Oh, and I turned 40 in the middle of it. I didn't know what was going on. I saw something astrological or karmic was happening. So then I had to go back to Banti with whom I was checking this out at each step. And so well, I still don't have the explanations. But Dada Rinpoche in Germany has been so kind and helpful. I'm sure he'd help me some more. So would it be all right to go and see him? So after we had a bit of discussion about that, Banti agreed. And I went back to Germany and saw Dada Rinpoche and have kept up that link with him ever since. For quite a few years, the way in which it was taught was that the whole thing was progressive, that you learned some, you practiced. And then you were given a bit more. So that was why I started doing it. But over time, I also thought, well, there are things that I can learn here for my own practice more generally and perhaps for the order. So I've kept up that link. And over, it's been, what, 15 years now, I suppose. And we've become good friends. But for a quite a long time, I felt in quite a sort of anomalous position in the order because it was actually quite rare at that stage for all the members to be going to other teachers. But it hadn't been initiated by me, if you like. It would have just been set in train by Banti. So that was OK. But it was, I felt in a strange sort of position. Also, I did find it quite challenging in some ways, just going out to another teacher and being involved over time. I got to know some of Dada Rinpoche's students quite well. So yes, this is if I had a foot in a second sanger as well. And I think there are a few things that I found tricky. Firstly, it was just the problem of having two approaches to the Dharma. For a few years, maybe about three years, I felt as if I was going for refuge in parallel. I had my FWBO approach to things, which I was quite happy with. And then at the same time, Dada Rinpoche was giving me a very good grounding and traditional Tibetan tantric Buddhism, which is a whole kind of self-consistent world in itself. And so I was going for refuge in two different ways. And I found that quite challenging. But remembering Banti's aphorism about beware the premature synthesis, I didn't try to suppress either side. I didn't try to force them together. I just sat with that experience. And over time, over a few years, by some magic that I think happens if you just do sit with these things in that sort of way, they came together. So I found that quite an interesting experience. There were also some issues of, well, it's not quite loyalty, exactly. I never felt sort of split in that sort of split loyalties. Well, I suppose up until that point, I'd had one straightforward teacher and so forth. And now I had more like two. And that just sort of took a bit of getting used to, really. It's like I didn't just have one single focus for my practice, for my devotion, for my faith, and so on. Yeah, I got two. Yeah, if I did guru yoga, well, where did I put Banti and Dada Rinpoche? Did I put them up there together? And did I do one and then the other? All those sorts of issues, which, as I say, it didn't amount to any kind of real spiritual problem. But yes, it was something to explore, which it took away a certain kind of simplicity that I had just through having one focus, one teacher, one practice. I think another thing that I found quite, in a way, difficult, was that I was in a rather unusual position at that stage of the things that there weren't people going off to other teachers in that sort of way. And so I was learning a lot, which was affecting me quite strongly. But I wasn't really talking about it. I'd sort of share bits of it with Banti. But I couldn't really sort of talk about it. It wouldn't have been appropriate in a way to have talked about it, particularly in the order, partly because some of the country things are given to you with a vow secrecy. So it's not appropriate anyway. But also, I really didn't want to sort of stir up people who were quite happy with the practice they were doing by giving them tales of, oh, this Tibetan Rama Hai go and see. So I had to just sort of contain a lot of my experience. There's got a lot that was quite spiritually significant for me that I was talking about only very indirectly. Thankfully, those of you who know me will know that I'm quite a sort of self-contained person. So I didn't find it as difficult as some people would have. But there was definitely an issue there. And I think that if anyone is going to another teacher or thinking of going to another teacher, there are a number of issues that you'd like that, that it's worth bearing in mind. Yeah, firstly, you will, almost whoever you go to, differences of approach, they may be quite valid, but there are going to be different ways of doing things. And it's like going to two different tennis coaches. They may be both be teaching you how to serve quite well, but one will be telling you to do it like this, and one will be teaching you to do it like that. And to start with, you may be a bit unclear. Thankfully, Bante's approach to the Dharma is so principal, coming at the Dharma as a Westerner, trying to understand it from outside the tradition. I feel he's really sort of gone to a lot of the basic principles. And that really helped in situations which would have been confusing. I could just sort of go back to those principles and things became very clear. But I think there's that. I think that if you do go into another Sangha or another teacher to any degree, you are likely, at least, to feel that your heart's a bit kind of split in some kind of way, you know, you're writing in a whole other element. And I think that you can end up feeling less, less solidly embedded in the order, at least for a period of time. You also may come across people who just don't understand our approach at all, and who can be quite challenging. Like, you may go to some Tibetan groups where they have a very strong idea of what's often referred to as pure lineage, you know, but there's a whole chain of teachers who've just faithfully passed down the same teaching, the same initiations, right down to this particular teacher that you're in contact with, and they are now passing it on to you. So they're valuing a sort of authenticity of the tradition that's guaranteed by passing on the same things again and again and again. And then you get somebody like Bante, who has an extremely good lineage as it were from his Tibetan teachers, but then comes to the West and starts thinking, well, we're going to lead to adapt things for the new conditions. So isn't just teaching exactly as his Tibetan teachers taught him, but his passing on is being a translator, is adapting things. So, you know, you can get people challenging you quite strongly, well, you know, how is that, where is your pure lineage in that? So you need to be clear about those sorts of issues. You can come up against quite a number of those questions. So I had definitely experienced some of these issues, and this was despite the fact that at the time that I got to know Daab Rinpoche, I'd been practicing, I'd been all the member for about 15 years, I suppose. And also, I was doing it very much with Bante's knowledge and blessing at each stage of the path. And also Daab Rinpoche was very open to Bante and appreciative of him. So one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about this is that, you know, there are more order members going to other teachers, thinking about going to other teachers. And certainly my experience, you know, if you're going to do that, there are certain conditions that I would really kind of advocate that you set up. The first is, as I say, I very much, well, the whole thing was started by Bante. I've not had any particular idea of going off anywhere. But it was, for me, really important that I was doing all this in consultation with my precept to Bante. I think it makes a real difference to be talking to your precept to your chapter, your spiritual friends, if you think you're doing something like that. In a way, even if your mind is made up, you know, even if you've got some great desire to go and get the black Ventry Yogini practice, you know, which has really stolen your heart away and you want to go and get it from some Tibetan teacher, even if you feel like there's nothing to talk about, in a sense, still, perhaps even more so. I think it's important that you're in dialogue. But I've been in the house almost out of politeness, I suppose, that you're going to do that. Also, there may be consequences that you may not have foreseen in, you know, going off to some other group or some other teacher. You could even do things which your preceptor or some other members might feel put you outside the order. Like if you were to go and say, be ordained as a pterotharabicu, you know, if you felt nasticism was really sort of central to how you wanted to practice, you might go and do that. And your preceptor might well feel that having kind of joined another, there must be some better term than ecclesiastical community. Like, I don't know what it is just now. Some other spiritual community in that sort of way, you've, as it were, kind of gone outside the order. So yeah, it's good to check all these things out. Although I don't think any of these things are hard and fast. I mean, we actually have an order member on the order register who was ordained in the '70s in New Zealand and went and became a pterotharabicu and is still, you know, his name is still there. And over the years, when I was order convener, I used to ask Bante if he was happy. And yeah, he was happy. So yeah, it's good to check these things through. And also, I think it's very good to look at, again, if you're really minded to do this, to ask around and get recommendations about who you're going to go to, if you are going to do this. Yes, Bante recommended me to Dada Rinpoche who needed no recommendation really, as far as I was concerned. And then Dada Rinpoche recommended me to do these two llamas. Otherwise, yeah, you are, you are sort of shooting in the dark a bit. And there are a number of order members now who've got good links with other groups, with other teachers. So it's good to make use of that, knowledge, that information. And pick somebody who's sympathetic to our approach. It will make it much easier. And if you have some, if you're in contact with somebody, well, say like Shen Penn Hooking, for instance, who's an old friend of Bante's and is very appreciative of the order, rather than somebody who may not know anything about us or may just know us by not very good reputation. And then also, if you're going to be involved in Tibetan Buddhism and you're going to receive an initiation of Black Vajrayogani or whatever it is, you also need to check out very carefully what's actually involved in taking that initiation. Quite often there are, you discover there are commitments or that you've pledged yourself to certain things. And in my experience of Tibetan groups, that sort of thing isn't always spelled out very clearly beforehand. You may find something sprung on you. So I think there are a number of things that it's good to really check out and be careful about if you should find yourself going down this route. At the same time for certain people, at certain times there can be definite gains, both for an individual order member and for the order. There can be new practices, new methods, which can be brought into the order. Experience of another Sangha can be very valuable, experience of their way of doing things. You may learn things from that other Sangha. You may also gain a much greater appreciation of the order. Familiarity doesn't always breed great appreciation. So sometimes you're just seeing other Sanghas in action. Yes, you may learn things, you may realize waves in which the order can still develop, but it may give you an appreciation of just how much we've achieved and how much we've brought together, just how strong our spiritual community is. Again, through seeing others that perhaps aren't as developed in that sort of way. Also, you may well have something to offer at the groups too. And by having contact with other groups, you may also have the effect of doing something to dispel the very poor reputation that we have in certain quarters of the Buddhist world. So those are some thoughts just based on my own experience about some of the issues that I faced and which I suspect other people would still face if you become involved with another teacher, perhaps particularly a Tibetan teacher. Now, I am not in any way going to get involved in saying anything about whether I think it's a good idea for all the members to go to other teachers or a bad idea. These things are very individual and I think that's the only level on which I could ever say anything very useful to anybody about it. From my experience, I suppose I would go as far as to say that I think it's probably more experienced to all the members who are likely to have the most to gain and who will probably find it easiest to integrate what they learn from another teacher. So now I want to move on and I want to look a bit at things that I've learned from my contact with Tibetan Buddhism. Maybe I need to just say that Tibetan Buddhism is huge. There's this huge sort of storehouse of practices and methods of study and so forth and so on. Before major schools, the Geluk-Sarkya, Karkyu, and Ninma cover a tremendous sort of spectrum of different practices. So generalizing about Tibetan Buddhism is not a very intelligent thing to do in some ways. I also want to say that I'm not just sort of starry-eyed about Tibetan Buddhism. Certainly a lot of the Tibetan Buddhists that I meet. I see some of them, quite a lot of them struggling in some ways. One of the things which seems to happen a lot in Tibetan Buddhism is that people get loaded up with lots of different methods, lots of different ways of practicing, and they can often end up almost not knowing what to practice at all. They've just got so many, so many things, so much stuff. Also, sometimes, as I said, when you take initiations, you get given commitments. And people often get loaded up with a lot of commitments to do practices every day. And they don't have time to do them all in depth every day. It would really have to be a full-time yogi or yogi need to do it. So they quite often end up just as it was sort of reciting through a lot of sardins without really the time to meditate on them. And, yeah, I think that's really unfortunate. Also, you get some Tibetan llamas who still teach in a very traditional way that isn't adapted to the West. Somebody told me a story just recently of there's a Scandinavian teacher called early Nidal, who's got quite a lot of centers in Europe, carju centers. And he needed a Tibetan llama to come and be the resident teacher at one of his centers. So they got Tibetan llama to come from India. And this llama came off the plane and started teaching. And in his first teaching, he said, well, I think we're going to have to get a few things straight before we get any further. Because just from being here a very short period of time, I've gathered that Westerners have a lot of wrong views about the dharma. First off, you think that the world is round. Now, the text state quite clearly that the earth is flat. I think it was about 24 hours before they put him on the plane back to India and decided that it wasn't going to work. So you get some llamas still, just not very adapted to the Western situation at all. You get some of the younger generation of llamas who are perhaps too well adapted. And there is also, I think, a general view amongst certainly Tibetan Buddhist teachers that I've met that with each generation, an awful lot is being lost. That each generation of Tibetan Buddhist teachers is not quite the same standard as the previous ones. And there's a lot of looking back to the last generation or two of people who were trained fully in the old Tibet. Like a lot of Bante's teachers. It's I'm talking to Ratna Kei too a couple of years ago. He went to something where Penor Rinpoche, who's now the head of the Numa School, was talking a little bit about Zogchen. And he said that the greatest living Zogchen master is Cetul Sanghi Dorje, one of Bante's teachers, and Penor Rinpoche was bemoaning the fact that Cetul Sanghi Dorje couldn't find any students that he thought were ready to learn the sort of highest levels of Zogchen. He had nobody to pass it on to. So things are, to some extent, perhaps inevitably going down a bit. So what have I gained? I want to focus mainly on things about Sadner, but certainly over the years of learning. I've learned quite a lot of things which are now coming into the order quite a bit anyway. So, for instance, I've worked quite a lot with what are called the Four Reminders, which are now fairly common, be known in the order just reflections which are designed to motivate you to practice the whole Buddhist path. So reflecting on the preciousness of human life, just what a fantastic opportunity it is. But then also it's impermanent, it's going to go. And to make the best use of it, you have to build positive karma. And also that the whole of Sanghi is unsatisfactory. Even if you produce extremely positive karma and end up in the best of Sanghi, still that's not good enough, it's only the path to enlightenment that is going to be satisfying. I sometimes think that we could make, I've appreciated a lot, gaining a deeper appreciation of karma from Tibetan Buddhism. I think we very much play down karma. It's certainly up until recently, up until Naguri's book was published. We've not made much of the law of karma. And maybe there's good reasons for that. Maybe it doesn't play well in the West, as it were. But I sometimes think, if I really took on the law of karma, deeply enough, my whole behaviour would completely change. And if I really believed in the law of karma, or I'd be handing out 10-pound leopards, like anything, because it was all going to, you know, "Redound to my good," you know. I don't, I don't, I still think I could, I could reflect a lot more and think much more in terms of karma than I currently do. They're also, I think, in Tibetan Buddhism, a lot of methods of developing bodhicitta, which are extremely valuable. And again, some of those are coming into the order, so low-jung mind-training, such as the eight verses of Keshirangri in the seven verse mind-training. I think that Tibetan Buddhism is very rich in methods, practical methods for developing bodhicitta. I've also gained a lot, I suppose, just from watching the inaction, people who have, from their mother's knee, been brought up with a deep faith in the Dharma. I think one of the things about Tibetan Buddhism is that it's still very alive with faith in the Dharma. Tremendous devotion. There's devotion to, well, to anything which reminds you of the Dharma, you know. So, like, having been around Tibetan groups, I can watch my Western Buddhist friends sometimes just sort of tossing Dharma books around or leaving them on the floor of their bedroom. And in Tibetan Buddhism, you do not do that because, you know, a Dharma book is sacred, it's valuable, it contains in it, you know, teachings about how you can put an end to suffering forever. It contains teachings about the part of the liberation, and how you can help other people on the part of the liberation. So they treat Dharma books with great kind of care and reverence. And I must say, personally, I appreciate that a lot. There's also, oh, just tremendous in faith and devotion to teachers and gratitude to teachers. Dyer Brimpeche, my friend in Germany. There are times when he talks about his main teacher, Trijang Brimpeche, died about a number of years ago now. He was one of the Dalai Lama's tutors and was perhaps the main girl of the teacher for his sort of generation. Dyer Brimpeche just started to talk about him. Often, there are just tears start to run down his cheeks. And a number once, going somewhere where Dyer Brimpeche was talking about how he'd been doing, he Dyer Brimpeche had been doing some tantric initiations in Tibet. He managed to go back to Tibet for a while. And he was giving them to quite a number of people who've known Trijang Brimpeche. And these people said to Dyer Brimpeche, you remind us of Trijang Brimpeche, how you perform that ritual. And Dyer Brimpeche, sort of trying to recount this story, was just in floods of tears that anyone could begin to think that, in any way, you know, how he did this ritual, was reminiscent of his teacher, Trijang Brimpeche. It was very, very beautiful to watch, very, very moving. Dyer Brimpeche was discovered as a talker at the age of about four and taken off to the monastery and his teachers, when he was young, had this very much spare the rod and spoil the child attitude. So he used to get whipped every couple of days, not for doing anything at all, just on general principles, that it would be good to, you know, sort of keep a young talker on the straight and narrow. And he suffered awfully, actually. I mean, listening to his story, it sounds like a tale of awful abuse. You know, he would have been taken into care in any kind of Western society. But again, he talks about, you know, these early teachers, without any ranker with great sort of appreciation and says, well, you know, they had a really, they were really doing their best. And, but at the same time, Dyer Brimpeche's son was recognized as a talker, and Dyer Brimpeche wouldn't let his son be taken off to the monastery, which given that he's on the next one down from the Delle-Alma, and this is his eminent Dyer Brimpeche, and very, very important in the Gilug hierarchy. The fact that he refused to do that was quite a statement. So, yes, anyway, there's a tremendous amount of sort of faith that just imbues that whole culture that I really appreciate. I also appreciate the fact that it's a rounded tradition. It's been going for hundreds of years, thousands of years. And I get some sense of what the order, you know, could be like over time. It's like within, say, that Gilug tradition, I've had most connection with, you get people who've been practicing the Delle-Alma for 60 years, 50 years, 40 years, 30 years, 20 years. So, you get a whole range of people with all the whole different ranges of experience. And people, sort of young, I've met some young talkus who were like 22, who, again, have already been studying since they were seven. And you asked them about the Delle-Alma, and they say, "Well, I'm just a young man. I've, you know, I've not got anywhere yet with my studies." Perhaps in ten years, I might be able to say something. There's something quite nice about a tradition which has the resources to just let people keep training and training. I sometimes think we, you know, we throw young order members and even mitterers, you know, into the fray, to start teaching, you know, very, very quickly. I also appreciate, in terms of visualization and sardina practice, that there is a great depth of experience. And, yes, there are. There's a whole sense of how visualization can develop over many years of practice, which leads into very subtle work with the, with sort of subtle energy, which I think we've, you know, we've hardly touched on yet. It's interesting. But I've been given some things about Tomoe and the Six Yogas of Narapur and so forth by Dhair Bhimshir, which I'm not ready to practice. But what interests me is that by some quirk of karma, Bante's pledge, at least to me, has been fulfilled. It's there. So, yeah, it's strange how these things work out. So I want to look a little bit at visualization practice and just make a few comments. Although we don't practice visualization within a tantric framework, our sardinists are all very linked to that, Tibetan Buddhist tradition. And in that tradition, there are said to be four conditions for sardina practice, which here, by, in this context, I mean, visualization. You done practice focusing on a Buddha or Bodhisattva. There are said to be four conditions for it to be successful. And the first one is firm faith that the practice will work. The second one is absence of doubt about the method. You're actually clear about how you're practicing, what it is you have to visualize, what you're doing, absence of doubt. The third one is single-pointed concentration. And the fourth one is maintaining secrecy. And I talk inevitably, because I read moving to Buddhas and so forth, quite a lot of people talk to me about their sardina practice. It particularly strikes me that four Westerners, and it's not just members of the order. I think even Western followers of Tibetan Buddhism struggle, particularly with the firm faith aspect of things. So I want to look at this just briefly. I think for most people, if your visualization practice isn't working, it's because something is nibbling away or has nibbled away at your sradhar, at your confidence in the practice very often. And it strikes me from looking at the Tibetan Buddhist that I know that they set up certain conditions to develop confidence in the practice that we don't always have. The first one is that they do do a lot of reflection, for any more philosophical reflection, than we tend to do. They really do look at the views that underlie the practice. And there's a lot of reflection on emptiness. There's, depending on what school you follow, there's a lot of reflection on a targeted garber. There's a lot of taking apart of and examining the everyday views that we bring into the practice. And I often think that in the West, we practice away with sardina, but we don't go deeply enough into the views that we've brought with us from our Western conditioning, which actually prevent the thing from working. So, for instance, you can be working away with sardina, but still very affected by the sort of scientific materialism that Nyanavachal was talking about last night. So even though you're working with the sardina, you have a sense that the real world is the external material world. And because of that, well, what is your practice of sardina, it then has to be imagination, fantasy, which you don't give tremendous weight. It's rather sort of thin. The Tibetans say that if you see your guru as a Buddha, you receive the blessing of a Buddha. If you see him as a Bodhi or her as a Bodhi Sattva, you get the blessings of a Bodhi Sattva. If you see them as an ordinary person, you get that. I think it's the same with sardina. So, if when you're visualizing Tara or Amitabha or wherever it may be, you feel that in doing this, you're actually linking in to that stream of wisdom and compassion that they embody. Well, then it has the effect of linking into a stream of wisdom and compassion of an enlightened being. If on some level when you're doing the practice, you're telling yourself that you're just creating something out of your own imagination, then you get the blessing of linking into creating something out of your own imagination. There's a real sense that what you tell yourself about the practice is very much a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, I think that the Tibetans are often very good at doing more reflection, more examination of views, to set up views which will actually support the practice. But then they also, they do do a number of other things which also, in effect, kind of tend to give confidence that what you're doing is going to work. First off, there's, they give you some initiation very often when you start doing the practice. These can be very simple and informal, like Chattal Sanghi Doji gave, Bowdoin under unasked, the Vadrosatva initiation by a swimming pool in a, I'm telling Kathmandu at one point. They can also be very long and elaborate. The first initiation that I've received from diagram showed lasted two days, eight hours a day and was still one of the highlights of my life. Even though it happened, the main part happened on April Fool's Day, appropriately enough for me, just in case I was going to get a swollen head about it. So, yes, you're introduced to the practice very clearly and definitely in a ritual way. And I think that does give confidence in what you're doing and a sense of the value and the importance of what you're doing. Now, I'm not advocating sort of aping the Tibetan tradition. Yeah, I'm not saying that we have to sort of start giving very formal ritual initiations. But I do think sometimes we're too casual in how we pass on practices. I know of, you know, all the members, new order members whose introduction to their practice has been to have a piece of paper sort of pushed under their bedroom door. You know, it's kind of misspelled and grammatical. Yeah, I would like to see a culture where we have slightly, we take slightly more formally introducing people to the practice, not necessarily by your private preceptor. They may not be the, yes, they'll give you the mantra if it's your first practice in your private ordination. I would like to at least make sure that people who are taking up a new practice have the opportunity to be led through it by somebody who's experienced. And also that they really do have a chance to talk through it all very clearly and very well. So that there is that absence of doubt through really knowing what you're doing. So I think we could just do a little bit more in this way to create more confidence in our practice through making sure that we always give people a good start. And not even just with your first practice with the subsequent ones as well. There's also a whole issue of lineage, which Bante, in earlier times, very much played down because I think he felt that in some Tibetan traditions or centers, people made much of lineage in the wrong sort of way you'd hear all this talk about. Oh, it's a very powerful lineage and it goes back to Dromgo Rinpoche, who's just that in the other, which really was in a way an attempt to use power, you know, to impress in the wrong sort of way. So Bante really wasn't understandably very keen on that. So we've in a way we've not made much of the whole issue of lineage. I was talking earlier this year to a private preceptor who went to see Bante recently and said that his private precepts said that he felt he couldn't make much of a connection, emotional connection with the revised sadness that are mainly given now, the ones which didn't come from Bante's teachers because he felt less of a sense of connection with the teachers. And Bante reportedly, I don't think this is gospel because I may have got it wrong, but what I understood this person to say was that Bante said that he tended to agree with that, that he himself couldn't do a practice without thinking of the teacher who'd given it to him. Now I'm not suggesting again that we make much of formal lineage, but I think that perhaps in revising the sadness in the early '90s, we just some extent just decontextualized the practices. Bante had advantages, but perhaps you also lose something of that sense of connection back through Bante to Jamie and Kensei Rinpoche or the German Rinpoche and back through them, through whole lines of very, very deeply committed practitioners. So I think it's good to try and reclaim something of that and to focus on how do you want to do it, to focus on Bante's teachers perhaps, apart from anything else because focusing on great teachers, well, again as Nyamalachal was saying, well, time and space do not exist in the way that we think they do. So perhaps if you focus on people like that, perhaps again, it has an effect and there will be a response. One other thing which I think doesn't certainly doesn't happen in all Tibetan groups, but happens in some, which is very useful is, I think there's more ongoing guidance for people practicing visualization with different Buddhism bodhisattvas. Very often you have a teacher or someone who's supervising your practice and you gain confidence for the fact that you know that they know how you're practicing and that you can go to them for advice if you have questions or difficulties. And again, this happens to some extent within the order, but I think it could happen a lot more. So to put it in our terms, you have someone who is witnessing you're going for refuge in this particular area of meditation practice. And yeah, you're going for refuge needs witnessing in an ongoing way, not just you're effective going for refuge at the point of ordination, but on into the future through to your real going for refuge and beyond. And it's good to have it witnessed in particular areas, particularly, you know, ones which are quite crucial, like meditation, where you're working directly with your mind. So I think that some of us have this relationship with a preceptor or some other experienced order member. But again, I think I see a lot of order members who are largely practicing on their own unsupported and that may be fine, but it's also quite easy with meditation to get into helpful habits. And I think it's just very good to have somebody who's more experienced than you saying, yes, this way that you're practicing is the way to practice that will lead to the end of suffering, as far as I can tell. This way that you're practicing is the path to freedom. So I think it would strengthen our faith in visualization if we did more study and reflection to break down views that prevents our new working. If we gave people a good start with the practice, one which is appropriate to the spiritual value of these meditation some Buddhist and Buddhist sappers among which clarifies doubts. And even if we're working with southerners, which in their actual form, don't come directly from Dante's teachers, I think it's very good still to cultivate that sense of lineage, the particular form of the practice may not come from them, but a lot of the visualizations and so on do. And then I think it's very useful to have ongoing guidance about your practice. So I'm not gonna say more, I could carry on the history of my shopping around with Tibetan Buddhism and just talk to you about Shen Penhukham, but I don't know if there's time really. It's been interesting for me, I suppose there I was this strange Cassandra in 1973 meeting with Bante and very concerned about would these advanced practices be available in the order. And there's a saying some by some magic, Bante kept his pledge to me. But then him having done so, what's dawned on me recently is that whether or not in this lifetime really ready to practice some of those practices which are all about sort of developing great bliss and emptiness and subtle body and so forth and so on. Actually, what I've really been learning and valuing from looking back, I see this from Bante and I see this from the Tibetan teachers that I've had contact with. Actually, it isn't anything to do with that. It's the more I practice and the more that I do meet people who are deeply, much more deeply engaged with their practice than I am, what I really value isn't that they've got well out techniques or that they've practiced anything very deep in that sort of way. What I really value is that I just had the opportunity to meet a number of people who really moved me by the depth of their faith in the Dharma. Bante has always really moved me just by the depth of this certainty of the Dharma. The Dharma officials have the same effect in a different way. Just seeing different individuals that sort of broaden out the picture somehow. I think the fact that I've seen a number of people who practice with real integrity, through all the difficulties, through all the upsets, through all the bante, through all the allness, through all the criticism, he's still just carrying on practicing, still in a sense being himself, faithful to the Dharma in his own way. I'm watching Dara Brimpeche as I say, he's a main lama of this big chunk of Easton Tibet. Most of the time he can't get back there, the Chinese won't even let him. If he does go back, he's followed everywhere by Chinese officials and it's very, very painful for him. And yet you've seen just constantly practicing patience, trying to practice compassion, I'm just deeply moved by that integrity. I'm moved by the humility of these people. And above all, I'm just moved by their open-heartedness in all sorts of ways. And the whole order for me in where's an expression of Bante's open-heartedness and he's just gone out in so many ways to so many people, so many of us. Yeah, Dara Brimpeche similarly, he's owned as a different kind of person with a different kind of personality. Also just strikes me as emanating sort of love in all situations that I see him. So yes, I've come on a long way from 1973. I realized that what I'm learning about isn't anything very well. What I thought is the advanced stuff isn't the advanced stuff. The really advanced stuff is deep faith in the dharma, is humility, is practicing with just real integrity and with a tremendous open heart to the world. And yeah, I've got anything from the order in Bante or from Tibetan Buddhism, it's really bad. (audience applauds) (upbeat music) - We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
