In-depth Stories

Photo courtesy of Jacob Sky Lindsley.

Jacob Sky Lindsley is a graduate of two Buddhist schools in the US, having received a bachelor degree from the University of the West near Los Angeles, California, and a master of arts degree from FPMT-affiliated Maitripa College in Portland, Oregon. He has worked for FPMT’s Vajrapani Institute as well as Maitripa College, and commences Ph.D. studies in psychology in 2017. His master’s thesis, Mindfulness and the Transformation of the Self, examines the relationship between mindfulness therapies and the Madhyamaka philosophy of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. Jacob presented a paper based on this at the November 2016 International Symposium of Contemplative Studies of the Mind and Life Institute.

Jacob spoke with Mandala associate editor Donna Lynn Brown.

Mandala: What led you to look at how Madhyamaka (Middle Way) philosophy¹ intersects with mindfulness?

Lindsley: I’ve spent a lot of time mulling over the Madhyamaka view of self as empty of inherent existence, and working with its meditations that help show that the true self that we think exists really can’t be found. This has convinced me that, as Buddhism maintains, our wrong view of self creates suffering. But I also have a background in psychology, so I wanted to see how mindfulness—so important in psychology now—gets at that root cause of suffering. What I found was that mindfulness-based therapies do not deconstruct the sense of self in the same way as, say, Gelugpa-style meditations. So I wanted to explore how mindfulness therapies understand the self they posit, and transform our relationship with it, compared to how the Gelug teachings do that.

I’m not trying to show that mindfulness helps people or doesn’t; other researchers have shown that it often does, and are now drilling down to understand who it helps and in what circumstances. Where there is not much clarity at this point is about how and why it helps. There are several theories, and researchers are working on it. What I’m doing is looking at how mindfulness transforms people’s relationship with the self, because that helps explain what is going on when they practice mindfulness. I think it can also illuminate how mindfulness helps—and also maybe why that help could be limited in impact.

Some of the questions I’m asking are: can mindfulness, as it is practiced therapeutically, cut the root of suffering as understood in Buddhism? If not, does it at least take a step in that direction? Or does it perpetuate or even strengthen our innate distorted view of the self? If that’s what’s going on, can mindfulness-based therapies be reworked to draw on the Madhyamaka view in order to better address suffering?

As far as I know, no one else is looking at mindfulness from a Madhyamaka perspective. I’d like to get that conversation going.

Jacob Sky Lindsley presenting his research at the November 2016 conference of the Mind and Life Institute, San Diego, California, USA. Photo by Doug Huppe.

Mandala: We hear the word “mindfulness” used in various ways. Can you clarify just what it means?

Lindsley: According to Buddhist theory, mindfulness is the mental factor that remembers to stay cognizant of the intended object of any particular moment of cognition. So if the breath is the object, mindfulness would remember to keep the breath in mind while another factor like attention would hold awareness on the breath. But nowadays we hear the word used in several ways. For example, it can refer to a kind of meditation, or to a way of being in ordinary life. Jon Kabat-Zinn says mindfulness is “paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally,” which can refer to both meditation and to being mindful as we go about our day. And then psychology uses the word for certain clinical interventions: mindfulness-based therapies. With respect to meditation, there are various kinds: mindfulness of breathing, of the body, of walking, and so on; of close attention to one factor or broader choiceless awareness. So mindfulness is an umbrella term for lots of things.

Mandala: Before we talk more about psychology, can you sum up the Buddhist approach to self?

Lama Tsongkhapa. Photo courtesy of FPMT Charitable Projects.

Lindsley: All schools of Buddhism believe that a transformed experience of the self is what leads to liberation and enlightenment—the end of suffering. Shantideva, for example, makes clear that all the techniques the Buddha taught were meant to lead to a direct insight into no-self, meaning realizing that the self we think we have just isn’t there. And Buddhism says that all of our negative emotions and psychological issues are mediated by our relationship to this false idea. So getting at the sense of self and transforming it is fundamental to how Buddhism deals with suffering, whether we uproot suffering entirely by realizing that this type of self doesn’t exist and removing that appearance from our minds, or, in a shorter-term sense, reducing our suffering by easing our grasping at this wrong idea of self.

Mandala: Is it a problem if mindfulness works with the self in a different way than Madhyamaka?

Lindsley: Not necessarily, if people find mindfulness helps them that may be good enough. It might even be great. But there are two potential issues. One is that mindfulness-based approaches to reducing suffering may obscure a powerful key to healing and well-being that is central to Buddhism because it’s been proven to work—by that I mean insight into the true nature of the self. People may forget that Buddhism has perhaps more powerful methods to eliminate suffering if they think mindfulness is all that Buddhism has to offer from a therapeutic point of view. Second, the way mindfulness therapies operate may actually reinforce an innate belief in the truly-existing self. If so, that might make for short-term gain in exchange for long-term vulnerability. That’s because trading one kind of self-experience for another can help us feel better, but if Buddhist philosophy is true, undermining this innate belief is the only way to remove the potential to suffer in general. This is a pretty radical idea!

Mandala: What are the similarities in the understanding of suffering between Buddhist philosophy and mindfulness-based therapies?

Lindsley: Like Buddhism, often these therapies are based on the idea of distortion: depression, for example, and other difficulties are influenced by seeing reality in a biased way. Some people organize their experience mentally in ways that are just not accurate. Maybe they are convinced they are inherently stupid or worthless, or they can never succeed at anything, or their life will never be OK—those kinds of things. Most of us do this a little. But people who struggle with mental or emotional problems often have negative cognitive patterns or self-understandings that significantly impair their ability to function, or just make them really unhappy. These are almost always evaluations of a self. And one purpose of mindfulness is to transform that distorted sense of self to make it more realistic. The reduction in distortion then reduces suffering, generally speaking.

Buddhist philosophy also emphasizes distortion. Buddhist teachers will say that the core lesson of Buddhism is to see without distortion: just seeing reality as it is will be enough, without changing anything else, to end suffering. For example, we believe that things that are impermanent are permanent and get upset when we are proven wrong. We grab at things we are sure will make us happy and are shocked when we get hurt. This is samsara, and it’s based on distortion. The most deep-rooted distortion is our experience of self. Many Buddhist practices ease our grasping at this mistaken sense of self and that reduces our suffering.

So that sounds similar, doesn’t it? But we have to be careful because the definitions of self are different, and so are the ways that their practices transform the sense of self.

Jacob Sky Lindsley co-teaching a meditation class to the public at Maitripa College with fellow Maitripa graduate Anita Bermont, Portland, Oregon, US, March 2016. Photo by Marc Sakamoto.

Mandala: How do the ideas of self in mindfulness-based therapies differ from Buddhist ideas?

Lindsley: Even though mindfulness has roots in Buddhism, the therapies based on it use Western notions of self. The main mindfulness-based therapies more or less rely on three types of self-experience.

First, they talk about a “narrative” sense of self. This is the story that each of us constructs about who we are in the past, present, and future. This is what we refer to when someone asks us to describe ourselves. When we ruminate, we manufacture a narrative of who we are.

Second, there is an “experiential” sense of self. This refers to our ongoing stream of experiences: thoughts, actions, perceptions. This is the content of consciousness. It includes self-talk, mental imagery, emotions as they are experienced—not the character inside the story, which is the narrative self, but the moment-by-moment experience before we fashion it into a story.

The third is the “perspectival” sense of self. This is the sense of being a consciousness that subjectively observes or experiences thoughts, feelings, and sensations. It is a background awareness.

Whenever we say “I,” we may mean any or all of these. We don’t often notice that in ordinary life we have these ever-shifting understandings of “I,” but looking at this schema, you can see that we do. All of these together, in a way, constitute what Buddhists might call the conventional self. They are always changing, and not, by Buddhist standards, actually findable as “Me” with a capital “M.” Buddhism would say that these kinds of experiences are not, by themselves, the root of our problems. The root is deeper: it’s an innate sense of an “I” that is real, solid, enduring, and “me,” and that we believe we can find somewhere in or around our minds or bodies.

Dharma students meditating at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, December 2016. Photo by Laura Miller.

Mandala: How do mindfulness practices impact the self, when the self is categorized in these Western ways?

Lindsley: Researchers are finding that negative self-assessments and negative interpretations of events play a big role in a lot of emotional illnesses, and almost all of this is self-referential, meaning our interpretations—which cause us pain and even ravage our lives—are almost always related to how we see ourselves. As a result, these therapies target the narrative self: they work to change unhelpful and probably inaccurate stories about who we are. Mindfulness plays a central role. Instead of trying to counteract painful thoughts or feelings, mindfulness changes how we experience them. We become aware of negative memories, feelings, or thoughts, we watch them come and go, and we learn to accept them in a non-judgmental way as just passing experiences. So the experiences still happen but aren’t problematized. This actually alters the narrative self. It takes away its teeth. And psychological outcomes improve.

Mandala: Does that really work?

Lindsley: Yes, because whenever we experience a distressing event, how real, or maybe how relevant, we perceive it to be affects how much we suffer. By perceiving what happens as a mere mental event, and not tying it into a bigger story, such as “this is why my life can never improve,” and not ruminating about it, we are not so deeply impacted. Some people call this “decentering.” With decentering, painful thoughts or feelings are not seen as necessarily valid reflections of reality or “myself.” There is a broader perspective. And the thoughts or feelings are defused; we see ourselves “thinking” instead of being the thought. We can step away from the pain our thoughts cause. It works. So decentering is one of the main things people learn in therapeutic mindfulness practices.

Decentering can be described as a move away from the narrative self toward the experiential or perspectival self. This reduces the power of the narrative because people stop identifying it as “self.” What is self is widened. We observe thoughts rather than engage with them, shifting the locus of identity. You’ve likely heard of or done meditations like slowly eating a raisin, experiencing every moment of that taste, or meditatively walking, feeling the floor under your feet … these are ways of shifting identification from thoughts to experiences, or, to say it in another way, from the narrative self to the experiential self. In this broader experiencing, the narrative loses some of its power.

Mandala: What about the third sense of self—perspectival?

Lindsley: Some mindfulness exercises lead us to a perspectival sense of self, particularly meditations in which we develop awareness of being aware. This is seeing and identifying with the “observer” mind; a transcendent sense of self. This also works, but is perhaps a little less common in mindfulness-based therapies.

Mandala: If we just lived in the perspectival self all the time, would we be happy?

Lindsley: The point of mindfulness isn’t to always live in any one mode, but to be able to move easily among them. This weakens the narrative sense of self, which is often the source of mental or emotional problems. Being able to choose among these senses of self also gives people greater mental strength and resilience. The point is to not hold so tightly to our stories about who we are and what has happened to us and where we are going and so on. When people talk about being mindful and staying in the present, that’s one way of understanding what they mean. They can shift into an awareness centered more in experience than thought.

Mandala: How does that compare to the Buddhist goal of realizing the lack of an inherently existing self?

Lindsley: One of the goals of mindfulness is to move people away from identifying with a painful, destructive kind of self and toward identifying with a more adaptive self: going from the always-thinking narrative self to either the experiential or perspectival self.

This does help people. But it is far less radical than realizing the emptiness of that self. Buddhism would say that attributing an identity to any aspect of our experience is going to lead to suffering. So identifying with a more experiential or perspectival self is not liberation. It’s less suffering than identifying with, say, a ruminating, paranoid narrative self. But from a Buddhist perspective we are still making a mistake by finding a self in any of these places and identifying with it. The self we identify with, no matter how subtle, does not inherently exist, and believing it does is going to create suffering. Actually, modern cognitive sciences get that; they understand that the self as we conceive it is not a findable entity, it’s just a special kind of conceptual activity. But then Madhyamaka adds to that conclusion by making clear that this self goes beyond the conceptual; it’s a visceral, innate experience that is at the very root of our emotional life. Changing our ideas doesn’t change it because it runs so deep. We “know” intuitively that it is there—and we are wrong. Our minds actually create this self, like a hallucination, and then we believe in it. That leads to trouble. And we can’t really help doing it.

Mandala: I’m guessing that mindfulness alone doesn’t remove this misconception.

Lindsley: Exactly. The Gelug Madhyamaka meditation tradition that I’ve been studying counteracts the distorted sense of self by using deep analytical meditation, not just mindfulness. First, analysis generates a certain state of mind and then second, the meditator abides as stably as possible in that state. The idea is to bring to mind as clearly as possible the appearance we have of the self. That is called “the object of negation.” Then, we experience a contradiction between this appearance and reality because, using all the reasoning and logic we can muster, we come to see that what appears to our minds is not findable where we suppose it ought to be. We apprehend an absence, essentially, where we expect to find this self we believe we have. Then we abide in that feeling of not finding. After the meditation, the habitual sense of self will return, but over time the contradiction fosters increasing doubt about the self being what we think it is. By repeating the meditation again and again, an understanding develops and deepens. We start to see that the self we perceive is a kind of hallucination, and we stop believing in it. We still exist! But the self does not exist in quite the way we believe; it is not self-existent, independent, partless, permanent, and so on. We are told that this distorted sense of self will eventually disappear altogether and we won’t be bothered by it anymore. Wouldn’t that be amazing?

In a Tibetan gompa, a meditation cushion awaits an occupant. Nepal, December 2016. Photo by Laura Miller.

So you can see that the Gelug approach is different from mindfulness, and so is its result. The Gelug method seems to be able to eliminate our distorted conception of the self, not just help people create a more adaptive sense of self. An over-focus on mindfulness to improve well-being obscures this traditional Buddhist method for confronting our habitual relationship to self and leaves untouched its potential for ending suffering. It just moves the attribution of self from the story, the narrative self, to another part of the self, the flow of experience or the awareness. But it still ascribes “self” or “I” to those things. That’s because it doesn’t offer any counteracting force to weaken or remove this false apprehension. Instead of saying “I am my story,” we say “I am these sensations” or “I am this awareness of the passing flow.” But the mistake, the hallucination of “I,” is still 100 percent there. Some people imply that mindfulness leads practitioners to seeing through the illusion of self, but I doubt this could be true: the problematic self that we believe in so heartily has not been identified or fully countered.

Mandala: Are you saying mindfulness is not so good?

Lindsley: No, no, don’t misunderstand me. Mindfulness can be life-changing for some people. Greater control over attention, more flexibility in responding to emotions and events, and more perspective in our relationship to concepts are all demonstrably useful therapeutic tools. Mindfulness encourages people to be with experience differently and that can be tremendously helpful. And it has been shown to reduce all sorts of symptoms of common clinical issues.

Mandala: What do you see as the way forward?

Lindsley: I think there are reasons to consider expanding the study of meditation-based therapies, and their effects, to include the Buddhist understanding of self. The Gelug practice I’ve described may not be for everyone. But it could help some people. It may also be possible for mindfulness techniques to address the Buddhist notion of a false self more directly by encouraging a reduced identification of any aspect of the body-mind as the self. Care needs to be taken; there are people who might be harmed by practices that undermine whatever sense of self they have. But it seems that for some people, deepening their understanding of the lack of a truly existing self could make them happier and perhaps promote adaptive qualities like altruism. After all, if attributing “self” to ever-evolving experience creates suffering, doing less of it should reduce suffering. That would have to be tested, so pulling these meditations into social science research makes sense. I believe that science can open itself up more to examining Buddhist concepts; they should not be dismissed as just religious ideas. They are testable. Mindfulness came from Buddhism, after all, and is now widely used in secular therapeutic contexts. Stopping believing in a hallucinated self may also be profoundly therapeutic.

I also suspect that mindfulness-based therapies could indirectly undermine the belief in a truly-existing self. As psychology looks for explanations of why or how meditation helps people, I think seeing self-grasping as a spectrum having various levels could be useful. Mindfulness may not uproot self-grasping, but it may loosen it to some extent—moving people along that spectrum. In other words, just the act of moving the sense of self from one domain of experience to another may give people some insight into the process of self-attribution, thereby lessening self-grasping. This could contribute in some cases to the positive outcomes from mindfulness we now see.

My hope is that psychology can take this Buddhist concept of no-self more seriously and really consider its implications for human suffering. If that happens, there can be more study of how meditations that deconstruct the innate sense of self can help people. That’s what I would like my work to lead to.

Jacob Sky Lindsley teaching meditation as part of the public program at Maitripa College, March 2016. Photo by Marc Sakamoto.

Learn more about Buddhist meditation and study by visiting FPMT’s education programs at https://fpmt.org/education/programs/.

Mandala is offered as a benefit to supporters of the Friends of FPMT program, which provides funding for the educational, charitable and online work of FPMT.

1. Madhyamaka means “middle way” in Sanskrit. It refers to a centrist view of selves and other phenomena, neither eternalist nor nihilist, in which their existence is not substantiated by any eternal essence, but neither do they have no basis for existing at all. They exist by way of dependent origination. In other words, Madhyamaka philosophers propound the Buddha’s ultimate view of reality: phenomena, including selves, exist conventionally but are empty of inherent existence.

Billboard advertizing the Kalachakra, Bodhgaya, India, December 2016. Photo by Cynthia Karena.

Mandala is pleased to present two reports on the January 2-14, 2017, Kalachakra initiation in Bodhgaya, India, the 34th such initiation His Holiness has granted and the fifth one in Bodhgaya. The first report is by free-lance reporter Cynthia Karena, and the second that follows is by FPMT’s South Asia coordinator, Frances Howland.

Cynthia Karena describes her personal experience of the Kalachakra:

Each morning I looked out over rolling rows of maroon-robed monks and nuns waiting for His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama to arrive. For ten days, this is how I started my day—joy, anticipation, prayers, mandala offerings, and of course chai (sweet milky tea).

Sangha at Kalachakra, Bodhgaya, India, January 2017. Photo by Jane Seidlitz.

His Holiness launched the event by saying, “In Buddhism, transformation isn’t based on faith. We apply antidotes to negative attitudes.” He emphasized that prayers alone are not enough. Hence, he dived into teachings on emptiness, and pointed out that the Kalachakra initiation is also a tool for transformation, aimed at ripening our minds and empowering us to practice the yoga of the Kalachakra tantra. His teachings were more direct and forthright than I’ve experienced them in the West. He encouraged analysis of everything, not just Buddhist teachings, noting, “We are in a time where we need to check the reality of things, even the Buddhist teachings.”

The crowds were significant—about 200,000 people according to the Central Tibetan Administration. This was fewer than the Kalachakra in Bodhgaya in 2012, but still many people sat outside the teaching grounds in tents and lined the surrounding streets. I heard with sadness that some Tibetans could not attend. It was reported that thousands had to scramble to return to Tibet because authorities had threatened their family members with job loss and other consequences if they did not.

Crowds attending the Kalachakra, Bodhgaya, India, January 2017. Photo by Jane Seidlitz.

In spite of the crowds, I found the event well-organized. Water trucks tried to minimize dust (an almost impossible task with so many people), and organizers were responsive to issues as they arose. After crowds jostled through a bottleneck of buildings the first day, the next day brought better barriers and traffic controls. A police presence ensured security and crowd control. Even viewing the sand mandala at the end was well-organized, with different sections of the audience—Sangha, Tibetans, foreigners—being allocated their own viewing times, making for a sedate rather than frenzied experience as at some past initiations.

And back to the chai. There was always a cup of it to be had during the teachings, and the sight of monks running at top speed through the crowds carrying teapots became a familiar one. While most of us savored our mugs of tea in peace, the occasional person got their head bumped by a metal pot as the tea monks hurtled by. The chai was expertly made in massive pots in a makeshift kitchen nearby; under the circumstances, I had to admire its quality and quantity!

The experience offered me a huge dose of inspiration to apply antidotes to negative attitudes. My challenge will be to keep going once home—away from the tremendous spiritual inspiration of His Holiness.

Cynthia Karena is a member of Tara Institute in Melbourne, Australia, who regularly travels to India. She is also a journalist and researcher, and has degrees in science and education.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Bodhgaya, India, January 2017. Photo by Bill Kane.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama holding up a placard offering good wishes made by student of FPMT’s Maitreya School. Bodhgaya, India, January 2017. Photo by Bill Kane.

Frances Howland describes the details of the Kalachakra and the role of FPMT:

Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Richard Gere attending the Kalachakra, Bodhgaya, India, January 2017

Students from FPMT centers around the globe assembled in Bodhgaya in January for the Kalachakra. FPMT’s Root Institute for Wisdom Culture, set amidst beautiful grounds overflowing with statues and stupas, was filled with guests including Lama Zopa Rinpoche; Tenzin Ösel Hita; Yangsi Rinpoche; Cherok Lama; Tenzin Phuntsok Rinpoche; Tenzin Rigsel, the three-year-old reincarnation of the late Khen Rinpoche Lama Lhundrup; and other lamas and geshes, as well as many FPMT Sangha. Even actor Richard Gere was among the guests.

His Holiness Karmapa, head of the Karma Kagyü school; His Holiness Sakya Trizin, head of the Khon Sakya lineage; and the newly appointed 103rd Ganden Tripa, His Eminence Sharpa Chöje Jetsun Lobsang Tenzin, the head of the Gelug lineage, all sat alongside His Holiness the Dalai Lama during the initiation.

More than 220,000 people in total gathered to participate in the ceremony. It was translated into nineteen languages simultaneously, and broadcast on various FM channels to those present. His Holiness was visible to the whole teaching ground area, and tech-savvy monks captured and broadcast the event live on sixteen mammoth LCD screens and eighteen televisions.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Bodhgaya, India, January 2017. Photo by Bill Kane.

The Tibetan diaspora arrived in force for the event, while Buddhists from across greater Asia appeared in vibrant ethnic costumes. Over 40,000 people came from the Himalayan regions, including Nepal, Ladakh, Bhutan, and other areas. In recent years, the event has also seen the participation of many Buddhists from inside China; this time there were approximately 2,200 participants from Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland, alongside 8,500 Westerners. Ninety-two countries in total were represented. Participants sat on the ground under the blue and white ceiling of a huge tent, with special areas allotted to each group.

Twice daily, monks and other volunteers delivered refreshments to the appreciative crowds: salty butter tea with rounds of Tibetan bread in the morning and sweet tea in the afternoon, meaning more than 200,000 pieces of bread were made each day along with enough tea to fill seven metal pots each holding 3,000 liters (800 gallons). Sangyal Gyal, who has made the bread for three previous Kalachakras, was in charge of the massive operation, overseeing 300 staff. All the ingredients were paid for by donations.

Tea, water, and kusha grass for the initiation, Bodhgaya, India, January 2017. Photo by Cynthia Karena.

The program started on January 2 with four days of teachings on Shantideva’s A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life and Kamalashila’s The Middling States of Meditation. Then came the Kalachakra itself. Kalachakra, or “Wheel of Time,” is a tantric practice that, although advanced and esoteric, has a tradition of being offered to large public audiences. The practice revolves around the concept of time (Skt. kala) and cycles (Skt. chakra), from the cycles of the planets to the cycles of human breathing. It teaches how to work with the most subtle energies in the body on the path to enlightenment while developing bodhichitta, the aspiration to attain enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings.

Sand mandala, Bodhgaya, India, January 2017. Photo by Cynthia Karena

The main Kalachakra deity resides in the center of a three-dimensional mandala palace along with many other deities. The palace is represented by a six-colored mandala of sand particles made on site by specially trained monks and dedicated to both individual and world peace; everyone was able to view the mandala. His Holiness explained, “[The Kalachakra initiation] is a way of planting a seed. The seed will have a karmic effect. And one doesn’t need to be present at the Kalachakra ceremony in order to receive its benefits.”

Crowds preparing for the initiation, Bodhgaya, India, January 2017

The event was completed on January 14 with the conferring of an Avalokiteshvara empowerment (Tib. jenang) known as “Chenrezig Who Saves from the Lower Realms,” followed by a long-life ceremony offered to His Holiness. His Holiness summed up for those who had gathered, saying that they must not go empty-handed back to their lives after the teaching. Rather, they must go home with kinder hearts, as people who, if they cannot do good, at least should do no harm. He went on to say that since we all have the seeds of compassion in us, we must nurture them by using our intelligence to identify the advantages of having compassion and disadvantages of not having it.

Monks hand out long life pills made of tsampa to the crowd, Bodhgaya, India, January 2017. Photo by Jane Seidlitz.

There was one particularly exciting moment for FPMT. It has long been the tradition at the beginning of the teachings for different groups of people to sit before His Holiness and recite the Heart Sutra. Root Institute’s own Maitreya School, a free school benefiting impoverished children from Bodhgaya and neighboring villages, was given the opportunity to do this at the 2017 Kalachakra.

Maitreya School students recite the Heart Sutra in Sanskrit to His Holiness, Bodhgaya, India, January 2017. Photo by Bill Kane.

Ven. Tenzin Paldron, director of Root Institute, explained: “Dee Chandrashekhar, FPMT India’s national coordinator, had developed a tune for the Heart Sutra in Sanskrit and a couple of years ago Lama Zopa Rinpoche asked her to come and teach it to the Maitreya School children. She came last summer, and the children learned it. With their teacher they reviewed it on a regular basis, to the point where they felt confident. They were ready. Twelve girls and one boy sat in front of His Holiness and the whole audience and recited the Heart Sutra. They also offered a handmade placard with wishes for a happy 34th Kalachakra puja. It was historic; I don’t think children have recited the Heart Sutra in Sanskrit for His Holiness before. And they are very devoted when they recite—they do it with their full heart. His Holiness was deeply moved; he called it ‘wonderful’ and ‘inspiring.’ And he offered one hundred thousand rupees (US$1,500) to be used to take all 190 of the Maitreya School children on a picnic. The children were so happy!”

His Holiness talks with students from Maitreya School after their recitation, Bodhgaya, India, January 2017. Photo by Bill Kane.

Mandala asked several participants about their experiences. Cherok Lama, now in his mid-20s, lives at Sera Je’s Kopan House and is currently in his second year of Madhyamaka studies. Rinpoche described his experience of the Kalachakra: “I traveled here by train from Bangalore with around sixty other Kopan monks from Sera Je and the tantric college. It took us eighteen hours to reach Varanasi and then we were delayed for a day by fog. At the teaching site the geshes were seated down with the monks and the rinpoches up on the stage with the dignitaries. I was in the Sera Je lama group. There were seven of us sitting together including three from Kopan. On the first day, the two staying closest to the teaching grounds got up at 4 a.m. to come and save us places on the stage so we could sit together.” He added, “The last time I was here I was younger and less interested in the teachings. I was more interested in being in the crowd and mingling. This Kalachakra is my fourth or fifth, and because I have finished my Prajñaparamita studies I could better understand the teachings His Holiness gave. It has been much, much more meaningful this time.”

Tenzin Ösel Hita at the initiation, Bodhgaya, India, January 2017. Photo by Bill Kane.

Ven. Paldron also told Mandala how Root Institute was involved in the Kalachakra. “Getting ready for the Kalachakra has been an intense time for us. We are packed with about 150 guests and many more staying in tents in our nearby Stupa Garden of Compassion. Even getting this place ready felt like a purification in preparation for the Kalachakra. And then it was so special to see all the flowers blossoming and to have FPMT Sangha and lay people from all over the world! We formed a Root Institute Kalachakra organizing team of around twelve very competent and dedicated people who came together to prepare a newsletter, print fliers, figure out the food, and deal with registration and accommodation. Overall, people seemed very pleased. I feel very, very grateful.” 

Gabriel Forrer from the Netherlands was the director of Root Institute from 1990 to 1995. Lama Zopa Rinpoche asked him to return to Bodhgaya to help get everything ready for this Kalachakra.  He reported that “it was a lot of work for me and the twenty-two Indian staff who were hired for this purpose. All of us working here were too busy to attend any of the teachings but we were able to watch it in the gompa via live streaming. We felt very fortunate!”

Gabriel Forrer with some of the workers at Root Institute, Bodhgaya, India, January 2017. Photo by Jane Seidlitz.

Rafael Ferrer from Spain is the FPMT’s European regional coordinator. He said, “Coming to Bodhgaya, especially for a Kalachakra with His Holiness, is an opportunity to know yourself better, to connect to yourself. We are very lucky to have Root Institute as our center where we can stay. Seeing Lama Zopa Rinpoche and all the other lamas coming and going gives a sense of family, and you meet so many Dharma friends. I felt really lucky to be able to visit the Mahabodhi Stupa and to practice and meditate there. It is probably the best place in the world to do that. I encourage everyone to come here!”

Some of Root Institute’s Kalachakra volunteers, Bodhgaya, India, January 2017. Photo from Root Institute via Facebook.

FPMT’s national coordinator for the Netherlands and former European regional coordinator Annelies van der Heijden, from Amsterdam, was at her first Kalachakra. “I do not usually like crowds, but somehow this one seemed quite relaxed. I expected more panic, more busyness, more tension. It was very inspiring even apart from the teachings, mainly because of the organization but also because of what His Holiness is trying to establish in the world among different religions. The first day, there was an interfaith event with so many religious traditions represented. I think this is such a big message for the whole world. It is not that it is new, but I think on this scale and at this time it is so relevant.”

Bodhgaya, India, January 2017. Photo by Bill Kane.

On the final day of the ceremony, in front of the crowds and in the presence of Bihar’s chief minister Nitish Kumar and Tibetan prime minister Dr. Lobsang Sangay, His Holiness called the 34th Kalachakra in Bodhgaya “a tremendous success.” Prime Minister Lobsang Sangay thanked His Holiness, praising him as “the greatest Nalanda master of this century.” His Holiness indicated that he would offer more Kalachakra initiations in future, given that he expects to live past the age of 100. What good fortune for everyone!

Frances Howland lives in Nepal. A midwife, she works in the field of health in South Asia and Tibet. Frances has worked for the FPMT since 1984 and is currently the FPMT South Asia regional coordinator. She has a Master’s degree in public health.

Mandala is offered as a benefit to supporters of the Friends of FPMT program, which provides funding for the educational, charitable, and online work of FPMT.

The late Khen Rinpoche Lama Lhundrup with Dieter Kratzer, Tara Mandala, Germany, 2004.

Dieter Kratzer is an FPMT registered in-depth teacher who has been teaching the Dharma for forty years. He spoke with Mandala associate editor Donna Lynn Brown about his development as a teacher from the early 1970s to the present day.

Dieter, how did you meet the Dharma?

Dieter Kratzer leaving Toronto, Canada, in 1973, a trip that would lead him to Kopan Monastery in Nepal. Photo courtesy of Dieter Kratzer.

In 1972 I left Canada, where I had been living, and went traveling all through Europe into Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan. From there I took the overland route through the Khyber Pass to India. In Dharamsala, I encountered the Dharma, and my first teacher was Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives. I met Lama Zopa Rinpoche briefly at Tushita as well. Then I heard there was a one-month course at Kopan Monastery in Nepal, so off I went. That was in 1973. I met Lama Yeshe there and I knew I had found my home. I was ordained in March 1975 by Lati Rinpoche and a year later received full ordination from Kyabje Ling Rinpoche. I lived at Kopan and in Dharamsala from 1973 through 1977, doing a lot of practice and retreat.

And how did you start teaching?

One day at Kopan, in 1975, Ven. Marcel Bertels asked me if I could give a talk about guru devotion. The idea apparently came from Lama Yeshe. I asked when, and he said, “Now!” “I beg your pardon?” I was in shock, but an hour later, I found myself talking to 200 people. That was the start. I was nervous, but people seemed to like it, so that gave me courage.

In the spring of 1976, I was asked to lead a meditation course: forty-five people, twenty-two days. Two nuns assisted, Venerables Karin Valham from Sweden and Elisabeth Drukier from France. I felt I could rely on them and that made me comfortable. And between the three of us we could speak to most of the students in their own language one-on-one even though the teachings themselves were in English.

Sangha at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, 1976. Front row, from the left: Yeshe Khadro (Marie Obst), Dieter Kratzer, John Feuille, Thubten Pende (Jim Dougherty), Adrian Feldmann (Thubten Gyatso), Jeffery Webster. Back row, from the left: Thubten Yeshe (Augusta Alexander or TY), Nicole Couture, Margaret McAndrew, Thubten Wongmo (Feather Meston), Nick Ribush, Sangye Khadro (Kathleen McDonald), Scott Brusso, George Churinoff, Bonnie Rothenberg (Konchog Donma or KD), Jampa Konchog (Yogi), Thubten Pemo (Linda Grossman), Chris Kolb (Ngawang Chotak), Marcel Bertels. Photo courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

Afterward, Ven. Nick Ribush came to me and said, “Well done!” I responded, “How do you know? You weren’t there.” Ven. Nick laughed and said, “My friend from Australia didn’t run away!” That was success in his eyes.

Soon after, I led a second course. These were the first two courses in which a Western teacher taught Western students at Kopan. It was Ven. Nick who asked one day, at Lama Yeshe’s suggestion, if I wanted to lead the next November course. “Why not?” I answered. Lama Zopa Rinpoche was the teacher and I led the meditations, following his advice, and dealt with all the organization. During 1976-77, the Sangha—twelve nuns and fifteen monks—underwent rigorous training in lamrim, and I was asked to design and lead that study program. I still have the notes.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche with Dieter Kratzer, Nepal, 1976. Photo by Dan Laine, courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

At one point, Ven. Marcel asked me to help him run the business he was creating in Kathmandu to support the Sangha. But Lama Yeshe intervened and said that I was not to do business; I was to teach. That was a clear signal. Then Lama asked me to go back to the West and teach there, so in 1977 I left Kopan. I was the spiritual program coordinator at Manjushri Institute in England until late 1979 and gave teachings there as well as elsewhere in England, including at universities: Oxford, Cambridge, Leeds.

How were you handling cultural issues? Being a German teaching in English, teaching an Asian tradition in the West, being a monk among lay people …

My first language is German, but my Dharma language was English, so it was easier for me then to teach in English than in German. Later, when I was back in Germany after having spoken English for so long, I had trouble finishing sentences in German, because I translated them from English! It wasn’t English that was the problem for me.

As for Tibetan Buddhism being foreign: I didn’t find that I needed to make many adjustments in those days. It was OK back then to be exotic. That was expected, even preferred. People were looking for a change from Western culture. And they accepted the traditional ways of teaching that I had learned from the lamas, especially from Lama Yeshe—he was my idol. The way he communicated was unbelievable, and it was my great wish to be as much like him as possible. My way of starting talks in those days was saying, “Buddhism is about you. It’s about your feelings, your hopes, your fears. It’s about your mind and how you work with it.” That opened people up to listening. Then cultural differences seemed irrelevant.

Later, I started to understand that there were still cultural issues, especially being a monk around lay people. Here is an example. I left Manjushri in 1979, taught in France for a time, and then got an order from Lama Yeshe: “You go Germany. You make center.” So I established the Aryatara Institut, as it is now known, in Munich. I organized teachings there and gave teachings myself.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Dieter, 1976. Photo courtesy of Dieter Kratzer.

That’s when I first noticed clashes between the Asian tradition I had taken on and European ways. There were seven of us living in a residential Dharma center in the country: three laymen, three laywomen, and a monk, myself. I had done lots of retreat—a few years in total, in Lawudo and Dharamsala and so on—something Lama Yeshe had emphasized. So I had a bit more Dharma knowledge. And that came out when we chatted about Dharma around the kitchen table. It didn’t go down well, to be honest, and I wasn’t sophisticated enough to be skillful. I had no mentor to discuss it with; I was on my own. For the others, it was challenging having a monk around: some people were comfortable with my robes, but others had trouble relating. They would criticize me for small things: if I wanted to stay in silence for a while they would say, “Why don’t you talk?” but if I talked, they would say, “Why are you talking?” Lama Yeshe had told me to wear lay clothes when I went to town, but the others didn’t like that. And so on.

Teaching was the part that went well. In German culture, when you explain why you do things, people feel comfortable. It bridges the cultural gap. So I explained a lot: why we do prayers, mandala offerings, prostrations, everything. People understood that and liked it. So teaching was where I felt I was succeeding. And teaching was what mattered most to me anyway. But I found the social side painful.

The gates of Nalanda Monastery, France

After several years I left Aryatara Institut and went to live at Nalanda Monastery in France. I was again the spiritual program coordinator. I knew a little French but I taught at Institut Vajra Yogini in English. There I didn’t perceive cultural obstacles: when I taught, the students hung on to my words. They were like sponges, that’s how badly they wanted the Dharma. That made teaching a joy. So France was a decompression after Aryatara. I was happy there.

After a few years at Nalanda, I had worked for a long time and I asked Lama Yeshe if I could do some retreat. “You come to India at the beginning of next year,” he said, “and you and I, we go to meditate together.” Can you imagine? I was overjoyed. Then he fell ill; he died in March that year. That was hard.

I’m guessing that the passing of Lama Yeshe ended one phase of your life in the Dharma. How did you regroup and go on?

I didn’t go to America for Lama Yeshe’s cremation. I had talked to Lama Zopa Rinpoche who had talked to Lama Yeshe, and Lama Yeshe advised that I go to India to do retreat. And so I went. Lama knew I wanted to keep teaching, but I needed a chance to go deeper into practice so that when I taught again, I would have more to offer. To teach, one needs real experience of the Dharma; that is essential. We have to become the Dharma to teach the Dharma! I stayed in retreat for almost two years. When I finished, it was 1986 and Lama Zopa Rinpoche sent me to Singapore via Hong Kong.

Dieter Kratzer teaching on vows at the request of Lama Yeshe, Main Stupa, Bodhgaya, India, 1982. Photo by Ina Van Delden, courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

What did you do in Hong Kong?

I taught Westerners in Hong Kong for a few months. At first I taught only in the traditional way. But that didn’t attract many people. “Exotic” wasn’t the fashion any more. So I started explaining things in a more psychological way, more in tune with the Western mind. The result was dramatic. I had started with only three or four people and within a few weeks over forty people were attending. I realized that, while the purity of the teachings had to be kept, for Westerners, it was better if explanations fit their culture and mindset.

What was it like to teach in Singapore?

Lama Yeshe had said, “We have to expand to the East.” In Singapore, the culture is Chinese, but I knew nothing about Chinese culture, nothing at all. It started well: I was a monk, which gave me automatic respect. People listened avidly and soon I had up to 150 people at every talk. I stuck to a traditional approach for the most part. For example, when I talked about the four noble truths, I didn’t hesitate to talk about how much suffering we can experience. But I experimented a little. I discovered that I could explain the lower realms both literally and psychologically. The same was true of refuge: I learned to explain it both literally and psychologically, meaning that one can develop into one’s own refuge; one can develop the Three Jewels in oneself. So I ended up teaching not exactly the way I taught to Westerners but not totally traditionally either. Teaching in Singapore was generally a success, I thought. And as the first Western FPMT teacher to be sent there, I was able to play a part in establishing Amitabha Buddhist Centre. That felt good, and still does.

Lama Yeshe visiting Singapore, 1984

But personal interactions were more difficult. People were kind to me, and I was invited for meals, taken out for rides, shown the countryside—yet the cultural differences started to show. At first I behaved just as I would in Europe. But I came to realize that I needed to be more careful about how I talked, for example, to ensure that no one ever lost face due to something I said. When that happened, I discovered, the person involved would not see me or talk to me again. I didn’t make a lot of mistakes, but I made a few, and that was enough to create difficulties.

My greatest challenge was my robes, which led me to be seen as “holy.” Sure, I had done some retreat and study, but I still felt I was an ordinary person with many weaknesses. The way people saw me and the way I saw myself were so different, I could not reconcile it. In a way it was nice to be treated as special, but I knew I was not special in that way. There was an outer me that was too distant from the inner me, and that left me deeply unhappy. I wanted authenticity, to be the same inside and out. So I ended up thinking hard about ordination.

I also started to feel more and more lonely. I would give a talk to maybe 150 people, then someone would take me home and I would be by myself. The contrast was striking. Around that time a woman appeared in my life, unplanned. My inner quandary made me open to someone who really saw and cared about me, my troubles as well as my virtues. This process of discernment about keeping my robes lasted quite a while. I still wanted to teach; that was what mattered most. I asked Lama Zopa Rinpoche if I could teach the Dharma as a layperson. He paused for a while, but then said yes. In the end, my main reason for disrobing was not attachment, but rather my sense of dislocation or disorientation. Still, my loneliness was the final straw, and I disrobed.

Prajnaparamita with Devotees, folio from a Shatasahasrika Prajnaparamita, Tibet, 11th century. Photo by Ashley Von Haeften. Flicker Creative Commons.

How did that affect your life as a Dharma teacher?

I lived for a while in France. There, I knew a couple who were running a small meditation group. They asked me to give a talk. I hadn’t done that since I disrobed. I hesitated; I was very unsure of myself as a teacher without my robes. They urged me to try. So I gave a talk in a mix of English and French: my French was not so good. And their response was overwhelming. They were happy, and more important, they connected with the teachings and with me as a person. I discovered that I could communicate better without the barriers the robes created. When they said that I explained the Dharma in a way that let it enter their hearts, it was a breakthrough for me. It was one of the highlights of my teaching life. And it gave me the confidence, the inner security, to teach again. I knew I could pursue what was most important to me in life: teaching the Dharma.

How did the next phase unfold?

For a while, I traveled a lot to teach: Europe, Australia, various places. And I did fifteen months of retreat at O.Sel.Ling in the Spanish mountains. This was the early 1990s. Lama Zopa Rinpoche then asked me to go back to Aryatara Institut in Germany as the director and teacher: a big job. I worked sixteen-hour days, seven days a week. Eventually, I went out on my own. I was teaching various groups; people would invite me and I also still taught at Aryatara. After a few years of traveling around, I meet my wife, Maria. We hit it off from the very first! So fantastic.

Dieter with his wife Maria. Photo courtesy of Dieter Kratzer.

I’m guessing that brought more changes.

Yes. In 1996, we moved to a small town not too far from Munich. I began to give teachings in our home, first to two or three people, but quickly the number of students grew and we built a meditation hall that could hold up to fifty people. With the blessings of Lama Zopa Rinpoche, we called it Tara Mandala. We also bought the property next door as a guest and retreat house. Khen Rinpoche Lama Lhundrup visited us in 2004 and recommended that we ask to be part of FPMT; first we became an FPMT study group and then an FPMT-affiliated center in 2008. I have taught full time there for the last twenty years.

What factors have helped make you a good teacher?

In the early years, I used to think that because I had knowledge and could talk well, I was a bit special. It was a lack of humility really. I soon realized that I had to have an attitude of learning from my students. They showed me where I could improve. For example, once I was teaching in England, and Rob Preece, who is an FPMT registered teacher himself and a psychotherapist, was acting as my assistant. I gave a talk on how reincarnation works. Afterward, Rob said, “Dieter, that was garbage! No one knew what you were talking about!” I was fuming. But I went back to my room and reflected. Although it was painful, I realized that he was right. The next day, I taught the same topic but in a different way. When I looked at Rob’s face, I saw he was smiling. I felt so grateful. So I started out thinking that everything I taught was OK, and fortunately some people, like Rob, told me where I had to do more work. That was how I developed as a teacher.

I also believe that teachers have to be a living example of the teachings; the teacher can be the teaching. That means not just having experience of the Dharma, but also living one’s life in a way that inspires confidence and forms the basis of good relationships with others. I have a lot of help from my wife in this. We’ve been together for more than twenty years and we live very harmoniously. She supports me and I support her. Our example inspires people, and that makes us happy and gives us strength to continue. Lama Yeshe said, “If there is energy, there is center. If no energy, no center.” Keeping a center going is tough. It is important, as a teacher, to stay in one place, to be available to meet people’s needs. That’s different from traveling teachers. They don’t have this close relationship with students. Setting an example and having good relationships are both part of transmitting the Dharma. Lama Yeshe said once, “We want quality, not quantity.” That stayed in my mind. For me it’s best to have small groups and work closely with people. So I teach small groups, ten to twenty-five people, a few times a week, year round, in a way that I get to know people and they know that they can rely on me.

Dieter with students at Tara Mandala, Germany. Photo courtesy of Dieter Kratzer.

Another factor. Even though I must be one of the longest serving teachers in the FPMT, I still prepare for practically every lesson, out of respect for the students. I prepare the content, I collect my mind, I concentrate on the subject matter. In a way I don’t have to: I can talk off the cuff now on almost anything. But I don’t. Every student is different, every group is different, and I open my mind so that I can tune in; I get a feeling for those present and teach according to that feeling. I think this intuition comes from having the inner conviction that what I am doing is the best thing in the world—there’s nothing better than teaching the Dharma.

So teaching is my profession, my vocation. I have learned over the years various ways to express the Dharma so that different people can relate to it, can make it a living experience. When I teach, I may choose certain words or analogies. Others can’t see this, but it may have taken me years to develop that particular approach to a subject. A lot of hard work, thought, and experience go into this. Having had forty years to deepen my own practice and sharpen my teaching skills—what a precious gift!

The cobbled courtyard of Tara Mandala, Germany. Photo courtesy of Dieter Kratzer.

What are your thoughts about how best to transmit Buddhism to the West?

The message is an old message. Yet it is up-to-date in its description of the human condition. The message has to be passed on, but that means explaining it so that people can relate to it, even if that varies by culture. At one point when he was visiting Germany, Lama Yeshe told me, “When you are in Germany, you teach German Buddhism!” He meant I should use my own wisdom to adjust my teaching to each environment—along with always taking care not to water down the meaning, but to keep the purity of the lineage I received from him. That was a challenge—but satisfying when I felt I succeeded. So although I vary my style of presentation, essentially I teach the words of the Buddha as explained by Lama Yeshe, who was the perfect teacher.

Fundamentally, we are not Germans or Tibetans, we are just people who suffer. The minds of people everywhere are pretty much the same. I see my role as doing everything I can to alleviate that suffering.

How would you describe your life as a teacher right now?

Who would have guessed that I would teach the Dharma for forty years? To run a center and teach there, with my amazing wife beside me, to see her children grow up in the Dharma, to have two grandchildren as well—they are seven and three years old and learning to do prayers and prostrations! I couldn’t be happier; I couldn’t be more fulfilled. Looking back over four decades I know in the depths of my heart that teaching the Dharma is the greatest privilege a person can enjoy. It is thanks to the kindness of my guru Lama Yeshe that I have been able to do this. I want to go on as long as my body and mind allow. I am determined to teach for many years to come!

Dieter Kratzer, now 75, is an FPMT registered in-depth teacher. He met the Dharma in 1973 and was among the first Westerners to lead meditation courses at Kopan Monastery in Nepal. A monk for twelve years, Dieter has now spent forty years doing the work he was requested to do by the Lamas and also found closest to his heart: teaching the Dharma. Dieter is currently the resident teacher of Tara Mandala in Bavaria, Germany, an FPMT center he and his wife Maria established twenty years ago.

Mandala is offered as a benefit to supporters of the Friends of FPMT program, which provides funding for the educational, charitable and online work of FPMT.

Ven. Tenzin Namjong.
Photo by Abhijeet Kumar.

Ven. Tenzin Namjong (Matthew Pasion) was born in 1977 in Hawai’i, USA. He ordained in 2007 and is currently in the tenth year of the geshe studies program at Sera Je Monastery in South India. This interview brings together a series of email conversations he had with Mandala associate editor Donna Lynn Brown.

Ven. Namjong, how did you meet the Dharma?

I studied philosophy at Princeton. I thought I was going to do a Ph.D. in philosophy, but I got disillusioned because academic philosophy seemed to have lost the big picture, meaning how we should live our lives. So I went to work in finance. That wasn’t very fulfilling. I got interested in yoga and, through yoga, meditation. Through that I got into Buddhism. What resonated with me in Buddhism is that there is this rich philosophical tradition, but all of it is about how we should live our lives.

I started meditating and reading different books from the Eastern spiritual traditions when I was living in New York in the early 2000s, then I left my job and went traveling in Asia. My first stop was Japan and I stayed in a Zen monastery. Then I went to Thailand and did a vipassana retreat. In India, I did Ven. Antonio Satta’s vipassana-Mahamudra course at Root Institute. That was where I first dipped my toes into the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. His Holiness the Dalai Lama was teaching during Losar in Dharamsala, and so I went there and received teachings on Words of My Perfect Teacher—a Nyingma lamrim text that gives an overview of the path to enlightenment. I went back to the US, and was doing vipassana, which I continue to love, but reading Shantideva and other Mahayana texts. I returned to India thinking I would study Tibetan and Sanskrit so I could do a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies. But the more I studied and practiced, the stronger the desire to ordain become, so after two years in Dharamsala, on the advice of my teachers, I went to Sera Je. I ordained the day after I arrived.

At Sera, you have to study in Tibetan. How has that gone?

Prior to Sera, I had only studied Tibetan for nine months. When I got to Sera, my plan was to use one year to prepare, including improving my Tibetan, and then start the geshe studies program the next Losar. This was in 2007. My teacher there said, “Yes, that’s OK. Take this year to study Tibetan.” Then one day I went to a puja where we read the Kangyur and I saw a monk—it was hot—fanning himself with the pages of the sutra. When I met my teacher after I said, “I can’t believe what I saw in this puja. There were people fanning themselves with the Dharma!” And he responded, “OK. I think you should start debate.” Related or not, that’s how it happened. And so I started in June of my first year there. At that point, I had not even been learning debate, just Tibetan.

Fortunately, one of my housemates, a New Zealand monk named Jampa Chöpel, taught me the basics of debate. I had read the late Daniel Perdue’s book—Debate in Tibetan Buddhism—but that’s different from actually doing it. One conversation I remember … You know that objects of knowledge include permanent phenomena and impermanent phenomena, right? So Jampa asked me, “The subject ‘object of knowledge’ itself, is that permanent or impermanent?” I was stumped. I just sat there thinking. He said, “You can’t just sit there pondering! Answer whatever you think.” I said, “Well, OK, impermanent.” And then he said, “No, it’s permanent …” There is an axiom: if a phenomenon has both permanent and impermanent parts, it is permanent. Working with him like that is how I got up to speed.

I started going to debate and my Tibetan was not very good, but actually, I believe it improved more by going to debate than if I had just stayed home and studied.

Ven. Namjong memorizing a text, Sera Je Monastery, India, September 2009. Photo courtesy of Ryan Matsumoto.

What is your schedule at Sera?

The academic year is divided into so-called “on sessions” and “off sessions.” During the “on sessions,” there is debate in the morning from 9-11 a.m. and then again in the evening from 6-10 p.m. During the off session, there is no morning debate and in the evening, debate runs from 6-9 p.m. In the morning, before debate, and at night after debate, we memorize and recite texts. Reading textbooks and commentaries is usually done in in the afternoon, or after morning and evening memorization. On top of that, there are often pujas and group prayer sessions that start at 5:30 a.m. There aren’t pujas every day, but sometimes there can be three or four. Each day, I try to do a bit of meditation and slowly go through the practices that Lama Zopa Rinpoche has given me, but the emphasis is on study. I heard that in Tibet, monks weren’t allowed to take initiations or even go to a lamrim teachings until after they graduate. That has changed in India, but that mind-set of study being foremost is still there. When I tell people we’re studying so long, up past midnight and waking up at five, they say, “What? That’s a monastery? I thought monks were more peaceful.” We’re trying to radically transform the mind, and difficult circumstances allow for more growth and change. I try to remember that when I’m feeling, “Oh my gosh, this is so difficult.” The geshe studies program lasts maybe twenty years, but samsara is beginningless—and if we don’t do the work to gain liberation and enlightenment, it will also be endless!

What role does debate play in your program?

By far the main avenue of learning at Sera is debate. Some people are surprised to hear that we have only two or three hours of classes per week. But we debate several hours a day. As we advance, there is even less class time. Once you know how to study, you read a text and then settle your doubts on the debate courtyard rather asking a teacher to tell you. It was a bit of a change for me to grasp that listening to the teacher is not so much to receive an answer as to get more questions, more doubts, so there is more to debate. That’s part of the reason we have twenty years. For example, for some questions, I can see there are good reasons on both sides. So I’ll debate these questions over and over, from both sides of the issue, not necessarily trying to come to one resolution—just experiencing all the arguments.

Do you like debate?

I don’t know about always liking debate, but it’s very beneficial for my mind. His Holiness the Dalai Lama emphasizes how we need to be 21st-century Buddhists: not merely relying on scriptural quotations, but using reasoning to establish the veracity of the teachings. He often quotes the Tattvasamgraha: “Like gold [that is acquired] upon being scorched, cut, and rubbed, my word is to be adopted by monks and scholars upon analyzing it well, not out of respect [for me].” Intense debate is the means by which we gain clarity about the teachings—particularly the four noble truths, selflessness, and emptiness. And years of debating key scriptures and concepts generates conviction. Then this conviction creates tremendous energy for practice.

Ven. Namjong surrounded by books while studying for debating exams in his room at Sera Je Monastery, October 2015. Photo by Ven. Tenzin Legtsok.

How do you think debate leads you to knowledge and realization?

All suffering comes from the mind, especially from distorted views about reality. If we discover the truth of reality, we can abandon the distorted views at the root of our suffering. Our senses are not accurate about hidden phenomena, and some of the key principles in the Buddha’s teachings—impermanence, selflessness, emptiness, past and future lives, the four noble truths, and karma—are hidden phenomena. These have to be realized for the first time by a reasoning consciousness. The purpose of debate is to develop our reasoning skills so we can realize these. You can’t just repeat, “All phenomena lack inherent existence, all phenomena lack inherent existence” and get a realization of emptiness! You have to see your own innate view and then use reasoning to discover what is really true.

Debate is analytic meditation in action. It isn’t primarily about defeating an external opponent. Rather, we need to recognize and refute our mistaken ways of thinking using reasoning. The answer in and of itself is not that helpful if you haven’t arrived at it through first identifying and then refuting the wrong view. The late Choden Rinpoche remarked that clapping the hands once on the debate courtyard (which is done every time a question is asked) has more benefit than three months of retreat. I think this is because studying and reflecting on the Prajnaparamita has so much benefit, as is explained in the sutras themselves. I have also heard that some past masters got their first realization of emptiness right in the middle of a debate, so the debate process definitely helps us to recognize and refute our wrong views, the most important one being the view grasping onto true existence.

Can you describe how debates proceed?

Dhi!

A debate starts with an invocation: “Dhi, jitar chöchen.” “Dhi” is the seed syllable of Manjushri, the buddha of wisdom. One standard explanation is that this means, “Dhi: in just the way Manjushri investigated the subject.”

There are two roles in a debate: the defender and the questioner. The defender has to put forth positions, and the questioner’s job is to make the defender contradict himself or abandon his earlier positions by showing that they give rise to faults or undesirable consequences. The questioner does this by starting from the defender’s thesis and then “throwing” a series of logical consequences that would seemingly follow from the earlier assertions. The questioner, appealing to scriptural passages, generally accepted tenets, and even common sense, tries to take these consequences to a point where the defender cannot maintain his position.

The questioner starts the debate. Often he gives a fragment of a quote. The defender has to then identify where in the root text, commentary, or textbook the passage is from, and supply the rest of it. He is then usually asked to reconstruct the outline of the text. At first, I was confused by the emphasis Tibetans place on learning outlines. Now, I see the utility: it provides a way to quickly run through the main points of the text. Listing the outlines is a scanning meditation on the whole text.

Usually, the initial quote will be illustrative of a larger point. For example, if we are debating about bodhichitta, the questioner may quote the Abhisamayalamkara: “Mind generation is the wish for compete enlightenment for the benefit of others.” After the defender goes through the outline, the questioner will set the groundwork for the debate. One common way to do this is to ask the defender to posit the definitions and divisions of the topic. Then the questioner may try to determine the “limits of pervasion.” A pervasion is a logical entailment: if “A” then necessarily “B.” The questioner will ask for the pervasions of various phenomena: how they interrelate. Once a pervasion is agreed to, the questioner will try to find a counter-example to show the defender has erred; then the debate goes on …

What is easy in debate? What is hard?

The questioner has a lot of freedom to decide where the debate will go. Defending is more difficult because the questioner sets the agenda, so he can direct the debate to where he feels comfortable. The defender is at the mercy of the questions. But one good thing about being the defender is that, if you don’t know the answer, you can just give one of the four responses and it is up to the questioner to prove the point. Sometimes, if you haven’t studied so much that day, and you’re asked a question you haven’t really thought about, you can just answer however seems reasonable at that moment, and see what kind of logic, reasoning, and quotes the questioner has. Sometimes one day I’ll answer one way; another day, I’ll answer the other way, just to see what reasoning people bring to the table.

Watch Ven. Namjong’s Tibetan classmates during an evening debate on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALepfYu8DkE&feature=youtu.be

Could you lead us through a short debate?

Sure. A basic example goes like this:

1. The questioner says: “It follows that if something is a color, it necessarily is white.”
2. The defender has only four standard answers: “Yes,” “Why,” “The reason is not established,” and “No pervasion.” If the defender agrees with the statement that if something is a color, it is necessarily white, he will reply “Yes.”
3. The questioner will then try to posit something that is a color and not white. He might say, “Take the subject red. It follows that it is white.”
4. The defender has the same choice of answers as before. If he agrees, he can say “Yes.” But it is common sense that red is not white. If the defender asks, “Why?” then the questioner has to supply a reason that would establish that red is white. Since the defender has already agreed that whatever is a color is necessarily white, the questioner can say, “It follows that the subject red is white because of being a color.”
5. When reasons are given, the defender has two standard answers. If he denies that the subject, i.e. red, is the predicate, i.e. a color, he will respond, “The reason is not established.” The questioner will then have to give further reasons why red is a color.
6. If the defender agrees that red is a color, but whatever is a color is not necessarily white, then he will answer, “No pervasion.”
7. But that pervasion was agreed to by the defender earlier in the debate, so now if he answers, “No pervasion,” he will lose his earlier position.
8. If that happens, the questioner will say, or more often shout, “Tsar!” while slapping the back of his right hand on the palm of his left hand. Tsar means “finished,” and here it signifies that the defender’s original assertion has been defeated.

It sounds more like a logic game than Dharma!

At the beginning, one of the main goals is to teach technique, and this is easier if it is first done in relation to everyday objects like colors. So then it does look like just a game! But it would be a mistake to think that, because we use these same techniques to debate serious topics. This style of debate allows very sharp distinctions to be made. That helps to clarify important issues for both parties.

NIght-time debating at Sera Je. Ven. Losang Dargye (standing) and Ven. Jampa Khedrup (seated), November 2013. Photo by Sandesh Kadur.

Is it very competitive?

Especially the first several years—and even now for some people—being tsar (defeated) can be like the end of the world. “That’s not supposed to happen!” Because of that, some people defend more and more difficult positions because they don’t want to go against what they’ve already said. That kind of competitive, “I’m gonna show him” attitude declines over time. I’ve been here over nine years and now I find debate pretty comfortable. Where I still see some showmanship and competitiveness is in the winter debate session where the monks from Sera, Drepung, and Ganden all debate together. That can generate some fireworks!

Personally, when I’m debating and I realize I’ve made a mistake, I like to be upfront, and say, “OK, give me a tsar and let’s go down some more interesting avenues.” And I admit I can be a bit of a showman too. For example, even if your opponent gives the “right” answer, you can act shocked—like they have said the craziest thing possible. If the opponent isn’t confident in his position, he may start to doubt his position, which can make his answers deteriorate. Again, it isn’t just about the right answer. I think of debate as performance art. That makes it more fun. One time, a visitor to the monastery saw us debating, complete with all the clapping and pushing, and thought we were practicing kung fu!

It must be hard on the ego sometimes …

Once in the first year I was here, I was trying to hold a point, and someone listening said, “You don’t speak Tibetan very well. Why not?” How do you even respond to that? It was a real blow to my ego. Oftentimes the benefit of debate is just to watch how the ego plays its games. Some days I get totally crushed in debate. Even in my third year, there would be days when I would understand very little. And I would get a bit down, thinking, “I can’t believe I’ve been here three years and I’ve barely understood anything my debate partner said!” It’s good for us to see everything that’s in the mind. The lojong teachings talk about bringing unconducive circumstances onto the path. A lot of the learning is not even about the text, but going through an extremely difficult program and seeing how your mind reacts to different situations. And debate is really, really good for that.

When we debate, we have to watch our motivation. There is a tendency, after a debate when we go home, to look up different scriptural passages and think, “Oh, I really could have gotten him on this point!” We have to watch our motivation because the eight worldly concerns can come in, especially pride. Pride manifests as jealousy towards our superiors, competitiveness with our equals, and contempt for those we consider beneath us. For example, when we have our debate exam, they post our scores on a board along with our names for everyone to see. Then if we see someone score higher than us, even though we think we are “better” than him, the mind freaks out. For several years, as an antidote to this, I didn’t even go to look at the results, but it was no use because all my classmates would look me up and tell me how I scored anyway! There is a balance though: because we do have a certain level of pride, we will study harder when the results are public. If we are skilful, we can actually use the ego to overcome ego.

Tibetan monks at Sera argue a point during a night-time debate. (L to R) Vens. Ngawang Gyatso, Losang Nyima, Losang Gyatso, Losang Trinley, and one unknown, Sera Je Monastery, India, November 2013. Photo by Sandesh Kadur.

What are some of the ways debate has helped you?

First, I often read certain passages in my room and I think I understand what they mean. Then in debate, I see that the things I had glossed over, thinking I had understood them, were more complex than I thought. So debate forces me to go deeper into the text to penetrate the meaning.

Second, having to debate in public where I have to reveal what I know and don’t know pushes me to put consistent effort into studying. If any of us don’t keep up with the class, debate makes that clear to everyone. I find this helps me to fight laziness!

Third, some topics have good reasons for arguing either side; there are many points of contention. The previous incarnation of Kyabje Song Rinpoche said that if there are no divergent views, then there are no scholars. Debate helps me appreciate and value the different positions. And it forces me think about things from different angles, and consider questions that wouldn’t necessarily come to me if I were just studying on my own.

Last, being constantly confronted with things that I don’t know is the best antidote to pride. As it says in the Jataka tales: “A fool who thinks he’s wise is the real fool. A fool who knows he’s a fool is at least wise in that regard.” Discovering how little I actually know has been one of the best things for me. It has spurred me on to further inquiry, which will hopefully lead to more knowledge one day. You know, I can’t claim to have any understanding of the scriptures yet. But I can see that, thanks to the kindness of my gurus, debate really has benefited my mind and my practice.

Debate can be quite physical. Is that how you stay in shape and keep up your energy?

Although debate can get physical sometimes, generally it isn’t. What you may have seen with monks pushing and shoving is the exception, not the rule. Most debate sessions are just with one partner, and for that you are spending half the time sitting down answering anyway. Even when you are standing up, the clapping isn’t enough to make your heart rate go up. So I can’t call it exercise.

That said, I do consider it important to exercise. I’ve had my share of illness at Sera, so I try to stay in shape. There used to be a group of monks that would go jogging before dawn, and I joined them for a time. But then the abbot spoke out against it. I think it is mainly that the people in the surrounding areas think it is un-monastic. The abbot said that if monks want exercise, they should do prostrations, which will benefit the next life as well as this one. Since then I don’t jog, I do prostrations.

Nonetheless, I try to do other exercise as well, as the prostrations only work some muscle groups and I can only get my heart rate up so much by doing them. His Holiness the Dalai Lama emphasizes that we have to take care of our health by proper diet and exercise—taking long life initiations isn’t enough. Since time is a factor, I have been experimenting with high-intensity interval training. I can do a full workout in twenty minutes and then have renewed energy for my studies and practice. And I do it where only my housemates can see me, not lay people!

Lama Zopa Rinpoche giving advice to the Sangha staying at IMI House in December 2015 during His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s lamrim teachings at nearby Tashi Lhunpo Monastery. In the photo are (L to R) Vens. Tenzin Namjong, Tenzin Gache, Tenzin Namdak, Tenzin Legtsok, Tenzin Michael, Losang Jinpa, and Losang Tsondru. Sera Je Monastery, India, December 2015. Photo by Roy Harvey.

Is your long-term goal to finish the geshe studies program and then teach?

My long-term goal is to attain enlightenment for the benefit for all sentient beings! Medium-term, I’ll ask Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche, because following the guru’s advice is the best thing, always. It seems I’ll continue studying at Sera for as long as I can. I’ve just finished my last year of the Prajnaparamita, where we study the Abhisamayalamkara, and then there’s four years of Madhyamaka. I definitely want to study and finish Madhyamaka. If the study goes well, I’ll be in a position to do many things: teach or translate or do retreat. From my side, I want to do retreat; I think that would be good for my mind. Also, since there’s a lot of interest in Buddhist philosophy in the West, and not too many teachers, I think teaching would be part of what I do, if people want to hear what I have to say! I consider myself very fortunate to have lived in a monastic community, so perhaps there is something I can do to help to build a monastic community in the USA for American monks who don’t have the inclination to come out to Asia. How about somewhere without snow in the winter? I’m conditioned to the Hawai’ian or South Indian weather! Anyway, the bottom line is, I’m continuing my studies and if things go well, I’ll be in a position to do a number of things to benefit the Dharma and sentient beings. Then whatever Rinpoche asks of me, to the best of my ability, I’ll do.

Sera IMI monks in the courtyard of IMI house at Sera Je Monastery, India, November 2013.(L to R) Vens. Gyalten Lekden, Tenzin Legtsok, Tenzin Gache, Tenzin Namdak, Jampel Tsering (child), Jampa Khedrup, Losang Khedrup, Tenzin Namjong, Gyalten Choklang. (The boy monk, Jampel Tsering, is Ven. Tenzin Namdak’s student and lives with the monks at Sera IMI house). Photo by Sandesh Kadur.

Learn more about the monks and nuns of the International Mahayana Institute (IMI), a community of Buddhist monks and nuns of the FPMT, at imisangha.org.

Mandala is offered as a benefit to supporters of the Friends of FPMT program, which provides funding for the educational, charitable and online work of FPMT.

Dr. Roger Jackson gives Dharma teachings at Sravasti Abbey, February 2016. Photo courtesy of Sravasti Abbey.

When did Tibetan Buddhism come to the West? In 1958 Geshe Wangyal established a monastery in New Jersey where several of the first Americans to learn Tibetan studied in the 1960s. Sakya lama Dezhung Rinpoche arrived in the USA in 1960 and began teaching at the University of Washington. Lama Yeshe started to teach Westerners in India in 1967, and Geshe Lhundub Sopa taught at the University of Wisconsin from 1967 on. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche started teaching in Scotland in 1967 and the USA in 1970. Tarthang Tulku founded the Nyingma Institute in Berkeley, California in 1972. So more than five decades have passed since the transmission began.

What can we learn from looking at how Tibetan Buddhism is taught in the West? Longtime teacher Dr. Roger Jackson talked to Mandala associate editor Donna Lynn Brown about the ins and outs of teaching Buddhism.

Roger, how did you meet the Dharma?

In high school in the mid-1960s, I got interested in all kinds of things! One year I was an existentialist, the next a Marxist…. But I was especially fascinated by “the mysterious East.” I majored in religion at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, and studied Zen, Daoism, and Hinduism; I really liked Vedanta. Philip Kapleau Roshi came and led a sesshin, and that was my first meditation experience. At the end of college, my now-wife Pam and I decided to explore the spiritual scene and moved to the Bay Area. It was Allan Watts one day, John Lilly the next, a weekend at the Nyingma Institute where we met Dudjom Rinpoche. We tried a lot of things but didn’t commit. After saving up $1,500 each working for the Post Office, we set off on a “spiritual journey,” arriving overland in India January 1, 1974. But we seemed to have obstacles—we missed His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala; we couldn’t stay at the ashram we liked in Rishikesh; India’s poverty overwhelmed us. We made our way to Nepal, where we saw some Tibetan Buddhism, but at that point, it seemed too exotic. We were about to head to Auroville in South India, but someone showed us a brochure for Kopan, and it hit us like a bolt of lightning. We realized that, if we were serious about spirituality, it was time to put up or shut up. So we registered for the spring 1974 course. I struggled right from the initial claim that mind is beginningless. Really? And after a few days of sitting under a shaking, moaning tent through earthquakes and thunderstorms, I was ready to pack it in. But Pam said, “No, I’m totally into this.” So I stayed out of attachment, and then gradually came around. At the end we both took refuge. We were incredibly impressed by the two lamas—they were the first religious people we’d met who seemed to embody what they taught. And they had this delightful bad cop/good cop routine. Lama Zopa would talk for days about the hells, then Lama Yeshe would come in and say, “Oh, but you have buddha nature.”

Roger Jackson in 1974 with Pam Percy and Margaret McAndew at the foot of Kopan Hill at the time of the 7th Kopan course. Pam and he later married; Margaret ordained. Photo by Wendy King.

And what led you to study with Geshe Sopa?

We found out Geshe Sopa was teaching Buddhist studies at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. That was a dream come true: to study with the teacher of the lamas we so esteemed. In my grad school application I wrote that I wanted to spread the Dharma in the West, and I still can’t quite believe they let me in, because back then scholars were expected to be objective. But they did. Studying with Geshe Sopa was like getting a Gelug monastic education, but I also received a more Western religious studies perspective from professors like Stephen Beyer and Leonard Zwilling. They showed me that Tibet wasn’t quite Shangri-la, and that Buddhism wasn’t just philosophy but also a complicated social reality—actual people living their religion. My dissertation ended up being on the question that confounded me back at Kopan: the beginninglessness of mind. I translated and discussed Dharmakirti’s argument for past and future lives and the four noble truths, along with Gyaltsab Je’s Tibetan commentary. It was later published as Is Enlightenment Possible? I got my Ph.D. and started teaching university in 1983.

You’ve taught Buddhism in both universities and Dharma centers. What’s the difference?

In centers I mostly keep to the tradition. Most of my Dharma center teaching is working through Indian Buddhist texts with American Dharma students at Gyuto Wheel of Dharma Monastery in Minneapolis. From Geshe Sopa, I learned the value of teaching directly from texts, so I present the text more or less as a geshe would—though I’m far from being a geshe!

A college or university is different. I teach by topic, and assign readings from various sources. Above all, I don’t teach “Dharma.” I help students understand Buddhism from an academic point of view. That includes the ideas from great texts, but from multiple perspectives rather than a single authority. In a typical class, I spend a few weeks on philosophy, making sure people know about the four noble truths, emptiness, the bodhisattva path, and so forth, but then I take them into areas like anthropology, sociology and cultural studies. For instance, we will investigate what Buddhism looks like on the ground in Sri Lanka or Tibet. And then we might examine a difficult ethical issue from a Buddhist perspective.

What has it been like, as a Buddhist, to teach Buddhism in universities?

When I started teaching in universities, I didn’t like to admit that I was a practicing Buddhist—most of us in those days kept up this “objective” persona. Some people stayed quiet about being Buddhists until they got tenure. That wasn’t necessary in Dharma centers. But then I taught for a while at a Jesuit university, and they made clear that they valued my Buddhist beliefs because they wanted not just a scholar but someone with whom they could engage in dialogue. I also came to understand that the notion of complete objectivity is ludicrous. So now I tell students I am a Buddhist. It may subtly affect how I explain things, and I want them to be able to call me on that.

Nowadays, it is easier to be an “insider.” We understand that total objectivity doesn’t exist; instead we are methodologically self-conscious, meaning we recognize and admit who we are and proceed as honestly as we can. It’s a shift from modernism, which assumed that there could be a neutral stance or objective knowledge, to post-modernism, which recognizes that we all come with presuppositions. That shift freed people to be who they were. We still have to observe good professional boundaries. Proselytizing is not OK, for example, and we have to maintain a balance among competing views. But this change in the intellectual climate helped Buddhist studies to flourish by welcoming practicing Buddhists.

How do young people take to the Buddhism they learn in universities?

They seem to love it. I joke that one of my jobs is to pop their bubble. They arrive thinking Buddhism’s so cool and Christianity’s so square. Their idea of comparative religion is to contrast the Dalai Lama with the Spanish Inquisition. I have to level the playing field by pointing out that Tibetan history is fairly bloody too. Even so, a significant minority of undergraduates who study Buddhism take up meditation or get additional Buddhist teachings. Some participate in meditation and study programs in South Asia, the Himalayas, or Burma. Back in the 1970s, I wondered if the popularity of Buddhism in the West might die out with the baby boomers. That hasn’t happened. I would guess that His Holiness the Dalai Lama is one reason. He’s a superstar—he has drawn people to Buddhism. There have been skillful presentations of teachings in the West, by him and others, that have made Buddhism very compatible with modern ways of thinking. Western Buddhism focuses mostly on meditation and philosophy. It doesn’t look quite the same as Buddhism in Asia—or in ethnically Asian Buddhist temples here.

How do you teach tantra in a university? What is the objective, and how do you avoid passing on information that is intended for practitioners only?

I taught a tantra course once, and one goal was to undo false impressions: “Tantric sex is a no-brainer for a whiskey man!” said one ad for Glenfiddich a few years back. Then, what I taught was academic material from the public domain. To convey what tantra is, I drew on Tantra in Practice, which is a collection of works by Western academics, and Geshe Tashi Tsering’s Tantra. I talked about the role of embodiment and imagination in practice. Then I contextualized tantra historically in Indian traditions. One reason students think tantra is “cool” is because they’ve heard that the great Indian mahasiddhas were rebels against conventional society, but Christian Wedemeyer, in Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism shows that this claim is overblown: leaving the monastery to practice in a charnel ground was not uncommon in those days, and tantric practice—then and now—has generally been quite mainstream. So I explained tantra’s nature and how it fit into Buddhist practice and society. It’s worth teaching, because tantra is an important part of Asian religious culture, not only in Tibet but also in China, Japan, and Korea. Even Daoism has a tantric side.

We often assume that university courses on Buddhism teach only philosophy, but now you also include practices—rituals, ceremonies, pilgrimage, daily life. Why?

It’s not what students start out thinking Buddhism is, so it’s good for them to learn. If I had seen some of that material, I wouldn’t have been so surprised when I got to Asia. When I started in Buddhist studies, almost everyone was studying philosophy. Over time, influences from psychology, history, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies worked their way in. Now, in Tibetan Buddhist studies, we see as many biographies coming out, for example, as books on doctrine—a sea change. Since it’s my job to expose students to the latest scholarly perspectives, I teach on how Buddhism is practiced in real life, as well as discussing gender, power, social class, and so on. We may want only “truth,” but Foucault showed us that truth is embodied and related to power. We can’t escape that if we want to understand Buddhism. We can’t only study philosophy. And learning how Buddhists live and practice doesn’t scare students away. Most undergrads start out more interested in the ideas; I could do a whole course just on their questions about karma! But education means exposing people to the broader picture, and they come to appreciate that.

Photo by Dreamstime.

There is now scientific research on the effects Buddhist practices, such as meditation and compassion, have on the brain. What impact is that having?

It is definitely bringing people in. For example, psychology and science students take courses in Buddhism because they hear about Dr. Richard Davidson’s research at the Center for Healthy Minds on the effects of meditation on the brain. They start out interested intellectually, then sometimes move toward practice. Because of this research, Buddhism gets seen as not just a “religion” like your parents had, but a science of mind. What gets shunted aside sometimes, though, is the traditional context of practices. Take Mahamudra: it may seem like a simple meditation—just mind seeing mind!—but it was always surrounded by ritual and devotion, and if you extract it from those, you lose something vital.

You studied with Geshe Sopa in a university. Do geshes teach in universities now?

Dezhung Rinpoche taught at the University of Washington in Seattle for many years, and Geshe Sopa was the first Tibetan religious teacher to get tenure in a Western university. Geshe Thupten Jinpa, Ph.D. sometimes oversees Ph.D. students at McGill in Montréal, Canada, and I believe Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi, Ph.D., does some teaching at Emory in Atlanta, Georgia. But I can’t think of any Tibetan masters teaching full time in a North American university right now. One challenge is that geshes do not have Ph.D.s or training in the Western critical method—unless they also complete a Ph.D. And what is expected of scholars here, and the teaching style, are very different. The most common model is to invite lamas or geshes for periods of time to teach particular texts or topics. That works well.

Can you take a critical stance in Dharma centers the way you can in a university?

In a university, we are expected to be historical and critical, but we can be that way in Dharma centers too, even while respecting traditional teachers and teachings. In fact, the ability to shift between one and the other is useful. I think I am invited to teach at Dharma centers because I have academic as well as traditional training, and can talk about both. That’s what I do at Gyuto: I stay within the tradition by teaching texts more or less the way a geshe would, but I bring in my academic perspective by giving historical context and discussing points of controversy. Scholars of Buddhist studies can enrich what is taught in Dharma centers by including important historical, social, and philosophical issues.

Dr. Roger Jackson teaches a class in Tibetan translation at Maitripa College, Portland, OR, USA, March 2016. Photo by Marc Sakamoto.

Are Tibetan Buddhist Dharma centers drawing closer to academic Buddhist Studies?

It varies. Some centers invite academics, like Jeffrey Hopkins, to teach. I gave some talks on Mahamudra at Sravasti Abbey a few months ago. Most centers now understand that Buddhist academics won’t undermine the tradition; we are conversant with both traditional and academic approaches, and can discuss similarities and differences. So the wall is eroding. We shouldn’t think the Dharma can’t stand up to critical and historical analyses of the kind applied by academics.

Has the teaching at Tibetan Buddhist Dharma centers evolved over time?

Not that much. Gelug centers have mostly stayed quite traditional. They still focus on lamrim, for example, without much Westernization. Students sometimes want more meditation, but that’s an adjustment Gelug centers haven’t always made. One result is a steady trickle of Gelug students going to Nyingma teachers to learn Dzogchen. John Makransky, Anne Klein, and B. Alan Wallace are prominent examples. So that’s one issue to consider. Another is how centers can serve both ordinary people and more serious practitioners. Mingyur Rinpoche, a Kagyu-Nyingma master, has created two tracks in his Tergar organization: one for busy lay people with a secular orientation, and the second for those who want to do a more “Buddhist” practice. His Holiness the Dalai Lama also stresses basic teachings for secular people, and more intense practice for those so inclined. I wonder if Gelug organizations should consider creating different tracks as well.

As they progress, do Dharma students need to go to monasteries or other practice centers for higher teachings? Can their own centers meet their needs?

Advanced students can keep benefiting from centers, I think, depending on the center. Deer Park in Wisconsin is one example. Classic texts are taught there throughout the year. These have infinite depths and can be studied over and over. And then Deer Park’s summer courses, currently taught by Jangtse Chöje Rinpoche, intensively cover major texts. That might be the ideal kind of center for advanced students. But even if a center doesn’t have intensive teachings, many have geshes or lamas with whom students can have a personal relationship, and who can give private teachings and guidance. Advanced students at smaller centers might stay part of the community, share rituals, and so on, but then travel for specific teachings or retreats. There are courses and retreats around the world; older students who are retired often travel to take advantage of opportunities. For younger students with fewer resources, going to India or Nepal is a way to get teachings or do retreat at a lower cost. People are traveling quite a bit nowadays to get the experiences they want.

How can Buddhist organizations deal with difficult areas where cultures clash—gender, power relations, and so on?

We are still early in the transmission of Dharma to the West. It’s good that we speak out, but change is not as simple as saying “this is unfair.” Our teachers come from monastic institutions that are very different from our Dharma centers. Western culture is a big adjustment. So we need patience. We can work for change, but we need to hold on to what is good, too. “Buddhist theology” is intended to translate Buddhism for the West, but also to bring into Buddhism the best the West has to offer, politically, culturally, and intellectually—such as a historical consciousness—to help shape the Dharma’s contemporary manifestations. We need to integrate the modern without losing what is essential. The result won’t be one version of Buddhism, universally applied. We will have a spectrum of Buddhisms, from a modernist wing that focuses mostly on philosophy or meditation as applied to contemporary life, to a more conservative wing that preserves traditional prayers, rituals, and ideas. The Buddha gave 84,000 teachings, so we can have more than one approach. And although I advocate patience, I am confident that it won’t take as long as the proverbial bird’s wing wearing down Mount Meru. We will figure it out.

Photo by Marc Sakamoto

Roger Jackson, Ph.D., has been teaching Buddhism since 1983. He is emeritus professor of Asian Studies and Religion at Carleton College in Minnesota, USA, specializing in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism. He is the author of countless academic articles as well the books Is Enlightenment Possible? and Tantric Treasures, co-author of The Wheel of Time: Kalachakra in Context, editor of The Crystal Mirror of Philosophical Systems, and co-editor of Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre, Buddhist Theology, and Mahamudra and the Bka’ brgyud Tradition. He is currently completing a book on Mahamudra in the Gelug tradition.

www.olivieradam.net

By Cynthia Karena; Photos by Olivier Adam

Strasbourg, France hosted His Holiness the Dalai Lama on September 17 and 18, 2016. His Holiness taught from Nagarjuna’s Commentary on Bodhichitta, conferred an Avalokiteshvara initiation, and gave a public talk entitled “Ethics Beyond Religion.”

As the weekend of teachings drew to a close, François Lecointre, director of Institut Vajra Yogini near Toulouse in the south of France, was exhausted but glowing. Said François: “For many people, to work on His Holiness’s visit is the memory of a lifetime. It’s long hours of volunteering; you get very tired and you work to your limits. But you can rejoice that in this life you have had the chance to do such a meaningful thing.”

www.olivieradam.net

Ten Buddhist centers representing the four Tibetan Buddhist schools were involved in this visit by His Holiness, François added, including three French FPMT centers: Institut Vajra Yogini, Nalanda Monastery, and Centre Kalachakra. He explained that in the early 1990s, at His Holiness’s behest, Buddhist centers in France created the Fédération du Bouddhisme Tibétain, so there is never just one center organizing a visit. “Whoever wants to join can,” said François. “It is a way to develop links and harmony among centers. And that FPMT centers help to organize teachings by His Holiness strengthens our link to him and preserves the lineage. Lama Zopa Rinpoche has said clearly many times that our number one priority as an organization is to serve His Holiness by all means possible. So it is great to be involved in organizing his events.”

www.olivieradam.net

FPMT volunteers were involved in reception, seating, security, ticketing, as well as other tasks. “The expertise of FPMT people in webcasts was also a great asset,” reported François, adding that, “a record 1.2 million people listened to His Holiness’s public talk on the webcast. For each of the 8,000 people listening in the hall, 150 people were listening in their homes. Don Eisenberg, who works with His Holiness’s office in Dharamsala, came all the way from India to work with the webcast team on this new set-up that people in charge of Dharma webcasts have been dreaming of for years.” The multi-language webcast set-up had been tested earlier at the Light of the Path retreat with Lama Zopa Rinpoche in the United States, he said.

www.olivieradam.net

François likens participating in the event with His Holiness to a teaching on emptiness. “Problems appear, and get solved. For example, out of his great kindness, His Holiness decided the day before the event to start the teachings one hour earlier than had been planned so that he would be able to give us more. Quite a challenge in terms of seating and security. But we sent an email to the participants and most people got here on time; it went OK. You have to let go of fear and expectation. You have to trust. You’re just a small part of the whole, and you can see that everyone has their part.”

www.olivieradam.net

Ven. Gyaltsen, director of Nalanda Monastery, was the treasurer on the organizing committee, and helped coordinate Nalanda’s participation, which included bringing a mandala from the monastery for use in the initiation and providing the carpentry to make His Holiness’s throne. Ven. Gyaltsen underlined His Holiness’s wish for the different schools of Buddhism to work together on this event in order to build harmonious relations. Since some members of the core organizing team from His Holiness’s teachings in 2011 in Toulouse were involved again this time, the different centers have come to know each other well, “which makes for harmony,” said Ven. Gyaltsen. He added, “To participate in organizing this event with His Holiness is very rare. It benefits many beings, and so many on the internet as well. To be a part of that is very precious, it is amazing. If you have the opportunity, you have to take it.” And there are some unexpected joys amid all the stress. “Yesterday I had the good fortune to be invited to eat with His Holiness, with only 20 people. I never thought I’d eat with him!”

www.olivieradam.net

Ven. Elisabeth Drukier, director of Centre Kalachakra in Paris and vice president of the Fédération du Bouddhisme Tibétain, was responsible for the logistics for all organizing committee meetings. It is Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s wish, said Ven. Elisabeth, that FPMT centers help organize His Holiness’s visits, and working on this one has reinforced links between the three French FPMT centers. “Nalanda and Institut Vajra Yogini are close together; I’m far from them, so the event was a good opportunity to work together.”

Ven. Elisabeth stressed that His Holiness’s visit to France was timely. “The country has suffered a lot, and there are still a lot of threats, particularly in Paris, so a visit by His Holiness is important. He brings a message of peace.” As well, in talking to the Fédération du Bouddhisme Tibétain after the public teachings, His Holiness said Buddhist centers should call themselves centers of Buddhist studies rather than religious centers, reports Ven. Elisabeth. “I share these thoughts,” she added, “because people are coming for study, teachings, and meditation, not for religion. Most of the time they keep their own religion of origin.”

www.olivieradam.net

Audience members were also touched deeply by His Holiness’s teachings. One participant, Anne Paniagua from San Francisco, was in a rush to catch a plane back to America, but was happy to share her thoughts about His Holiness. “He speaks from his heart,” she recalled, “he doesn’t speak in abstract terms. At the core, he spoke about how we can develop and change ourselves as a result of our inner action—change ourselves to produce different results.”

His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Steven Laureys, www.olivieradam.net

Laetitia Franceschini, from Toulouse, took away that she had to really study and not rely on blind faith. “Practice is up to me now, turning everything into the path, not just reading something.” She was also impressed that His Holiness spoke about educating the next generation to be compassionate and maintain harmonious relations with others. “I was happy when he spoke about Muslims. His Holiness said that the phrase ‘Muslim terrorist’ is wrong. He said that any person who wants to indulge in violence is not a genuine Buddhist or genuine Muslim. All major religious traditions carry the same message: a message of love, compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, contentment, and self-discipline. It creates stigma for Muslims when one person’s actions brand the whole community. It was inspiring when he spoke about being harmonious with Muslims, and not focusing on one act. That’s very important. I have Muslim friends who barely went outside after the Paris attacks because they felt people were looking at them in an accusatory way. They felt stigmatized. His Holiness’s thoughts carry weight in the world. He’s such an important figure for peace, harmony, and compassion,” she concluded.

www.olivieradam.net

New Zealand-based FPMT nun Ven. Carolyn Lawler commented that she planned to listen to His Holiness’s Strasbourg teachings again, especially those on emptiness. “Emptiness is really what stuck with me. Do you remember how he said that if we have any image at all, however weak, that is not the ultimate state of emptiness? If we have any image whatsoever of any object or situation, then we still have some measure of ignorance in our minds, due to some unpurified afflictions. This makes it so clear that we need virtue, particularly loving-kindness and compassion, to be present with whatever wisdom we have when meeting any person or situation, because we are limited in our view by our ignorance.” She added, “His Holiness’s teaching made me want to read and meditate much more on emptiness in particular, but also on everything taught in Tibetan Buddhism, because it’s all about getting us out of suffering, isn’t it?”

And that’s an outcome from his teachings that would surely make His Holiness smile.

www.olivieradam.net

Offering service to His Holiness the Dalai Lama is one of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s vast visions for the FPMT organization.

Cynthia Karena has a science degree and a masters in education. She is a freelance journalist and documentary researcher in Australia.

By Ven. Sangye Khadro

The news about Israel in the international media is usually gloomy, but, as is the case everywhere, there are bright stories that don’t make the headlines. One such story is a new project, the Human Spirit Psychoanalytic-Buddhist Training Program, which opened its doors in March 2015. This is a seven-year program, run jointly by the Israel Association for Self Psychology and the Study of Subjectivity (IASPS) and FPMT center Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa (ILTK), to train psychoanalysts. Unlike traditional psychoanalytic training programs, its curriculum includes classes in Buddhist philosophy and meditation.

History and Background

The program is the brainchild of an eminent Israeli psychoanalyst, Raanan Kulka, together with his colleagues. Raanan has been practicing psychoanalysis for almost 40 years; he has also been interested in meditation since the age of 16. Over the years he acquired an extensive knowledge of Buddhism, primarily Tibetan and Zen Buddhism. Feeling that Buddhist teachings and practices – particularly those related to compassion, emptiness, and non-duality – could be helpful to therapists in working with their patients, he began thinking of a new type of psychoanalytic training program that would incorporate Buddhist philosophy and meditation alongside traditional psychoanalytic studies.

Raanan Kulku presenting a book about the Human Spirit program to His Holiness in Italy, 2014. Photo courtesy of Ven. Sangye Khadro.

In 2003, a friend and colleague of Raanan’s, Manuel Katz – a teacher in the Mindfulness Counselling Program held at ILTK – invited Raanan to be a guest speaker in their annual conference. From that time, Raanan and Manuel began discussing the idea of a Buddhist-psychoanalytic training program with Ven. Joan Nicell, then coordinator of the Masters and Basic Programs at ILTK. Ven. Joan, feeling it was important to discuss the project with Lama Zopa Rinpoche, arranged for a meeting between Rinpoche and Raanan in Singapore in early 2011. She was present at that meeting and said it was like a reunion between two old friends. Rinpoche expressed a great deal of interest and agreed that ILTK would work with him to create this program. Rinpoche also said that Raanan should definitely meet with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who would be happy with what he wants to accomplish.

Over the next few years, two teams of people – one in Israel and one in Italy – continued developing the visionary project. In Israel, Raanan and the three other members of the Leading Committee – Manuel, Iris Gavrieli-Rahabi, and Arie Green – worked on planning the psychoanalytic side of the program, selecting teachers, searching for a suitable venue for the school, and seeking funding. Raanan’s wish was for the program to be fully funded so that the students would be supported while studying, rather than having to pay course fees. Fortunately, a wealthy businessman and philanthropist, who was well acquainted with the IASPS, was so inspired by the vision that he offered to fund the entire project for the first seven years. As for the venue, it was decided to locate the project in Lod, a town in central Israel mid-way between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, in which there is a strong demographic mix of different ethnic and religious groups – Jewish and Arab, Muslim and Christian – and socio-economic levels. The project will offer free analytic therapy to citizens of Lod, many of whom are in need of such help but unable to afford it.

In Italy, Joan and a group of senior students and teachers worked on formulating the Buddhist curriculum, based on FPMT in-depth education programs, as Raanan wanted Human Spirit students to have a comprehensive understanding of Buddhism. We came up with a tentative list of topics and resources for the seven-year program, with the understanding that adjustments could be made as we go along, depending on what works and what doesn’t. Several members of the ILTK team – Vens. Sangye Khadro, Joan, and Connie Miller – were invited to Israel from 2011 to 2014 to lead the annual five-day retreat organized by the IASPS for therapists. During these retreats we had a chance to deepen our relationship with and understanding of the IASPS and its work. The three of us, plus several other in-depth FPMT teachers, were requested to serve on the Buddhist faculty of the program. The idea is to have a team of four to six teachers who would teach on a rotating basis. It was eventually decided that Ven. Sangye would teach both semesters of the first year, and the two semesters of the second year (2016) would be taught by Ven. Lozang Yonten and Andy Wistreich, respectively.

The application process opened in March 2014. The plan was to have 15 students in the first program, and another 15 students starting a new program three years later. Applicants had to be licensed psychotherapists with a Masters degree in psychology, psychiatry or social work, plus five years of clinical experience. Despite the strict requirements, 52 people applied – this was probably the largest number of applicants ever for a psychoanalytic training program in Israel. The organizers then had the difficult task of assessing the applicants and determining the 15 who would be most suitable, a process that took seven months. At the same time, renovation work began on an abandoned school in Lod that had been chosen as the site for the project.

On March 1, 2015, fifteen students – eleven women and four men, ranging in age from around 38 to 53 – sat cross-legged in a provisional “gompa” at the Lod school to begin their first lesson in meditation. The renovation work had run into delays, due to permit problems, so the workers had constructed a temporary facility consisting of a classroom, a meditation room, several offices, a common room, and bathrooms. It was the Human Spirit home for the next three and a half months.

Many of the students were new to Buddhism and meditation, so there was an atmosphere of nervous excitement on the first day. The weekly schedule included six 30-minute meditation sessions: one at the start and one at the end of each of the three days we met in Lod. In spite of the usual initial difficulties – physical discomfort, wandering mind, doubts, and so forth – the students gradually settled into the practice and came to enjoy it. In fact, just before the one-week Passover break in April, a few said they would miss the group meditation sessions during the holiday!

The schedule also included two classes per week in each of three domains: psychoanalysis, Buddhism, and humanities. The reason for including humanities in the curriculum was the belief that studying select treasures of literature, art, music, and philosophy from around the world will be another mode of transforming the minds and hearts of the students.

Self Psychology

The classes in psychoanalysis – taught by different members of the IASPS each semester – include studying the classical works of Freud and his followers, but mainly focus on a particular school of psychoanalysis that Raanan and his colleagues practice, known as “self psychology.” It was developed by Heinz Kohut, a Jewish- Austrian man who immigrated to Chicago in 1940 to escape Nazi persecution. There he completed his studies in medicine, neurology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis, and also began lecturing at the University of Chicago. His work led him to develop a different view of human potential than that of traditional Freudian psychoanalysis, which saw human beings as basically motivated by their sexual and aggressive drives. Kohut believed that human beings have intrinsic positive qualities, and whatever psychological problems they experience are the result of unmet needs, particularly during childhood. He asserted that a skillful analyst, using tools such as empathy, can help a patient fulfill their needs and achieve transformation, e.g., from self-centeredness to altruism. Due to this confidence in the human potential – which is quite similar to the Mahayana Buddhist idea of buddha nature – the Human Spirit community feels that self psychology is the most suitable form of psychoanalysis for building bridges with Buddhism. They also believe that for a psychoanalyst to be able to delve into the depths of the patient’s mind and bring about healing, it was important to develop a blend of Buddhist contemplative ideas and the psychoanalytic innovations they have been working on.

Buddhism

As for the Buddhist side of the program, the first semester involved two parts: (1) basic instruction in meditation, and (2) an introduction to Buddhist philosophy, its different schools, and so forth. The second semester also comprised two parts: (1) a gentle introduction to the topic of “transforming suffering into the path” using Thich Nhat Hahn’s book, No Mud, No Lotus, and (2) classes focused on the nature of the mind, specifically its conventional nature of clarity and awareness, and the seven types of awareness explained in lorig (awarenesses and knowers). The students were particularly fascinated with the latter topic; we had a number of intriguing discussions about questions related to their work as therapists, such as whether or not Buddhism has an explanation of the “unconscious,” and if consciousness is individual or collective.

Ven. Sangye Khadro with students of Human Spirit. Photo courtesy of Ven. Sangye Khadro.

The Human Spirit students are not expected to accept the Buddhist explanation of things, nor to actually become Buddhist – this was confirmed by Lama Zopa Rinpoche during his meeting with Raanan in Singapore – although some might choose to do so. Instead, the purpose of the program is for them to become “a new kind of psychoanalyst: embodied and enveloped by Buddhist philosophy and meditation.”

Discussions and Clinical Work

One day per week was devoted to discussions: one was a “Meeting the Dharma” seminar, during which the students could share experiences and insights arising from their encounter with Buddhism and meditation. Another was a “Clinical Seminar” in which the students discussed their work with disadvantaged members of the Lod community. For the first year and a half, each student is required to spend four hours per week visiting a selected “patient” – who could be Jewish or Arab, an elderly person living alone, a child with learning difficulties, or a mother struggling to raise her children with an unsupportive husband. During these visits, the students attempt to practice the tools they are learning, such as empathy, which is particularly emphasized in self psychology, as well as mindfulness and compassion. From the middle of the second year, they will begin to treat patients in psychoanalysis, with supervision from senior psychoanalysts.

The students are also required to be in personal analysis four times per week for at least five years during the seven-year program. They are all parents, some with very young children, so it’s quite a challenge for them to juggle all their numerous personal, scholastic, and work commitments! Nonetheless, they found it highly rewarding to be part of the Human Spirit program. One student wrote: “My first year in Human Spirit has been very special. I’ve discovered a new way of being: a very gentle, kind, and loving way of life; a way to be connected to my fellow human beings and to all sentient beings with compassion, responsibility, and with a sense of calm happiness. I feel very fortunate that I’ve had the opportunity to take part in this path.”

Students and staff of Human Spirit. Photo courtesy of Ven. Sangye Khadro.

Another said that what was so special about the program for her was “learning new ideas, especially the Buddhist ones, letting them sink in, and seeing if and how they change me, my work or my life, and how they ‘communicate’ with other ideas I have about life, about myself, and about the ways I can help people. Meditation is a whole new world for me, and I’m just starting to find my way in it. I feel that being a part of this group of people – students and teachers – is a huge privilege: trying together to create something new that aims to help people.”

A third student wrote that it was her first opportunity to study and practice Buddhism in such a systematic way, and she felt “that the ancient ideas are inspiring our present and future work and studies, as human beings and as psychologists. The meditation and lorig studies enabled me to rethink our everyday and professional concepts. In this process of learning and meditating, I felt that concepts we tend to think of as familiar or already known to us (such as ‘mind’ and ‘awareness’) are now understood and felt in a new way. It is as if ‘something’ that was ‘solid’ and ‘unified’ became a stream of very delicate and elusive moments that keep changing. 

“I also find that Buddhism enriches and expands our ethics: the responsibility for all sentient beings, the principle of equanimity, the gathering of intention and motivation, the practice of mindfulness that helps us remember those ideals and to notice our ongoing conduct and speech. … During meditation the conventional tendency to separate and discriminate between ‘me’ and ‘not me,’ or ‘mine’ and ‘not mine,’ is temporarily dissolved. Therefore, meditation supports the sense of responsibility for others, and also helps to practice empathy.”

Ven. Sangye Khadro, 2011

From Ven. Sangye Khadro: “As I was involved in the program for the entire year, meeting regularly with its students, faculty and staff, I think I can confidently say that it was a life-changing experience for all of us. I wish to express my deepest thanks to all who made it possible, and to dedicate the positive energy we have accumulated that all beings everywhere may become free of suffering and its causes, attain happiness and its causes, and swiftly realize their potential for enlightenment!”

More information about the Human Spirit project can be found at: http://www.selfpsychology.org.il/?lat=en

Mandala brings you news of Lama Zopa Rinpoche and of the activities, teachings and events from nearly 160 FPMT centers, projects and services around the globe. If you like what you read, consider becoming a Friend of FPMT, which supports our work.

Geshe Thupten Jinpa, Portland, Oregon, US, May 2015. Photo by Chris Majors.

In May 2015, Geshe Thupten Jinpa, His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s principal English-language interpreter, came to Maitripa College in the United States to talk about his newest book A Fearless Heart: How the Courage to Be Compassionate Can Transform Our Lives. The book describes why compassion is important for the human species; the structure of Compassion Cultivation Training, a secular, science-based compassion program Jinpa helped develop at Stanford University; and methods for how we can act on an increased sense of compassion in the real world. Jinpa took time to talk with Mandala editor Laura Miller about the book and the development of Tibetan Buddhist practice in the West.

Laura Miller: Congratulations on your book coming out. Would you give us a synopsis?

Geshe Thupten Jinpa: Thank you. The book is divided into three parts. Part one is making the case for why compassion matters and driving home the key point that compassion is part of our natural human instinct. The seed of compassion is in all of us and, increasingly, various scientific research coming from different disciplines is pointing to the fundamental truth that compassion and instinct for empathy are inborn. These are innate; these are not something that we have culturally acquired or learned from some kind of socialization. I refer to some of the very interesting studies of very, very early childhood and the display of children of a much stronger preference towards helping behavior versus hindering behavior. Also, I make the point that given that compassion is part of our natural instinct, it also often plays a powerful role in motivating us to act in a particular way. And therefore, if it is possible for us, as much as possible, to somehow cultivate that and learn to make it a more active force in our everyday life, ultimately it is in the self-interest of the person himself or herself.

This is, I suppose, a self-interest argument for the value of compassion. I show that numerous studies demonstrate how compassion and happiness are closely related. In fact, I refer to compassion as the best kept secret of happiness. This begs the question: if it is natural and if it is so good for us, why don’t we do it more? I bring in and discuss what hinders us from expressing our more compassionate parts – fear and pride, particularly the fear and anxiety that we bring into our relationships with others.

The second part, which is actually quite large, presents the key steps in Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT), a particular program that I helped develop at Stanford University when I was a visiting scholar, which has now been delivered and offered to so many people. We have trained and certified over 100 instructors formally. It has now been used as an intervention program to help treat veterans suffering from PTSD, and there is a private healthcare group in San Diego with 20,000 employees, which has about eight people who have been trained in CCT who are now offering this as part of human resources.

I present the key steps of these CCT practices, but also place each of them within a larger psychological context, which combines both classical Buddhist psychology as well as contemporary neuroscience and contemporary psychology. For example, for the intention setting practice, that chapter has a whole discussion of how we understand intention. What is the relationship between intention and motivation? What is the latest scientific theory on motivation and how does that relate to our perception of the world?

The final part of the book is about how all of this translates into our individual, everyday life. What does it mean to live a compassionate life on a day-to-day basis? I make the point that through cultivation we can transform compassion from a natural response triggered by a situation in front of us, to a more proactive standpoint from which we can relate to the world, a mental perspective. And then ultimately, one of the highest developments is when compassion becomes so natural that it moves from mental perspective and becomes a way of being. I actually have a short section in the book presenting the six perfections – generosity, ethics, patience, joyous perseverance, concentration and wisdom. This is, I say, the way in which the Buddhist tradition has envisioned what it means to live compassionately and behave compassionately on a day-to-day basis. Although this comes from the religious context of traditional Buddhism, the basic principles behind the six perfections have nothing religious about them.

In the final chapter, I envision how compassion will unfold in the larger world.

What has inspired you to write this book?

I have had the privilege to serve His Holiness for so long and I know that one of his main focuses is to promote an appreciation of basic human values. He calls it “secular ethics.” His Holiness is deeply interested in promoting this way of understanding and exploring human experience, and appreciating the key defining characteristics of what makes us human beings. These are qualities of compassion, empathy, forgiveness, a sense of connection, appreciation of others and so on, which are fundamental values. One of the things that His Holiness does is to convey this without any connection to Buddhism or religion. And I have been very impressed and inspired by that line of thinking and work. It has made a tremendous difference in the larger world.

I think where I see my own personal role in this area is to, in one way or another, serve as a kind of cultural interpreter between traditional Tibetan classical culture and the modern West. In my work for His Holiness as an interpreter and also in my writings and translations, I see we are now living in a very exciting world where – thanks to globalization and coming into contact with so many different cultures – we have access to knowledge and insights that were traditionally beyond what was available before. In this kind of situation I believe that when we bring the best of Buddhist traditional knowledge together with the best of the contemporary scientific approach, there can be important mutual contributions.

My own work, particularly for the Library of Tibetan Classics, was more traditional translation work. And that I think is a very important step in the transmission of knowledge and insights from one tradition to another. Most of the major epochs in cultural transformation have come from exposure to a different culture and translation work. In the case of Tibet, translation of classical Indian Buddhist texts completely reshaped the Tibetan tradition. I believe that translating many of the key classical Buddhist texts, especially Tibetan and Indian, will really shape modern sensibilities and modern value systems, including science.

I think in order for these ideas to impact contemporary culture in an effective way, there also needs to be a second-level interpretation. The second-level interpretation draws from the actual translated texts, but they are brought into the idiom and conceptual framework and the language of the host culture. When I translate texts, I am very faithful to the original because I am reproducing what existed in the original. But when I do the second-order interpretation, then my loyalty is really to the host culture, which is the English-speaking world. And in a way, this particular book, if you can call it “interpretation,” would be at this second level.

In the introduction to the book you include a quotation from His Holiness from a Mind and Life  Institute meeting in India where His Holiness is urging scientists to look into the positive qualities of the human mind, like compassion, that can be cultivated through contemplative practice with the idea that with scientific understanding, some of these practices can be offered to the world as techniques to increase emotional well-being, mental well-being. So what strikes me about this quote is how insightful and far-sighted this encouragement from His Holiness was. It seems to be that His Holiness has really been a catalyzing force for this research and findings that are clearing the way for the development and spreading of secular compassion. Can you share some of your thoughts of His Holiness’ role in this and how it has influenced your work?

His Holiness said, after the establishment of the Mind and Life Institute in 1985 and the first conference in ’87, that it became very clear to him that something very important could come out of the meeting of these two investigative traditions – Buddhism and modern science. Both of them are interested in understanding the human condition. In the West, scientists focus more on the outside; in the East, the classical contemplative traditions have focused more on the inside. That is a crude way of putting it, but it is a simple way of putting it. And it makes perfect logical sense to say that if we bring the best of these approaches, then we have a complete picture. That seems to be the basic impulse on the part of His Holiness and he has been right from the beginning an enthusiastic advocate for integrating knowledge.

As these conversations unfolded, it became evident that there are so many resources in the classical Buddhist tradition, particularly when it comes to mental processes. The interesting thing about the contrast between Buddhist psychology and contemporary Western psychology is that, until recently, contemporary Western psychology didn’t really have much to say when it comes to actual mind training. They are interested in understanding the phenomenon of mind, what are its mechanisms, why do certain people behave in a particular way. The focus has been very much on what goes wrong – on the pathology – because the model is medical. His Holiness realized that the focus in the West has been just on understanding the diseases and the pathology. The method that they are bringing is very rigorous because there is a systematic approach looking at the causal dynamics and the connections and their behavioral connections and so on. But, when it comes to recommendations on what can be done, there is a kind of a paucity in the Western approach.

Geshe Thupten Jinpa, Portland, Oregon, US, May 2015. Photo by Chris Majors.

In traditional Buddhist psychology, however, in addition to the tremendous depth of knowledge and understanding about how the mind works, there are also a lot of practices that are recommended that individuals can do, such as practices for how to strengthen one’s compassion, how to open one’s heart; how to develop greater resilience; how to develop greater patience; how to learn to observe one’s thoughts and emotions; how to regulate one’s emotions when one gets worked up; how to develop this meta-level awareness, where one can step back and disengage and observe what is going on in the theater of one’s mind. There are so many resources there and His Holiness basically felt that it makes no sense not to connect the two. Clearly, the Western scientific side could learn from the techniques that are there in the Buddhist traditions as well the insights that are there in Buddhist psychology and science of mind.

That there could be potential offerings to the world from this connection, His Holiness has been prophetic. Look at the story of the “mindfulness movement.” Of course, there is a lot of fad surrounding this, some of which is slightly excessive. But that doesn’t preclude the fact that the mindfulness movement has truly made tremendous contributions in the clinical domain. For example, the prevention of a relapse of depression when mindfulness is added to cognitive behavioral therapy – there is tremendous data that shows its efficacy. The mindfulness movement has in some sense proven His Holiness’ intuition that the meeting of the two traditions can really be very constructive. In fact, people like Professor Richard “Richie” Davidson, who is a pioneer in what is now called “contemplative science,” when you ask them about the evolution of the emergence of contemplative science, will explicitly attribute it to His Holiness and to his remarks at that particular Mind and Life conference, where he asked scientists to use their tools to look at the positive side of the human mind and see if some of the classical techniques actually work, and then adapt and offer them to the world.

It seems that with the popularity of mindfulness, it’s opened the gates for compassion training to come in. Would you talk about that?

I think one of the advantages of mindfulness language is that it is value neutral. That is why it is much more palatable and acceptable in a culturally secular environment, especially in the United State where there is a religious, almost dogmatic insistence on the separation of church and state. Mindfulness, because the language is about attention, present moment awareness, disengagement from habitual thought patterns, observing what goes on in your experience, and becoming more aware of your own body sensations and so on, is value neutral, and the concept is not that difficult to understand. It is difficult to experience it because we do not come into the world naturally gifted with mindfulness; it is something you need to cultivate. However, the concept itself is not that difficult, and that’s why there’s much less resistance in terms of receptivity to concepts about mindfulness.

People who’ve engaged with mindfulness have the ability to naturally experience what it feels like to be in a calmer state of mind, to be in a more focused state of mind. It allows for deeper qualities of mind; you can get a taste, and that is why it much easier to understand. Something like compassion is much more complicated because compassion also has a strong emotional component. Also, historically, the word “compassion” has belonged to the value side of language and has been seen as being part of the religious value system, which creates some cultural resistance on the part of some individuals. Now it’s changing because science is increasingly showing us that compassion is an inherent part of who we are as social creatures. It has nothing to do with religion; it’s part of who we are as human beings. I think the resistance to compassion that arises from thinking that it is a religious value only is disappearing. It’s His Holiness to whom we should really give the credit because His Holiness has been saying for over 40 years across the world that compassion is a natural human quality. Although historically it may have been the religious traditions that have promoted compassion, in itself, compassion is independent of religion. He has been a very strong voice advocating that and people are beginning to listen to this.

Can you describe the work that is being done at Stanford University on compassion training?

My work at Stanford began in the winter of 2007. In 2005 there was an important conference on depression, craving and suffering, where His Holiness interacted with a group researchers and scientists at Stanford University. It was truly inspiring for a lot of researchers and clinicians who were there who had never thought something like this could potentially be of interest to the researchers in the clinical community. This led to a conversation within the core group of scientists at Stanford School of Medicine that here was something that had real potential. A neuroscientist by the name of Jim Doty, who attended the conference and is now a faculty member of Stanford, had an endowed a chair in the neurosurgery department and set aside some funds to explore the possibility of setting up a kind of a permanent center there. He invited me to be part of the founding group and once I had a conversation with him, I was convinced that there was a real potential.

At that time, although there were individual researchers doing scientific studies of compassion, it wasn’t really accepted as part of the legitimate field of scientific inquiry. One of the early works that Jim and I did was to use Stanford’s name and power to convene people from many different universities and different fields – neuroeconomists, clinical scientists, basic researchers, psychologists, child developmental psychologists, including Christian theologians and Buddhist scholars – to our first conference that looked at how we are defining compassion. That was very, very successful. In fact, one senior Stanford psychology professor, who was actually a real sceptic, came up to me on the second day and said, “I have to admit I was wrong.” They were genuinely impressed. Then we did another conference focusing on the measures of compassion. We had another one that explored the language of mental life. These were all attempts to bring people together from so many different backgrounds. People like Barbara Fredrickson, who studies loving-kindness’ effect on the vagus nerve; Kristin Neff, whose work has primarily been on self-compassion; and Paul Gilbert, who is a pioneer in developing compassion-based therapy dealing with people who have pathologically high shame, were there and so on and so forth. We had Richie Davidson, who is a pioneer in this whole area. At the last conference I attended, at Telluride and organized by Stanford, I was one of the main speakers. I was so happy because out of 50 to 60 speakers, about 80 percent of them were completely unknown to me, which means the field is opening up. Instead of feeling depressed that I didn’t know the majority of speakers, I took it as a cause for celebration because this means that now compassion is becoming mainstream.

While I was a resident visiting scholar at Stanford, I thought that there was a fantastic opportunity for me to develop a secular compassion training program, taking inspiration from MBSR (mindfulness-based stress reduction). I developed an eight-week compassion training program. Although the initial program was developed by myself and was tested out on Stanford undergraduates, it soon became clear that the program could benefit a lot from adding on other approaches coming from contemporary Western therapeutic traditions like Steven Hayes’ acceptance and commitment therapy and Marshall Rosenberg’s nonviolent communication, which has some very powerful tools, like how to distinguish between the language of observation that talks about the pure facts, and the language of judgement, where we bring in our interpretation of the situation. I think this is a powerful way of becoming more aware of how much judgement we bring into describing a situation because you do it by learning the language, which is in some ways more practical and easier than trying to imagine what to do, which is the meditation-style approach. I also spent several long weekends together with a team of local experts – Kelly McGonigal; Erica Rosenburg, an emotions researcher and student of Paul Eckman; and Margaret Cullen, who is MBSR trained and a family therapist – coming up with exercises. In the end, the final instructors’ manual that we came up with, which is the actual protocol, has a very strong interactive component. I really feel happy that I had this opportunity and space to do this.

And who is the training aimed for? Is it for anyone? 

When I was developing this program I was very clear that we shouldn’t keep in mind any specific target constituencies. As much as possible, it should be a generic program that could be offered to adults. My understanding is that later on we could use this as a basis to develop special adaptations for specific needs, whether for the pain management, stress relief, or whatever. I really wanted to have a very generic program that could benefit ordinary people.

In chapter 1 of your book you include a short quote from Fred Rogers: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” This quote resonated for me in the days and weeks after the earthquake in Nepal. And I personally feel like it’s this ability to look for the people and to actually rejoice in the compassion that is arising that has helped me not despair for what is a sad, sad situation in Nepal. So could you share a little bit more on that and how that works?

I think that often when we are confronted with tragedy and situations where we see other fellow human beings doing horrible things to others, or when it’s a natural disaster, it is very natural for us to get fixated on what is wrong. Biologically, we are programmed to detect threat and danger, and fear is such a dominant emotion because fear is a signal when something is a threat and you need to do something about it. Because of this, we get so fixated on the negative side of things.

On the other hand, if we’re able to step back a little bit and also look at the positive side, every tragedy has some kind of silver lining. For example, you cite the current tragedy in Nepal with the earthquake. If we just get fixated on the tragedy and the problem, and as we are not physically there, we feel powerless and also we feel depressed. Yes, the perception of the suffering is very important because that is what is going to pull our heartstrings, which is what is going to motivate us and move us. But at the same time, you are able to also notice good things, because in these kind of situations people help out and it brings out their best. Sometimes there are people who take advantage and loot – but this is what makes human society very interesting. For most people, tragedy brings out their best. What happened in New York on 9/11 is a typical example of how human beings have this ability to rise to the occasion. Sometimes we don’t notice this, but I think being able to notice this is very good for us because we don’t want to lose hope; when we give up, then that’s the end of story. If we are able to notice the good side, then it really energizes us and motivates us, and that is why I love that quote. I’d heard about this before but I never really gave it much thought. But during the Boston Marathon bombing, some of the newscasters talked about this and I thought “Yes!” I remembered it, and it is a powerful advice.

Can you talk a bit more on this?

There are numerous practices that I present in the book. One of the things that people who have been completely unexposed to the Dharma, like a VA group in Palo Alto that received an expedited six-week training course, find powerful is the simple exercise of equanimity, recognizing that “Just like me, this person wants to be happy, this person do not want suffering” and learning to use it almost like a mantra. It’s a very simple concept, but for a lot of people who struggle with outrage and short temper when they see someone being unfair, being able to just recall this phrase has been a powerful antidote restraining them.

One of the other things I suggest in the book is intention setting. Those who are brought up in the Buddhist world and those who have been exposed to Buddhism know that intention setting is such an important part of everything that we do. It’s like setting the tone. And whatever tone you set colors what unfolds afterwards. But many people who are not exposed to this kind of idea don’t think about it. For example, if you are running a meeting, if you set a clear intention right at the beginning (you don’t even have to share it with your colleagues, you can do it mentally; it takes only a minute or half a minute) and said, “OK, I’m going to bring my best to this meeting; I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt to everybody and I will recognize that everybody who is making suggestions is going to be making them from the best part of their intention; I will acknowledge and honor them and I will do what is the most wise and compassionate thing to do here,” just setting that intention completely changes the way you would respond and react to other people’s opinions. You wouldn’t take them as a threat or challenge to your views. Those kind of things I think are simple practices, but they have huge, huge implications.

Geshe Thupten Jinpa at Maitripa College, Portland, Oregon, US, May 2015. Photo by Chris Majors.

This next question is more relevant to FPMT centers. What is the role of the Western Dharma center in the development of secular compassion? Where do they fit in?

One of the things that His Holiness has expressed in his aspirations for Maitripa College is that in addition to teaching Buddhist studies, the college could teach something that is more universal and that people can utilize regardless of whatever affiliations they may have. I think FPMT is the largest Gelug association in the West and is the fruit of the beautiful vision of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. You have a tremendous network of sangha members, who have emotional connections with centers all over the world. I think its capacity for outreach is enormous; its presence is everywhere. Also, because of its longevity – FPMT has been in existence for now several decades – there is a depth of resources in terms of experienced people within the community. I would hope that some of the senior members of FPMT would take up this second-level translation that I was talking about earlier, catering to the needs of people who identify with Buddhism and need standard Dharma teachings, but at the same time have the ability and facility to offer this larger, more secular Dharma to people who are simply interested in finding more peace in their life and who are not particularly interested in having any religious affiliation; to people who are looking for some ability to bring more peace into their life, focus more, relate to their family members and the world in a more compassionate way, have a more enriching life, and make their life meaningful and serve society in a meaningful way. That is a very deeply spiritual and legitimate aspiration.

I would hope that the FPMT would think about that because the people who are steeped in the traditional practice are in some ways the best teachers to bring general-level Dharma into more secular contexts with integrity and depth behind it. The only thing that you would need is a little bit of training in the language, because it is a different way of presenting the Dharma. But that is not a very demanding challenge. There are many people teaching mindfulness and so on, but the depth of their personal experience and realization is very shallow, whereas people coming from the FPMT with many, many years of experience and practice, have much greater depth. It’s simply a matter of learning how to present it.

The majority of FPMT members are Western Dharma practitioners, so you don’t have the problem of language. Tibetan teachers are much more used to doing traditional teachings and on top of that they have the problem of language. Their lack of proficiency in English precludes them from having a deeper appreciation of the cultural needs and the cultural sensibilities and nuances of the particular host culture – non-Tibetan FPMT members don’t have that problem.

There are a couple of FPMT centers right now that are beginning to develop projects in this field that we’re talking about. One is Maitripa College, with their Mindfulness and Compassion Initiative. And another is at Instituto Lama Tzong Khapa in Italy, which is developing some sort of science academy. Very early days, you know, but, I was wondering given your experience working at Stanford and with the Mind and Life Institute, what advice you can offer in terms of developing a project and taking it forward.

I think perhaps the most important thing is the sincerity of the motivation because when you have a sincere motivation, you are able to bring a clarity of vision. We are all imperfect human beings, so nobody can come up with a full vision of how things are going to unfold. But where we can make a difference is to ensure the purity of our intention, and also as much as possible, develop a clarity of a vision of what exactly we are trying to do. When these two things are clear, then it becomes a lot easier to actually initiate something. Whoever is in the leadership position needs to have a passionate belief in whatever project they are leading because passion is infectious and can inspire people working on the project as well as funders. It also attracts other people into the movement. If you look at many of the movements, most of them have been successful because there are one or two people who were completely passionate about it – they believed in it – and because of their passion, they are resilient, they don’t get bogged down just because there are obstacles along the way.

A kind of different question, I’m very curious about what your thoughts are regarding the possibility or role of Western high level meditators with realizations – kind of Western yogis – is this something we should be aiming for, is it possible and where might they fit into the development of Dharma in the West?

Yes, that is a very interesting question. There are now, because it has been several decades, high-level Western practitioners who have had high-level realizations. I personally know a few, so there is nothing ethnically obstructing the attainment of these realizations; it really doesn’t matter what ethnicity you come from. The question is how is it that the presence of these yogis hasn’t really translated into the ability for these yogis to inspire people, be in leadership positions, and be great Dharma teachers. That, I think, is an interesting question. I think part of that has to do with the fact that the language of Dharma in English, and for that matter, in French and other languages, isn’t fully settled yet. It is an ongoing process.

Also, I think in the West (although FPMT is an exception), there hasn’t been enough institutional development to really allow the space for Western Dharma teachers to emerge and assume the authority that they deserve. I think these will come. I think it’s probably just a matter of time.

What is very important is that when you have indigenous Western teachers come up, that they be genuine. Tibetans have had the Dharma for such a long time and Tibetan relationships between the guru and students are organic – gurus tend to emerge on the basis of their reputation as teachers and thus there are checks and balances. For example, gurus have attendants who really keep them in check – they are a bit like spouses, keeping you in check. These attendants are very close household members who act as a kind of check on the lama’s behavior. There is very little room for a teacher to go on an ego trip.

In the West, the culture is very individualistic and it is a culture of celebrity – people love fame, people love exposure. There is a danger of someone being put on a pedestal and not having the strength to be able to remind themselves, “Yes, all of this is fine, but in the end, I am who I am.” That kind of groundedness, down-to-earthness, is a quality that needs to be cultivated because in the Western context, generally there isn’t this attendant-lama relationship and things may get out of balance. Also, the culture doesn’t facilitate the development of grounded charismatic teachers. The only model we have are celebrities. Subconsciously, celebrity culture seeps in into peoples’ relationships and those dynamics make it all very complicated. I think these are things the Western Buddhist Dharma centers and cultures will have to gradually learn. I think it is a learning process.

Is there anything that you would like to add or would like to say in to particular to the FPMT audience or anything out that you think is really important?

I think the sense of belonging that the FPMT community has is important. That self-conscious identification with the community is, I think, very important. That will increasingly – even from our own personal selfish point of view – guard students against loneliness and feeling left out and all the rest. In the West, I think we underestimate the importance of community because people are brought up to have very autonomous identities that we should be relying upon ourselves and all the rest. A sense of community is very important. FPMT members are very fortunate because it is a very large community, it has a long history, and Lama Zopa keeps in close touch with all the centers and there is a personal connection with him. I think that should be recognized and valued because there is a Tibetan saying: “When you have a jewel at home, you fail to appreciate its value.”

Geshe Thupten Jinpa is a former monk and holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He has been the principal English translator for His Holiness the Dalai Lama for three decades. He is an adjunct professor of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy at McGill Univeristy and chairman of the Mind and Life Institute. 

Temporary dairy shelter, Nepal, May 2015. Photo by Phil Hunt.

The massive April 25, 2015, earthquake in Nepal brought devastation to the country’s people, economy and culture. Many in the international FPMT community responded to the crisis by offering prayers and making donations to FPMT’s Nepal Earthquake Support Fund. On the ground, the monks and nuns of Kopan Monastery formed the Kopan Helping Hands program and were immediately offering assistance to thousands of earthquake-affected people. You can read about their work and the work of the Namgyal Rinpoche Foundation in FPMT Charitable Projects blog posts.

In addition to helping people in need, FPMT students have been helping earthquake-affected animals, which are often overlooked in times of disaster. When the earthquake struck Nepal, Phil Hunt was already en route to Kathmandu. Hunt is an Australian FPMT student who along with Tania Duratovic coordinates the Animal Liberation Sanctuary, a project of Kopan Monastery. They also oversee Enlightenment for the Dear Animals, an FPMT project based in New South Wales, Australia, and Tree of Compassion, an Australian charity focused on helping animals, people and the environment.

Hunt arrived in Kathmandu on April 26 and was able to assess the situation at the Animal Liberation Sanctuary, which is located close to Kopan Monastery. The sanctuary itself had no physical damage and experienced only minor difficulties. Phil, with team members from Tree of Compassion, was able to go out and assist animals around the city and surrounding areas. In August 2015, Tania visited the sanctuary.

Goats at the Animal Liberation Sanctuary, Nepal, August 2015. Photo by Tania Duratovic.

These are some of Phil and Tania’s reflections on animal welfare after the earthquake and as Nepal continues its recovery:

When disasters strike, the first response is naturally to search for and rescue people. Animals are often forgotten in the chaos even though they are often injured and in desperate need of food, shelter and medical attention. Getting help for animals in a disaster is a challenge, but it can benefit the entire community as well as the animals themselves. Long after international rescue teams have gone, the assistance to animals needs to continue to ensure missed animals receive care and those under treatment return to health.

Fortunately, the resident “four-leggeds” at the Animal Liberation Sanctuary were only spooked by the earthquake. They ran immediately into their shelters when the earthquake struck and then ran back out again as the earth continued to shake, but were physically unharmed. Unfortunately, thousands of animals were not so lucky.

When any disaster strikes, the first thing most big non-governmental organizations involved in animal rescue do is an assessment of the situation. This often takes a week or more. In the case of Nepal, international NGOs for animals did not arrive until early May and most were gone a couple of weeks later. This left local groups to deal with the immediate situation and the longer-term follow-up.

Phil Hunt and Dr. Umesh Mandal with medicines, Nepal, May 2015

Phil managed to fly in to Kathmandu the day after the first earthquake struck and Tania, who has a long history of working in disasters rescuing animals and training others to do so (see “The ‘Roo from Black Saturday” and “The Hidden Toll of Australia’s 2011 Floods”), immediately began organizing medical supplies and funds for the animals in Australia.

The first few days following a disaster are crucial for animal survival. While many local people were naturally too afraid to move about and the rubble from damaged buildings made road access difficult, we took the opportunity to get out and assess what we could and liaise with other local animal welfare groups. We were well placed to treat animals because of the excellent connections that Animal Liberation Sanctuary veterinarian, Dr. Umesh Mandal, has with the Nepalese veterinary networks. Experience with farm animals, especially larger ones like cows and water buffaloes, was essential as many international teams were more accustomed to domestic pets, who fared better in the earthquake. In at least one district, many sacrificial goats being kept in houses and apartments in the lead up to a festival were killed or injured during the earthquake when the structures they were in collapsed.

The Need for Veterinary Aid

Our main priority was to treat animals in need as soon as possible. Initial searches were undertaken on motorbike as it was simpler to get around. As roads were cleared, we were able to organize larger vehicles.

Many animals in the earthquake and aftershocks suffered physical trauma – such as fractures and wounds – as well as psychological trauma. Complicated wounds needed medication and ongoing treatment. Fractures needed skilled treatment and regular follow-ups to ensure infections or other complications didn’t occur and, if they did, were addressed. Without this skilled intervention, animals die from injuries or are crippled and have subsequent lifelong pain.

A “downed” cow being examined by team members in Nuwakot, Nepal, May 2015. Photo by Phil Hunt.

While there were many animals suffering from physical trauma as a result of shelters and buildings collapsing, many other animals we treated had complications that likely arose from stress and their poor condition before the earthquake. “Downed” cows and water buffaloes were an example of this. Also, a number of pregnant animals gave birth prematurely or collapsed and were too weak to give birth. Like the people themselves, most Nepalese animals are not particularly well nourished and most goats, cows and buffaloes are kept for milk and are underfed. Naturally, these animals did not have much strength to withstand the trauma and stress of the earthquake.

Calf in oil toxic shock, Nepal, May 2015. Photo by Phil Hunt.

In desperation, locals tried to “fix” the animal themselves, often with disastrous results because of their ignorance of veterinary medicine. In a village east of Kathmandu and high up a steep valley slope, for example, we encountered one calf partly covered with used engine oil to treat a skin condition. The calf nearly died from toxic shock.

Fortunately, many animals were rescued – calves born, mothers saved – thanks to the combined efforts of the team.

The Importance of Follow-up

Veterinary care is still required in the days and weeks after the first treatment. Fractures need to be checked and splints and casts reapplied as needed; wounds cleaned and dressed; medication regimes assessed and adjusted; minerals and supplements revised and so on. In such a large disaster it is difficult to provide the full treatment required when so much immediate care is needed in widely dispersed and difficult to access places. Some big NGOs had people to follow up, but many left not long after the first treatment was given. Without proper follow-up, animals continue to suffer and some eventually die.

Our team continued with this follow-up work until early August, three months after the first earthquake. The local team showed great tenacity and commitment to helping animals, even though aftershocks made any travel dangerous. Once the monsoon started, areas that had seemed stable began to move and collapse as rain seeped into the newly formed cracks in the earth. This happened to the track to the Animal Liberation Sanctuary, for example, which was blocked due to the collapse of a wall immediately after the first earthquake and then cleared only to once again be under threat when part of its slope shifted.

Temporary shelter for a calf, Nepal, May 2015. Photo by Phil Hunt.

Temporary Shelters

One of the first things villagers did after the earthquakes was to build temporary shelter for their animals. In one village, a buffalo was tethered in the rain and the family was distressed that they were not able to give the animal shelter. A young girl went out into the rain and hugged her, apologizing for taking her shelter. Throughout the disaster area, we witnessed reasonably solid temporary shelters going up for animals at a much faster rate than for people. Humanitarian aid meant for displaced people was often quickly repurposed. For example, tarpaulins could be used to repair damaged animal shelters.

How Small-scale Farming Contributed to Injury

It’s clear that some animals – birds, dogs, goats and male cows – fared better than other animals. People said that just before the earthquake struck, birds took wing; pigeons in the squares suddenly flew off. Street dogs were also said to have started moving before the earthquake was detected by people and because they are quick and agile, escaped falling material better than most. Goats are mostly herded outside of urban areas or are kept outside of buildings. Male cows, who are not owned by anyone, wander the streets and roads and were only at risk to nearby falling debris and collapsing buildings.

The main victims seemed to be female cows and water buffaloes, who are more often kept in a building or shelter of some kind. There was no escape for them. In and around Kathmandu there is a thriving small-scale dairy industry, and there has always been the village- and family-scale use of animals for dairy. At the family level, one or two females are kept in a building, sometimes directly below the living space of the people. They stay inside or can be tethered outside, but the majority of their time is within a building where they are easier to control, will not require fencing, will not eat valued plants, and will not find their calves and share their milk. It is far from the idyllic life we imagine when we think of “small-scale urban farming.”

Dr. Umesh looking at the remains of a building that crushed 2,700 chickens when it collapsed, Nepal, May 2015. Photo by Phil Hunt.

As the agricultural sector in Nepal follows the West’s industrialization model, more and more farms are turning to intensive livestock production. In the drive to produce more milk and maximize profits, female cows and buffaloes are kept in larger herds and kept pregnant and lactating for as long as possible. While small in Western terms, these dairy farms can have six, ten or twenty animals confined in a building all day. Like their small-farm sisters, there is no escape when an earthquake strikes.

Goats too are increasingly being kept in larger herds and confined for longer periods within man-made structures and most injuries to goats during the April 2015 earthquake were due to their confinement. Intensive farming of chickens has also become more common. Our team came across one such farm where over two thousand hens died when the building collapsed on top of them.

Rebuilding

While the immediate treatment and main follow-up period for animals is over, the rebuilding of Nepal will take much longer. Rubbing salt into the wounds, so many Nepalese have had to destroy what was left of their homes by themselves – by hand – before they could start rebuilding. For most outside the cities, it is difficult to contemplate using better earthquake-resistant construction methods that they simply can’t afford.

Goats Ösel and Kalu, who are friends, at the Animal LIberation Sanctuary, August 2015. Photo by Tania Duratovic.

At the Animal Liberation Sanctuary

At the Animal Liberation Sanctuary, we took in two new rescued goats during the earthquakes. One was a young male, now named Ösel, who was rescued by Tenzin Ösel Hita and the members of his pilgrimage group on the day of the first earthquake. The other is Kalu, an old goat who was initially rescued from slaughter 10 years before. He lived on the roof of an apartment building that was badly damaged in the earthquake. Kalu and Ösel are now close friends and are fitting in well in their new, safe environment. We are very grateful that the sanctuary, only recently completed after so many years of planning and construction, made it through without any injury, loss of life, or structural damage.

Not for Everyone

The conditions for rescuing animals can be very trying and also dangerous. There are the normal problems of the elements – heat and dust or rain and mud – as well as bad roads and exhausting travel. In addition, after an earthquake there are ongoing tremors, landslides, fallen power lines and unstable buildings. And there are always unpredictable and scared animals to deal with! Long days stretch into the night. (This was especially true on trips outside of Kathmandu when it was not possible to stay the night.) Many veterinarians are used to skipping meals and this tendency is exacerbated in disaster situations, even on follow-up visits. Perhaps the most difficult aspect is the distress when you cannot help an animal as much as you would like. It’s heartbreaking when there is simply no remedy available to help. You cannot help the animal nor can you help the poor villager who is desperate for the animal to live. At those times, all you can do is pray and say mantras and focus on those that you can help.

A water buffalo with a broken femur, Nepal, May 2015. Photo by Phil Hunt.

Something for Everyone

Disasters can happen anywhere at any time. It is important that you have a plan for what you will do for your animals should a disaster strike (see the “What to Do in a Disaster” section of “The Hidden Toll of Australia’s 2011 Floods”). Write to your local authorities and ask that they include animals – pets, farm and wildlife – in their disaster response plans. The next time you hear of a disaster, please remember the many animals that are also affected and include them in your prayers and dedications.

A calf and its mother, Nepal, May 2015. Photo by Phil Hunt.

Tania Duratovic and Phil Hunt are co-directors and co-founders of Enlightenment for the Dear Animals, an FPMT project that aims to help people benefit animals, and coordinators of the Animal Liberation Sanctuary, which is a project of Kopan Monastery in Nepal.

Learn more about Enlightenment for the Dear Animals and the Animal Liberation Sanctuary Project on their website. You can support the project by visiting their information page on fpmt.org.

You can read more updates from the Animal Liberation Sanctuary on FPMT.org.

Gethsemani Abbey, New Haven, Kentucky, May 2015. Photo by Martin Verhoven.

In May 2015, Ven. Losang Drimay, teacher and resident at Land of Medicine Buddha in Soquel, California, was one of 12 Buddhists to meet with 17 Catholics at Gethsemani Encounter IV. The first Encounter took place nearly 20 years earlier at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, the home and retreat of the late Trappist monk, writer and mystic Thomas Merton (1915-1968) in New Haven, Kentucky, in the Unites States. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who was a friend of Merton, attended the first Encounter. Each Encounter allows a small group of spiritual practitioners to live, practice, talk and rejoice together in a monastic setting.

Both His Holiness and Lama Zopa Rinpoche encourage interfaith dialogue, which can take many forms. Angelica Walker spoke with Ven. Drimay about her experiences at the interfaith gathering and what she took from it.

How did you become involved in the conference?

I heard about the conference through my friend, Reverend Heng Sure. He is the resident monk at Berkeley Buddhist Monastery in Berkeley, California, which is a branch of City of Ten Thousand Buddhas.

Rev. Heng Sure speaking at the Gethsemani Encounter IV, Kentucky, US, May 2015. Photo by Martin Verhoven.

What traditions were represented at the conference?

It was just Catholics and Buddhists, and not all Catholic traditions, but specifically Benedictines, monastics who follow the Rule of St. Benedict. There’s an agency called Monastic Interreligious Dialogue which one of the organizers, Sister Hélène, called a “pontifical commission,” meaning someone from the Vatican says it’s OK to do this. Essentially, the conference has the official seal of approval from the Pope.

What traditions of Buddhism were represented?

The majority were Zen practitioners, but when I use the word “Zen,” I’m using that term very loosely. I should probably say “Chan” because it wasn’t necessarily people from the Japanese Zen tradition. There was only one monk from the Japanese Zen tradition from Shasta Abbey. The others were following the Chan tradition from China. At times I had to pipe up and say, “Not all Buddhists say what Zen Buddhists say!” There were only three Tibetan Buddhists there, so we were slightly outnumbered. Besides myself, there were two nuns from Sravasti Abbey in Washington State, which is the abbey that Ven. Thubten Chodron founded near Spokane. Interestingly, those two nuns had been raised Catholic, so they were perhaps more familiar and conversant with Catholic ideas and rituals than I was. I was raised in a Methodist Sunday school and knew about Catholicism only through my friends who went to Catholic church.

One of the nuns from Sravasti Abbey had a very interesting connection with the Abbey of Gethsemani: one of her distant grandfathers sold the land to the Gethsemani monks! Her ancestors are buried in the churchyard at the front entrance. She remembers going there with her parents 30 years ago to visit the family graves.

Participants of the Gethsemani Encounter IV, May 2015

Why do you think it’s important for this type of interfaith conference to take place?

I think it helps both parties freshen up their own practice and way of doing things. After you’ve been in a certain place for a while, things can either get stale, or you just forget there could be a different way to be doing things or thinking about things. It’s not that either side will stop being Catholic or stop being Buddhist, but you may get a new angle on what you’re already doing. For example, by hearing the presentation on lectio divina (“divine reading,” the practice of prayerful and contemplative scripture reading), I will continue thinking about how this applies to my own reading practices.

In fact, I was reminded of what Ven. René Feusi mentions in The Beautiful Way of Life: A Meditation on Shantideva’s Bodhisattva Path, the book that’s recently been published, which basically came out of a retreat practice of what could be called divine reading. He doesn’t call it that, but he would read a verse, think about it, make it his own – you roll it around in your own psyche and see if it speaks to you. What does it say to you, how would you put it in your own words? It was important to hear that there’s another tradition where that’s not accidental, but rather that this is the way to work with scripture.

The Catholics in this particular group were very liberal. The fact that they’re having conversations with Buddhists is a sign that they are liberal. The Gethsemani group has been very interested in learning meditation, and one of the monk-priests who participated took himself over to Japan years ago and learned zazen. Zazen is now a part of his daily practice, not that he’s Buddhist – he’s not giving up his Catholic world-view. But every day he practices on a cushion the way he learned from a Zen master.

They had a retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani with His Holiness the Dalai Lama during which he taught the Catholic participants meditation. It was only offered to Catholics; it wasn’t open to the general public. They’ve been interested in learning Buddhist methods in order to keep their practice fresh and alive and moving forward.

The other thing that was fascinating to me was that one of the presentations was about the nuns, and specifically how someone becomes what Buddhists refer to as “ordained,” which they call “profession.” What we might call “novice ordination,” they call the “rite of first profession.” Later they go through the “rite of perpetual profession.” So it’s like what we Buddhists call “novice ordination” and “full ordination.” We saw a YouTube video of a woman taking her perpetual profession, held at a monastery in Minnesota, which I thought was interesting.

Informal discussion at breakfast during the interfaith gathering, Gethsemani Abbey, May 2015. Photo by Martin Verhoven.

What did you enjoy most about the event?

It would definitely be the personal connections that usually happened outside of the formal presentations, like when you’re sitting around the dining table talking during the breaks.

But there are two other things that I was pleasantly surprised about. I was expecting the presentations to be boring – usually these types of things are something I feel like I have to just tolerate. But they weren’t boring, and I think the reason was that they were coming from a place of personal experience. The Catholics who were presenting were so scholarly and well-prepared. They had their papers typed up and documented. The Buddhists tended to just speak more off the top of their heads, but the Catholics were very well-prepared. It wasn’t dry scholarship; it was very informative and I learned new things about how they do things and why.

My other favorite part of the event was choir, which is a huge part of what happens at the abbey – about seven or eight times a day. During these choir periods, the monks who live at the abbey gather in the church to do Gregorian chants. The church is very plain. They’ve stripped away all the decorations because they’re Trappist, a Catholic cloistered contemplative order known for discipline and simple living. Usually, the public is behind a screen, but they actually had us – the Buddhist participants – in the choir stalls with them. So, not only were they allowing women in the choir stalls, they were allowing heathens in the choir stalls, if you can call us that. It was very liberal of them, I thought. They had us interspersed with the monks so that they could help us turn the pages because it’s very complicated. Each session, there’s a different “recipe” of what you’re going to recite. They’re working their way through the Psalms, so you have to know which Psalm they’re on each day. There are three different prayer books and bookmarks in different places, so even though it was all spelled out for us, we still needed someone showing us which page we were on. They were very generous and patient with us. I thought about how some of the monks were OK with having us there, and some were probably not that into it, so I was especially conscious of that. It wasn’t everybody’s decision to have the Buddhists in the choir stalls.

Ven. Drimay during choir at Gethsemani Abbey, May 2015. Photo by Martin Verhoven.

They have a sign posted in the dining room that says something like: “Dear retreatants, please don’t sing louder than the monks and try to keep up the pace.” I thought, “I would never dare to sing louder than the monks!” I was just mouthing the words.

Did you lead any sessions at the conference?

Because I was a late addition to the program, I just added to what Rev. Heng Sure was already scheduled to present. He had a session on maitri (Pali: metta), loving-kindness meditation, and fortunately I’m very used to having to suddenly stand up and speak into the microphone, so I got up and said something about that. I wasn’t leading them in a meditation, I was talking about one of the ways to develop bodhichitta and the particular type of love that is mentioned for that topic. The article on what I talked about – “Love Based on Like” – is on the Dialogue Interreligieux Monastique/Monastic Interreligious Dialogue website.

Ven. Drimay during a presentation at Gethsemani Encounter IV, May 2015

Some of the presentations were more conceptual and some of the presentations were specifically practice, which they call praxis, or, roughly, an accepted practice or custom within their order. Rev. Heng Sure was scheduled to give a praxis presentation on bowing, or prostration. He is particularly qualified to give that presentation because back in the 1970s he was famous for prostrating up Highway 1, from south Pasadena in California up towards Ukiah – more than 800 miles (1,287 km). It took place over two years. The book that is based on that pilgrimage is called Three Steps, One Bow. He has a slideshow from that pilgrimage, which he presented.

When he was done presenting, he said, “Drimay, do you have anything to add?” So I got up and showed them how to do the full-length bow according to the Tibetan tradition, and I mentioned how in the Tibetan tradition the 100,000 prostration practice is one of the standard preliminaries. I also shared that prostrating is a normal practice, that Tibetan people love to prostrate across the country, and sometimes they prostrate right out of the country!

What were some of the ritualistic similarities and differences between the Buddhists and the Catholics?

One presenter was a Korean Catholic monk-priest. In the Catholic tradition, monks can be priests and priests can be monks, but they’re not the same thing. At Gethsemani, out of 42 monks, seven are priests. They’re all monks, but only some of them are priests as well. This Korean monk-priest presenter, Father Anselmo, spoke about being from a country which is traditionally Buddhist. He talked about the Zen imagery of The Ten Ox Herding Pictures, which is similar to the Tibetan Buddhist Elephant on the Path. Father Anselmo presented the Zen ox herding diagrams and related them to the Christian path. That was the presentation that was the most cross-cultural. Most other people were just presenting their tradition’s practices or ways of thinking, but he was bridging traditions right from the start.

One of the Christian presentations I found most interesting was presented by Brother Lawrence, who was the resident participant from the Abbey of Gethsemani. He explained what they’re doing during their “liturgy of the hours,” also called the “offices.” What they’re doing is reciting the Psalms, which are part of the Old Testament. Brother Lawrence describes this literature as expressing every kind of human experience. The thing that each Psalm has in common is that they’re all directed to God. The Psalms include some very violent, lustful aspects; some of it is joyful; some of it is sad or angry. To an outsider, it seems very surprising and strange that these Catholic monks are spending their careers, from before the sun comes up to when the sun goes down, reciting Old Testament literature. They’re basically reciting Jewish scriptures. He asked, “So why do we do this?” He answered his own question, saying, “Because that’s how it has always been done since the time of the Desert Fathers.” This means they are carrying on a tradition which pre-dates Jesus. They’re carrying on a tradition which is more than just Christian. I find that fascinating! It’s like they’re human time capsules.

Stained glass window in Gethsemani Abbey. Photo by Martin Verhoven.

The monks recite different Psalms each session and work their way through them. The chapel has two banks of choir stalls, so side A will recite the first two lines, side B will recite the next two lines, and they call and respond like that across the aisle. Then they recite something called the “doxology,” which is remembering the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. They have some other songs as well; every night they sing a song to Mother Mary.

When somebody from the monastery dies, they wrap up the body in a shroud and place the shroud between the two banks of choir stalls, and they recite, taking turns keeping vigil around the clock, until they’ve recited all 150 of the Psalms. That’s their funeral rite.

Their rituals seemed very transhistoric – timeless. These men spend their lives doing this. They have other jobs and hobbies and do things in their free time, but no matter what else they have going on, they still have to show up seven or eight times a day in the church.

Did you get to know many of the resident monks at the abbey?

We didn’t talk to all of them. Only one of the monks who lived at the abbey was a full-time participant in our conference. The other participants weren’t from Gethsemani. They were from monasteries in Minnesota, Kansas, and Pennsylvania, among other places. Some of the Gethsemani monks dropped in on the conference and I got to know some of the others just by meeting them while they were doing their daily jobs – working the front desk or giving us rides back and forth. After the conference was over, there was a weekly Thomas Merton study group which was led by one of the resident monks. I sat in on it and got to know some of the others through meetings like that.

How do the monks support themselves?

They support themselves entirely by making fruitcake and fudge. They lace both liberally with bourbon. They did have one or two versions that didn’t have the bourbon in it. At first, they had laid some out on a table for us and then quickly realized they had to label it “non-alcohol”!

What were your living quarters like?

They have a beautiful guest house. It’s attached to the main cloister, but outside of it. The set-up of the building was comprised of very traditional architecture where the monks live around a courtyard and at one edge of the courtyard is the church. The monks have their own entrance into the church. On the other side of the courtyard, at the front edge of the church, is a wing which is three-stories high or more of guest facilities, with a dining room and a few meeting rooms. The rooms were very nicely appointed. Each room was single, with a bed, a desk, a reading chair, and a bathroom – much like my own set-up here at Land of Medicine Buddha. So, there was no hardship! It was all very simple, but it had everything I needed.

Visit to Thomas Merton’s retreat cabin, Gethsemani Abbey, Kentucky, US, May 2015. Photo by Martin Verhoven.

How did the conference come to a close?

Our closing ceremony was held at Thomas Merton’s retreat cabin, which was a little walk down a country road to get to. The Catholics, and even some of the Buddhists who have been influenced by Thomas Merton, felt very moved to be able to visit his cabin; it was like going to Milarepa’s cave or something like that. Some of the Catholic visitors were moved to tears when they went into his cabin. It’s still a working retreat house. Each monk at Gethsemani gets one week a year of personal retreat at the cabin.

After visiting the cabin, we gathered on the front porch and said one thing that was meaningful to us about the gathering and sang some songs. There were several monks who were musical, Rev. Heng Sure among them. One of them played the Native American flute, and I thought, “It’s not just the Buddhists who like to play music!”

Father Michael plays a Native American flute at the close of the Gethsemani Encounter IV, May 2015. Photo by Martin Verhoven.

Ven. Losang Drimay has been studying, practicing and working in FPMT centers since 1984, receiving hundreds of hours of instruction from the many qualified lamas and senior teachers. She eventually took ordination in 1991. She has worked for the FPMT International Office, served as resident teacher at Ocean of Compassion Buddhist Center in Campbell, California for 11 years, and currently lives and works at Land of Medicine Buddha leading regular meditations and classes.

Angelica Walker grew up at Vajrapani Institute in Boulder Creek, California. She met Ven. Losang Drimay when she was three years old. She will soon graduate from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a degree in Literature and Creative Writing.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche making offerings to the Mahabodhi Stupa, Bodhgaya, India. Photo by Ven. Thubten Kunsang.

By Ven. Tenzin Legtsok

Recently, a Dharma friend asked me a question which comes up often in relation to holy objects such as stupas, sutras, and mantras. “So, there’s a story in the lam-rim about a fly unintentionally going around a stupa and as a result having the root of virtue required to take ordination as a novice monk in a future lifetime,” he began. “How could it be that virtue was created in that fly’s mental continuum when the fly had no positive motivation?” he asked. “And if that root of virtue arose in the fly’s mind solely due to the power of the stupa, doesn’t that mean the stupa’s power to benefit sentient beings exists from its own side and so is inherently existent?”

The story, told in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand,¹ is about an old man named Shrijata who wanted to leave his home and take ordination. Venerable Shariputra refused to give Shrijata novice vows, explaining that he didn’t have the roots of virtue to be able to keep ordination. Shrijata was utterly disappointed. Shakyamuni Buddha saw the situation through his clairvoyance, appeared to Shrijata and told him that he does have the roots of virtue to take ordination, but that this virtue is so subtle that Shariputra could not see it. This virtue, the Buddha said, was created in Shrijata’s past life when as a fly – following a cartload of dung – he unknowingly circumambulated a stupa.

According to the Buddhist philosophy of the Middle Way clearly expressed by Nagarjuna, Chandrakirti and Lama Tsongkhapa, it’s argued that nothing exists inherently or totally independent of other things, from its own side. Even if the virtuous imprint that arose in that fly’s mental continuum as a result of going around the stupa was not dependent whatsoever on the fly having a virtuous intention or positive motivation, still the fly had to go around the stupa for that imprint to be produced. That particular root of virtue couldn’t have arisen in the fly’s continuum if it hadn’t gone around the stupa.  

Lama Tsongkhapa wrote in The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (Lamrim Chenmo), “Those who enjoy the fruits of the innumerable collections amassed by the Teacher need not have accumulated all of the causes of these effects, but they do need to accumulate a portion.”² So, it’s argued that the fly created a portion of the cause to enjoy the results of the merit collected by past buddhas simply by going around the stupa. Thus, the resultant virtuous imprint that arose in the fly’s continuum was a complex dependent arising connected to the activity of past holy beings and did not arise solely because of the physical stupa, although it did play a part. Even the physical stupa itself is not inherently existent because it exists in dependence on parts, such as its four sides; in dependence on causes and conditions, such as the people who built the stupa and the material it was made from; and in dependence on mental imputation, the label “stupa” being applied appropriately to the base for this label.

But a question remains: how does an inanimate object – no matter how sacred – affect sentient beings regardless of their motivation? This is not so easy of a question to answer. If you’re in doubt that the Buddha taught this, the idea is reiterated in the King of Concentration Sutra, where it says that even looking upon a drawing of a stupa with a mind of anger creates the cause to see millions of buddhas in the future. Similar statements are made in other sutras – such as the Sutra of Golden Light or the Sanghata Sutra – about how hearing merely a few lines from these sutras purifies negative karma collected over eons and helps a practitioner accumulate inconceivable amounts of merit. Lama Zopa Rinpoche has explained that such effects are due to the power of prayer. “It’s like mantra,” Lama Zopa Rinpoche said. “A mantra has power because a buddha blesses it to have power. A mantra is powerful because a buddha makes it powerful. This [ability], the power of prayer, is one of a buddha’s 10 powers.”³

Students circumambulating the stupa at Maitreya School, Root Institute, Bodhgaya, India, March 2015. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.

The power of prayer or aspiration (mönlam gyi wang in Tibetan) is one of many qualities of the wisdom truth body (jñana-dharmakaya) enumerated in chapter 8 of Maitreya’s Ornament of Clear Realization (Abhisamayalamkara). Lama Tsongkhapa describes this quality as follows, “Because they accomplish just as they wish, they have power over prayers included.”⁴ In short, this means that buddhas have achieved the power to accomplish whatever prayers they make. Lama Tsongkhapa adds that this ability is the result of joyous effort – the fourth of the six perfections – because in the past as bodhisattvas they never stopped striving for the welfare of sentient beings.

One might counter argue, “How could buddhas have the power to accomplish whatever they pray for? They pray for all sentient being to be free from suffering yet countless sentient beings still suffer.” The buddhas’ having achieved the power of prayer is similar to their having achieved the perfection of generosity. That a buddha has completed the perfection of generosity doesn’t mean that they have eliminated all poverty in the world, but instead, that they have perfected the attitude wishing to give whatever they possess for the welfare of others.⁵ Similarly, achieving power over prayer does not mean that a buddha’s prayers are all immediately fulfilled exactly in accordance with their aspirations, but that from the buddha’s side there is nothing more that could be done to fulfill their prayers. All the incredibly vast oceans of merit that a buddha has accumulated previously as a bodhisattva on the path and as a fully enlightened being has been dedicated toward the fulfillment of their prayers and continually functions to fulfill these intentions. What remains undone is only from the side of sentient beings. Shantideva made a prayer in A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life:

If in those who encounter me
A faithful or an angry thought arises,
May that eternally be the source
For fulfilling all their wishes.⁶

Bodhisattvas create unimaginably huge collections of merit and wisdom on the path to enlightenment through their practice of great compassion, bodhichitta and the six perfections. By dedicating all of this positive energy toward fulfilling the welfare of sentient beings, they make it possible for us to enjoy a portion of the fruits of their virtue, what Lama Tsongkhapa’s quote above was about. Thus, the force of bodhichitta, the two collections of merit and wisdom, prayers from the side of enlightened beings, and from the side of ordinary sentient beings like us, the condition of encountering sacred objects – even without a virtuous motivation – together create the possibility for us to easily accumulate virtue, purify negative karma and plant the seeds for liberation and enlightenment. This is one way that stupas, mantras and other holy objects are imbued with power, which is the common answer to the questions about the unintentionally virtuous fly.

Amitabha Buddha statue at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, Washington, US, June 2015. Photo by Chris Majors.

This ability that stupas, statues and scriptures have to almost passively plant seeds of virtue and enlightenment in the minds of sentient beings makes it obvious what an incredibly skillful means it is to build such holy objects, especially when we consider how hard it is to create causes for liberation from samsara and complete buddhahood. In his discussion of the second noble truth about the origins of suffering, Lama Tsongkhapa makes the very sobering point that without actual renunciation, bodhichitta, or wisdom realizing emptiness, except by the power of exceptional objects in relation to which we create actions, all our virtuous actions contribute to further wandering in cyclic existence under the control of karma. Lama Tsongkhapa says:

… you might not have acquired, through extensive meditative analysis of the faults of cyclic existence, the remedy that eradicates the craving for the wonders of cyclic existence. Also you might not have used discerning wisdom to properly analyze the meaning of selflessness, and might not have become familiar with the two spirits of enlightenment [conventional and ultimate]. Under such circumstances, your virtuous activities – with some exceptions on account of the field’s power – would constitute typical origins of suffering, and hence would fuel the process of cyclic existence.⁷

For most sentient beings, it is rare to have a truly virtuous thought arise and actual renunciation, bodhichitta and the wisdom realizing emptiness are unheard of. Even among those fortunate enough to aspire to these attitudes, most do not have a clear idea what they are and exactly how to cultivate them, or, although intellectually understanding them, do not actually generate these realizations in their mindstreams. In short, for most of us it is incredibly difficult to generate an actual cause for liberation and enlightenment. The big exception is “on account of the field’s power,” which is to say that in relation to exceptional objects such as the guru, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, and the holy objects representing these, we can easily create causes for nirvana and the state of omniscience. If by just seeing such objects with a mind of anger plants the seeds for all the realizations on the path to enlightenment, as indicated in the King of Concentration Sutra, then there is no need to mention the far reaching benefits of viewing such objects with a mind of faith, making offerings, constructing and paying homage to these objects in various ways. Through the power of prayer of extraordinary beings, holy objects provide unique opportunities for sentient beings of all levels of intelligence, from the tiniest insects to the most brilliant humans and gods, to easily create causes for liberation and enlightenment and enjoy a share of the positive effects of the buddhas’ two collections of merit and wisdom.

Two objections can arise from our common understanding of the general characteristics of karma and they are important to consider. The first is how can a negative attitude such as anger or craving produce a happy result such as seeing millions of buddhas or taking ordination if karma is certain, in the sense that every experience of pleasure must have arisen from a previous positive karma that is its cause, and every experience of suffering must have arisen from non-virtue. The second is how can we experience the results of positive karmic actions created by others such as buddhas and bodhisattvas if we do not experience the effects of karmic actions we did not commit.

In general, one karmic action can be very complex, arising from a collection of positive and negative causes and producing a variety of results, some pleasant and others unpleasant. For instance, when someone gets angry and insults us and we patiently respond with genuine kindness and concern, we create a positive karma.  Although the karmic result of this will be a pleasant experience, one cause of that experience is the anger of the person who insulted us. In the case of someone scowling at an image of a buddha with anger, they will definitely suffer as a result of this action because it is motivated by an afflictive emotion. However, due to the power of the object, an incredibly virtuous object in this case, they will also experience a positive result of that action. The negative result arises primarily due to their negative attitude, whereas the positive result arises primarily due to the power of the particular object, such as a buddha image that is able to produce a positive result for the reasons given above.

In response to the second objection, it’s true that we don’t experience the results of karma created by others with whom we have no relationship whatsoever. However, in some cases, we can experience the results of karma created by others when we form a karmic link with them. For example, when a group of people collectively do an action, like saving the lives of 100 fish, each member of the group accumulates the karma created by the group. In the case of the lucky fly discussed above, it created a karmic link with enlightened beings by going around the stupa. That small action enabled the fly to experience a portion of the positive results arising from the buddhas’ infinite collection of merit and wisdom. In short, the help enlightened beings extend to us is like a hand reaching down to help us climb out of a hole: if we don’t extend a hand up for it to grab onto, we can’t benefit from it.

Countless statues, tsa-tsa, sacred images and offerings fill Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s room at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, Washington, US, June 2015. Photo by Chris Majors.

The Buddha famously said to analyze his teachings like a goldsmith analyzes gold:

Like gold [that is acquired] upon being scorched, cut, and rubbed,
My word is to be adopted by monastics and scholars
Upon being analyzed well,
Not out of respect [for me].⁸

We should not throw skepticism to the wind and blindly believe whatever we see in the Buddha’s teachings. That wouldn’t provide a firm foundation for our spiritual development. However, we also need to avoid scornfully dismissing the possibility that sacred objects and beings can have an enlightening influence on us in ways we cannot readily explain. This could close avenues of possible benefit to us which at the time we can’t fully appreciate and lead us to create the heavy negative karma of abandoning the Buddha’s teachings.

The subtle workings of karma are among the most difficult topics in which to gain conviction and because they are considered “very hidden phenomena,” they are traditionally “proven” by appealing to the validity of the Buddha and his teachings. In Buddhist works on valid cognition and logic, the integrity of Buddha as a teacher is established by showing that his teachings on the four noble truths, and especially on emptiness, are true. Generating faith in the Buddha and his teachings, especially on karma, needs to involve not just our intellect, but more importantly, our heart through personal experimentation with the practices taught, which can be a lifelong endeavor much like developing a deep trusting relationship with a spouse or friend. To develop conviction in the power of holy objects, mantras and sutras, it helps to have a reasonable way to conceive of how they can affect us and why this is important. For this purpose, I have tried to present a few supporting arguments and scriptural citations to consider. In the end, though, the measure of whether a set of practices are beneficial to us or not must be our own experience.

In finding our own way to the mountaintop, it would be foolish not to consult the accounts of past masters who’ve gone before such as Shakyamuni Buddha, the ancient Indian pandits of Nalanda and the sages of Tibet by extensively reading their works. As well, it is invaluable to make contact with living teachers who fully embody the Buddha’s teachings, listen to their message and seek their advice. Then while engaging in practices according to their instructions, we monitor whether the transformation in our own minds is for better or worse. Where we see benefit, we delve further and find ourselves discovering possibilities to create inner sources of well-being we had not known before.

Ven. Tenzin Legtsok is currently in his 12th year of the Geshe Studies program at Sera Je Monastic University. He has been ordained as a Buddhist monk since 2001. Born in Virginia, US, in 1973, he obtained a Bachelor of Arts from Kenyon College in 1995. The question of what makes for the most happy and meaningful life, which compelled him to major in philosophy during college, gradually lead to his study of meditation and philosophy with teachers among the exiled Tibetan communities in India and Nepal from 1999 until the present. For the past 10 years he has tried to make basic Buddhist teachings accessible to various audiences in India and the US.

1. Pabongka Rinpoche, translated by Michael Richards (Wisdom, Boston 1991) p. 440.

2. Tsong-kha-pa, The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment Vol. 1, p. 214.

3. From a conversation with the author in Bangalore, India, 2008.

4. Tsongkhapa, legs bshad rin po che gser gyi phreng ba bzhugs so (Sera Jey Monastic University, 2001). This line was translated by the author although the entire work translated into English by Garath Sparham is published by Jain Publications: Golden Garland of Eloquence, and the line cited here is in Vol. 4, p. 180-1

5. See Tsong-kha-pa, The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment Vol. 2, edited by Joshua Cutler (Snow Lion, Boston 2004) pp. 114-5.

6. Shantideva, A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, trans. By Stephen Batchelor (Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, Dharamsala 1979) Chp. 3, vs. 16.

7. Tsong-kha-pa, The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment Vol.1, p. 305-6. Tsongkhapa’s statement here is based on a passage by Arya Asanga from the Compendium of Determinations.

8. Cited in Tshongkhapa’s, Treatise Differentiating Interpretable and Definitive Meanings; The Essence of Elloquence, translated by Jeffrey Hopkins in Emptiness in the Mind Only School (University of California Press, London, 1999) p. 71.

Prayer wheel with 64 billion OM MANI PADME HUM mantras at Land of Medicine Buddha, California, US, January 2015. Photo by Laura Miller.

By Donna Lynn Brown

Who hasn’t spun a prayer wheel? Whether a massive work of art that we propel with our whole bodies, a desktop ornament we twist with our fingertips, a decorated paint can on a spoke or a hand-held cylinder, most of us have set a prayer wheel into motion and hoped for blessings to fly out.

But do we consider precisely what is inside the wheel? Oh, mantras, you say. You know that. But mantras have to be printed on something. In the old days, that was paper. You may assume that’s what is in the wheel you are spinning today, but paper is getting less and less common. It only holds so many mantras, and it deteriorates over time. Perhaps you think it should be replaced by a CD or a flash drive – something digital for the modern world. Would that have the same power to bless? Unfortunately, no. Lama Zopa Rinpoche has explained that mantras in prayer wheels, statues and stupas need to be visible – even if only by microscope. A mantra that cannot be seen by the human eye in any circumstances carries no blessing.

Exit digital. Enter microfilm. Unlike bits and bytes, microfilm bears actual images of mantras. And thanks to microfilm, a large prayer wheel can contain billions of them. Better still, the film can last up to five hundred years. Yet while microfilm may seem outrageously modern compared to ancient mantras, the technology is actually aging and falling out of use. That creates its own challenges.

Tai Vautier knows this better than anyone. Tai, a talented jewelry-maker, was born in Spain to Buddhist parents, raised around FPMT’s Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Vajrapani Institute in California, and currently lives in Oregon in the United States. For years now, she has been working to produce mantra microfilm. The story of its current use in FPMT’s holy objects is largely Tai’s story.

Tai Vautier

“Back in 2001,” she recalled, “I was given a hand-held prayer wheel by another FPMT student, Julia Hengst. Julia always carried a prayer wheel in those days, and I used to tease her about it. The one she gave me was wood and made by Jim Glass. He’s passed away now, but he used to make these beautiful prayer wheels. I was skeptical, but when I started spinning the wheel, I noticed right away that it wasn’t just a chunk of wood, it was like a ‘being’ – I felt like I was hanging out with a really good person. I got hooked. Then my husband, Robert Woods, and I decided to make them. Jim Glass taught us in his workshop in Berkeley. This was in 2002, when my kids were just born. We stuck to his design and started making them in our garage in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Jim was using microfilm for the mantras. With film, millions and millions of mantras could go into even a small prayer wheel. Julia always stressed how important that was: the sheer number of mantras. Jim had a stock of microfilm with manis (the mantra OM MANI PADME HUM) on it, but the master had been lost.” In the audio-visual world, a master is the original from which copies are made. Without a master for the microfilm manis, there was no way of making more. “So I decided to create a new OM MANI PADME HUM master,” Tai continued. “That’s how I got started.”

It wasn’t easy finding a microfilm producer to work with. Producers hadn’t heard of prayer wheels and wouldn’t give Tai the time of day. Finally, she ran across a Texan in Albuquerque who worked in microfilm – and who had once given his wife a bracelet engraved with OM MANI PADME HUM. When Tai talked about the mantra, he understood. The two of them started working together in 2003. Tai and her husband kept making wooden prayer wheels for about a year, but she wanted to focus on microfilm. They handed the making of the wheels over to long-time friend Chuck Thomas, who also supplies some of the prayer wheels found in the Foundation Store, FPMT’s online shop.

Dzambhala mantra as seen under the microscope. Image courtesy of Tai Vautier.

Getting as many mantras  as possible on the film, while keeping them legible, was Tai’s aim. At first, using an old Ditto machine, she copied mantras from Lorne Ladner’s book, Wheel of Great Compassion: The Practice of the Prayer Wheel in Tibetan Buddhism, but shrinking made these illegible. She then got the original of one set of Lorne’s mantras, which had come from the office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. This she scanned and edited in Photoshop. She managed to get an astonishing 880,000,000 manis onto a 2,000-foot (610-meter) roll of microfilm. But although the mantra remained readable, the master, due to the shape of the Tibetan letters, was too fragile to withstand the constant duplication needed to fill large orders. While this master is still available for small jobs, a sturdier one was needed. Tai worked long hours in Photoshop to thicken some parts of the Tibetan letters and spread others apart, in effect designing her own font in order to create mantras that were readable after reduction and didn’t cause the film to weaken with heavy use.

Tai’s Photoshopped images turned out well, but the files had too much data to be sent digitally to a microfilm camera. They had to be printed. Even the best printers bleed when letters are that small. And no matter how smooth the paper was, its grain distorted the tiny letters. Tai persevered. She discovered she could send her images digitally to a machine that used a highly sensitive photomultiplier tube. With this, a page of miniature mantras could, like a photo, be developed and printed on completely smooth 11” x 14” (28 cm x 36 cm) paper. This was photographed and printed onto a 5/8” (16 mm) frame of microfilm. Each mantra, at this point, was no larger than the tip of a hair and visible only by microscope.

Just how small could they go? In her passion for numbers, Tai worried that she might be shrinking the mantras too much. She consulted Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Size didn’t matter, he said, as long as the mantras remained perfectly clear under magnification. To improve quality, she upsized the mantras slightly, going from “super high-density” to “high-density.” A 2,000-foot (610-meter) high-density roll of microfilm now holds 685,809,230 mani mantras. Over the years, she made a total of 18 such high-density masters for various mantras requested by different Dharma groups, each one taking months of painstaking labor to complete.

Prayer wheel made by FPMT student Chuck Thomas for the Foundation Store, FPMT International Office’s online shop

Tai achieved her goal of putting vast numbers of crystal-clear mantras onto microfilm, and Dharma centers have purchased more than a million dollars worth of high-density film made from her masters. The film is in hundreds of prayer wheels and other holy objects around the world. For Tai, it was a labor of love, and all done as a volunteer. She said, smiling, “I was just happy to help people make mantras. Because of having had my own prayer wheel for a while, I could see how important they were. But after making 18 master rolls, I did need a rest!”

While Tai refocused her life on family and jewelry-making, the company she had worked with to print the microfilm rolls went through ownership changes. Eventually about 50 master rolls of mantras, prayers, and PDFs of sutras made by Tai, FPMT, prayer wheel makers, and others were in company’s hands. But over time, the master rolls, some in good condition and some deteriorating with use, were moved to a different city and a company where Tai no longer had a contact. And although Lama Zopa Rinpoche had asked Tai to keep an eye on quality, the changes in ownership and location made this impossible. In 2014, orders started to back up, shipments fell to nothing, and phone calls to the company went unreturned. Worse, the master rolls were nowhere to be found. Tai started getting calls. Was she willing to plunge back into the microfilm project?

Tai didn’t hesitate. She contacted the company, and, after some back and forth, managed to get most of the masters back. Missing was the one most heavily used – the mani roll. As fortune would have it, Tom Truty, FPMT’s director of Education Services, had a second master of that one at FPMT’s International Office in Portland – a back-up wisely archived years earlier. With the help of FPMT as well as translator-scholar Eric Fry-Miller, Tai inspected the master rolls for quality. Some had broken down, but about 30 remained in good enough condition to be put back into use.

Jeff Lindquist, 2015

She took on yet another challenge: finding a new producer in a world where few printers still work with microfilm. Luck was on her side. Practically on her doorstep, Tai found Jeff Lindquist and his company Linco Micro-Image Systems, of Clackamas, Oregon. Jeff grew up around microfilm – his father was in the business – but was considering getting out in favor of digital. When Tai talked to him, he changed his mind.

“I have a passion for microfilm, so I’m fascinated to see it being used in this unique way,” said Jeff. “I’ve been reading Lorne Ladner’s book because I want to learn everything about this so we can do it perfectly. We’ve invested in a new camera to get the best clarity – with such small images, precision is vital. And quality is our main goal. We’re also looking for a second duplicator to make sure we can meet the demand, and I plan to hire one or two new people once everything gets going. It’s exciting.” Jeff is already filling orders – and Tai is delighted with his commitment to quality and understanding of the details.

And, working with Tom Truty, Tai and Jeff are taking steps to make microfilm easier to order and use.

First, they relabeled each master roll in both English and Tibetan, with labels that show direction as well as name, and can be read without magnification. This helps users to know what is on the film, install it upright, and ensure it revolves in the correct direction, a priority of Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Labels have been inserted every 100 feet (30 meters), so if a film gets broken, the pieces can still be identified.

“Relabeling is something I’ve wanted to do for a while,” Tai explained. “I get complaints from prayer wheel makers about how hard it is to know which film they are using or its direction, since the mantras can only be read with a scientific microscope. And then the microscope flips the image, making it even more complicated to figure out which way it’s going. Now, every single roll has a clear indicator that can be seen with the naked eye. Jeff and I spent weeks on this, but it’s worth it!”

Second, with the collaboration of Eric Fry-Miller, Tai has been helping Jeff to create a website – buddhistmicrofilm.com – so customers can order on-line from a list of what’s available. Jeff also plans to keep a stock of popular mantras on hand for quick delivery. And for those needing to put a new mantra or text on microfilm, he will make PDF-style masters on request. The website will also list makers of prayer wheels.

FPMT is helping too. Even though others will be able to order copies of FPMT’s masters from Linco, Tom Truty has made clear that FPMT will not collect royalties – a practical way to keep prices low, and one in keeping with a karma-based approach to spiritual products.

Will Tai make more high-density masters? Existing ones will eventually erode and need replacing, but using the old photomultiplier technology is probably no longer feasible. Making PDFs of pages, or typing then shrinking mantras digitally, are solutions that produce fewer mantras, but allow masters to be created more easily. But Tai hasn’t abandoned the dream of high-density. “I’m checking it out,” she said. “Jeff has access to a newer technology that may be able to create high-density masters without the time or expense of the old process. We are making test runs and it looks hopeful.” She smiled as she explained. “I still want prayer wheels to have billions of mantras!”

Tai was thrilled to hear that the new arrangements for microfilm have received a final stamp of approval. “Lama Zopa Rinpoche himself has ordered the first new master roll to be made by Linco. It includes the five powerful mantras, the four Dharmakaya Relic mantras, Avalokiteshvara and others. And anyone will be able to order it. So we are really honored!”

It’s a fitting tribute to Tai’s efforts to fill the universe with billions of blessings.

More information on mantra microfilm, including ways to order it for stupas and statues is made available by FPMT Education Services on FPMT.org.

Prayer wheels of different kinds and sizes are available through the Foundation Store, FPMT International Office’s online shop. All proceeds from the Foundation Store are used to further the charitable mission of FPMT, Inc.

Donna Lynn Brown is a regular Mandala contributor and a student at Maitripa College in Portland, Oregon, US.