3 Jewels
I was very fortunate in that there is a Bond song in Houston and that song got away and that song is very fortunate in that we would have visiting teachers come through the Houston area, so we would have a multitude of Lamar’s very highly trained Lamar’s come through to give us teachings. Once probably we’d have four or five teachers come through every year and so we would be we were exposed to a number of teachings and we were exposed to a number of personalities which also taught us that the teachers are important. But the really the most important thing is the teaching and how to separate the teaching from the teachers, because the teacher’s really is highly realized as they are almost all of them are still humans. I’ve been fortunate to meet two living Buddhas or three living Buddhas, but for the most part, my teachers are human and they will tell you that as well. That does not diminish them in any way, shape or form. I have the most heartfelt gratitude and thanks and fortunate life to be able to know so many wonderful teachers and to have had so many wonderful experiences with them. We’re fortunate also in that in the West the teachers would come from India, Nepal and stay here for a while, and so they would arrange retreats for us, the retreats where we would be able to go someplace and stay there for a week or a weekend, a week, ten days, and it allowed you to escape from all this everyday stuff. You leave your cell phone home, you do that, and you immerse yourself in the teachings, in the calm, in the peace, in the routine, so that it became you were allowed it allowed you to go deeper and without the distractions of the everyday world. Then you could take that experience home and practice it again. Continue to practice it once you got home. So I ended up with a tradition that I love there was meaningful with for me and in a location that afforded me the ability to meet all these people and to get all these wonderful teachings. Oh, how fortunate and lucky ones are this me? It was really good. And then that moved my involvement and my immersion into the Berne tradition and the teachings of the one tradition and my commitment to them, to the practices.
Lineage
The bun tradition, according to tradition, was founded 18,000 years ago. Now, I think is 14,000, 14,000 years ago by Tom Busch, a Buddhist opposition rabbi. And so over the years and he taught differently to different people based on their capacities because we all have our minds work different ways and some people resonate with some kinds of teachings and other people won’t. And so but the typical career and then within this you’ve got sutra, which is the path of renunciation in order to try to not be entangled with your negative emotions, which is what causes us to get into so much trouble. And then there’s a tantric path where you learn to transform your negative emotions into positive ones, and then the sirtuin path, which is you need to born. And I believe the Nygma tradition. And that’s a path where everything is perfection in itself, which sounds wonderful in la la land, but in reality is it’s difficult to see that. And so there’s a training of the mind in order to allow that to open up and happen. For example, in searching, if you’re feeling angry rather than reacting on that anger, if you just sit and ah, even just pause and notice the anger and look at it, if it over time, it will just dissipate. Leave it as it is and it just dissipates. So that’s the absorption path. Within this, there are things that you can do to train with each of those each of those paths, such as tantric and searching. But classically, you have causal vehicles which you do to train yourselves to get ready for the meditation. And some of those have to do with clearing your body, getting your body ready, because as the body moves, the winds within the body move, and that affects what’s going on in your mind. So we do have body exercises that we do, and then we have mental exercises. We typically start with purification, and that’s done with the 900 practices that you’re supposed to do, 100,000 of each one of these. And many people, the monks in the monastery will do it in a few months, but most laypeople will take years to finish the mantra. And then from there you go into practices like shinny, which is the calming of their mind, their their practices of focus, so that you can tame your mind to be still are and not as active. And that is there’s a progression within shinny. And then from there you begin to open up into other meditative techniques, either tantric techniques or research and techniques, so that you can begin to practice those. And the included within the bompard tradition are all of the earth based and element based things as well, so that if you have a obstacle or is something you can’t get past, this emotion, then you look at which of the elements is based on that is associated with that, and you work with that element to clear that so that it’s your meditation is easier for you.
Lineage
The bun tradition, according to tradition, was founded 18,000 years ago. Now, I think is 14,000, 14,000 years ago by Tom Busch, a Buddhist opposition rabbi. And so over the years and he taught differently to different people based on their capacities because we all have our minds work different ways and some people resonate with some kinds of teachings and other people won’t. And so but the typical career and then within this you’ve got sutra, which is the path of renunciation in order to try to not be entangled with your negative emotions, which is what causes us to get into so much trouble. And then there’s a tantric path where you learn to transform your negative emotions into positive ones, and then the sirtuin path, which is you need to born. And I believe the Nygma tradition. And that’s a path where everything is perfection in itself, which sounds wonderful in la la land, but in reality is it’s difficult to see that. And so there’s a training of the mind in order to allow that to open up and happen. For example, in searching, if you’re feeling angry rather than reacting on that anger, if you just sit and ah, even just pause and notice the anger and look at it, if it over time, it will just dissipate. Leave it as it is and it just dissipates. So that’s the absorption path. Within this, there are things that you can do to train with each of those each of those paths, such as tantric and searching. But classically, you have causal vehicles which you do to train yourselves to get ready for the meditation. And some of those have to do with clearing your body, getting your body ready, because as the body moves, the winds within the body move, and that affects what’s going on in your mind. So we do have body exercises that we do, and then we have mental exercises. We typically start with purification, and that’s done with the 900 practices that you’re supposed to do, 100,000 of each one of these. And many people, the monks in the monastery will do it in a few months, but most laypeople will take years to finish the mantra. And then from there you go into practices like shinny, which is the calming of their mind, their their practices of focus, so that you can tame your mind to be still are and not as active. And that is there’s a progression within shinny. And then from there you begin to open up into other meditative techniques, either tantric techniques or research and techniques, so that you can begin to practice those. And the included within the bompard tradition are all of the earth based and element based things as well, so that if you have a obstacle or is something you can’t get past, this emotion, then you look at which of the elements is based on that is associated with that, and you work with that element to clear that so that it’s your meditation is easier for you.
Motivation
The Bourne tradition follows the buddy sort fun way. And with that you choose to liberate yourself for the benefit of everyone else, and that you will continue to return until all sentient beings are able to liberate this specific language of service to others was new to me in terms of the bumper tradition when I found it, but it was not new to me in the way I lived my life prior to that. And so it probably was a way for me to feel even more comfortable with this tradition than I would have otherwise, because service to others was the way I was raised to be and to live my life anyway. So that’s the way that was. And I think, you know, the interesting thing about it is that human beings and probably all creatures, all sentient beings are we don’t I don’t know that we know that yet. But all in all, humans for sure are hardwired to kindness. Our bodies produce more endorphins. They produce more killer T-cells. And when we do acts that are generous to other people, that help other people and so forth, we are hardwired to be helpful to other people in that it’s beneficial to us physically on the cellular level when we are. And I think that in often what happens is that individual people lost, individual people that I know are extremely kind to other individual people that they know. And where we as a culture get into these camps is, is because of cultural influences is because I think at most everybody we’re hardwired for. But we also are just raised to be kind to your neighbor and your sister and your whatever. So unfortunately, there are people out there that don’t have that experience in life, but I think most of us do. And so the bodhisattva vow it just goes ahead and puts into words and commitment what you’re already living. At least it did for me and one of the reasons I was comfortable with the tradition so the if I can borrow from chick not hard if you can change yourself then you change your family. So if you yourself live the body set for life, then you’re going to model that and energetically get that going in your family. And then they energetically get that going in the neighborhood and then that energetically is gotten together in your city and then that energetically and the way we live permeates and influences the state, the country and the world so that we can have peace. It starts right here with us.
Practice
Daily practice. And I have to tell you that my daily practice varies and it varies a lot on how I feel and what my time is. And it varies from I may have a daily practice like this for a while and then nothing for a while, and then again for a while and something else and then nothing for a while. And then for a while it’s most it’s been most productive. When I could find a way to do it in routine every single day. That is an absolute. So that would be my recommendation if someone wanted a daily practice to find a way, even if it’s 10 minutes every day to do it the same every single day. I used to get up and take my dogs for a walk and I would sing my daily prayers. While I was doing that. I would come back and sit on the porch, do my sore long exercises, and then sit for about ten or 15 minutes. And that would be my day. And then of course, always dedication at the end so that you dedicate the merit of your practice to all sentient beings. It seals it and makes it permanent. So then as life gets in the way, you get out of habit, you get out of routine, you don’t have time. You have to get up and go do this. You’re on the road, something happens. And so without the discipline or habit, then it becomes a little bit harder. Often what I will do is after I’ve had a teaching or retreat, I will do that practice every day for a while, right? The so that I change with the daily practice is I’m doing the prayers and mantras from the particular practice that we just had the retreat taught. I try to do practice every day a little bit, but for me even more than that, the bompard tenets and the ideas of the one tradition permeate my thought process. Always, so that if I have a decision to make, I would say how you know, it would generally be in the back of my mind. Is this a kind way to do this? Is it is this a wise way to do this job? How do I how does it fit into this? What so it’s there’s I’m conscious all the time about what I’m doing and how it fits into the ethics and the principles of the BUN tradition. So my daily practice is not just on the cushion, but is all day long thinking about or incorporating and having that be a part of the way I live right now. I’ve been studying tech, so which is like true core, it’s Tibetan yoga. And so I’m learning. I’m learning that. So every day I get up and say the morning prayers for the hour in the opening prayers for that and do those exercises and then close down AM so right now currently my daily practices for that. However every night when I go to bed I sort of dedicate my day. I review it and dedicate my day and say the purification mantra recommended by soon not posh imam. Also in the morning when I wake up, I do an opening prayer of asking the enlightened beings to join me for the day. Now, how do we pick what practice we’re going to do on a daily basis? And one of the things as because there are so many practices, it might be easy to get lost and say, Oh, I should be doing this. And that’s actually one of the things that I go through life with is no matter what I’m doing and how happy I am, I’m always thinking I should be doing something else. And one of my teachers told me, that’s not enough earth. So if that’s a problem for you, go practice a little earth, because that always helps me when I find that bubbling up. Oh, I’m not happy with what I’m doing. It’s not enough earth. So I will go practice Earth for a while. But I think we intuitively are attracted to a practice and that we should practice it. And I also think that it’s important to practice a practice enough times. If you’re going to practice it at all, practice it enough that you’re comfortable with it, and then it becomes a part of you, and then you can move on to something else. If you’re not attracted to it, just leave it be. And so Tenzin Mango Rinpoche, as always, teaches us in our often says when he’s giving us a teaching, if I say something and you don’t get it, don’t worry about it, just let it go. And if I do it in it, but you want to you want to hang on to the things that I say that you understand and resonate with you and that’s what you practice. So it may very well be that it’s intuitive on what you should practice, but just like it’s makes it hard to gain any depth in something. If you go from tradition, tradition, tradition, sampling a buffet all the time, it also is hard if you just sample practices and never make them a part of you. So if you’re going to practice that well, I do. What I try to do is practice a practice enough that it’s solid in me and I understand it and I feel it. And then I will try another one.
Refuge
How do you decide what you’re going to study? And I think that it’s important to understand that there are a good number of traditions out there and a good number of ways to approach the idea that Buddhism has that offer to tame your mind so that it becomes clearer and the path to enlightenment or realization or this clear mind is there. But it’s tough. And really, in order to do it, it’s better to dove deep in one tradition than it is to sample multiple traditions. And what happened to me was that when I found one, I knew that this was what I wanted to study. I didn’t look back and I never studied with anybody else. It was too much and too much depth and too much richness and more curriculum than I can manage in one lifetime. I don’t need to go sample more. I want to study this. And so that’s what I have done. The so the commitment was there from the beginning and once I found but the commitment was to burn, to study that and then to in terms of refuge in the Bompard tradition, refuge is often offered, I should say, often is occasionally offered by particular teachers. If they’ve been with a group of students for a while, it is not a considered necessarily a step in the curriculum of training your mind. So I have taken refuge with one or two of my teachers, but it’s not something that we it’s more of a heart based commitment or a heart based connection. It’s more of a heart based connection to a teacher and to the tradition. So but it’s certainly not would not be considered a step or a checkbox that you have to do as you go along the curriculum to learn to to find enlightenment. The other part to this is that there are stories in them. One tradition about how as we become more and more immersed into the our ability to do this, we become lighter. We begin to realize the the space in our bodies. And it’s not just the space in our spiritual being, but actually in our bodies. They talk about people being able to walk through walls, putting their hands down an imprint and a stone and flying thing. So my scientific mind says, Wait a minute. But when we start to learn more and more about the science, our instruments get more and more precise and can measure smaller and smaller things. Everything that’s in these texts is being proven out scientifically. And so it’s interesting to study this, to say so. Another reason I stay with this is because I’m curious about it. How did people thousands of years ago, with no instruments, no knowledge or anything, be able to put together these systems of medicine and of energy, work and breathing that are now being proven to be correct by these instruments that are just now coming online in our civilizations. So curiosity is a whole nother reason why I study this stuff.
Reincarnation
It’s it it’s interesting. You know, I’m curious and though one of the things that’s interesting about these traditions, these really ancient traditions and the traditions that require you to they require you to figure it out for yourself. They do not ask you. And in fact, they demand that you not take anything on faith. They but there is faith in that as you begin to explore it and you find that there are pieces of it that the the teachings present that are true, then you begin to have more faith that other pieces of the tradition are probably true as well. And so along with that comes the reincarnation. And I remember very early in this pathway, my girlfriend and I were talking and the concept of achieving enlightened enlightenment in this lifetime came up. And she still teases me to this day when I said to her, she said, Are you going to achieve life enlightenment in this lifetime? And I looked at her and I says, Oh, no, are you kidding me? Something else I’ve got to do. I’ve got all this other stuff I’m supposed to do. And you want me to add achieving enlightenment in this lifetime to my last. So the involve element of that has evolved in that it’s it’s still that, but it hasn’t become a chore. It’s no longer a chore. So they say that the the teachings say that the easiest time to realize enlightenment, the best time, the best opportunity, the best opportunity to achieve enlightenment or to realize it because we already have it. We just don’t see it is when we die is the minute we die because we are finally released. And from our attachment to our body, which is the strongest attachment we have. And so even people that realize that are close to realizing enlightenment are waiting for that period and hoping that they can recognize that time and then they’ll come back anyway because they’re bodhisattvas to continue to help people. Yeah. It’s I mean. Yeah.
Retreats
Most of the teachers hold retreats or hold teachings on any number of texts that are a part of the teachings. The Buddha taught 84,000 teachings, and so they’re they essentially send you down those paths and it’s all the same path, but it’s a different, slightly different way of looking at it so that you can for the different minds, the different consciousnesses of the people who are listening to it. So we have had in there and we often call in the West, our teachings are often called retreats, even if there are only two days. So we’ve had retreats on all the subjects. We’ve had tantric retreats on the different tantric masters we’ve had, and the Zen retreats on different aspects of the Zen we’ve had retreats from the master, which is covers that one exercise I was telling you about, that shared dream yoga, sleep, yoga and other aspects of sort of getting ready to be doing all your, your research and meditation. And so in the retreat, the format is usually the same, like I mentioned, but the content will be different and the teachers based on what the topic be. What does a retreat look like? So we would I will share my experiences from a residential retreat at Zintan in France, which is a place where our highest and most revered teacher, Youngs in Tanzania, was for a good number of years. He’s now retired and living in Kathmandu. But the when COVID is over Campo Temple, you and John will be back teaching there again. And they also have resident lamas there that teach from there. But we would go to France to residential retreat there, and the day would start and before breakfast with a song, what’s called song. And it’s a fire offering. It’s a smoke offering. So you get up and and you say the prayers and the mantras and you do the smoke offering. And it’s to on the offerings and all of the spirits in realms from all around in order to satisfy their needs. You do breakfast and then you go to a teaching and one of the teachers will do a little bit of a teaching. And then you have a break and then you have a meditation. Then we have the charter, which is the water offering, and it’s a ceremony. There’s four of these rituals during the day. The first is song, the second is a tour, which is a water offering, and it is a ritual with a number of prayers and chants and blessings in a water bowl. And you put things in it. And then that is offered out and it is there for all of the spirits and beings that are associated with streams and rivers and so forth. So then the then the afternoon you and have a little bit of a break, another teaching, another meditation dinner, and then before dinner, after the last meditation, there would be the third of the generosity offerings, which is the duchy. So it’s another smoke offering where you recite the prayer and then you sing a mantra for purification. Everyone takes a little samba and pours it into the fire and it becomes an offering to all of the beings in the ghost realm who are have. It’s a formless realm where they are never satisfied, so they can’t have food, but they could have the smoke. Hopefully the prayer is that the smoke will satisfy them and then we have dinner, a break, and then the fourth offering of generosity, which is cheer. And that’s a drum and bell thing. That prayer that is sung where you offer your body to whoever needs it or wants it. And it is that practice. It sounds pretty barbaric, but what it really does is it teaches you to not quite be so attached because we’re going to lose this body in the long run anyway. So we practice, it gradually sinks into us that, yeah, we’re really going to, it’s going to go. And so we practice this and daily and the idea of offering whatever we have, it all goes to other people, other beings form formless or whatever. So those are remnants of the shamanic tradition that we still and there are a lot of bomb powers that would say they’re not shamanic, they are the born practices, the indigenous religion of Tibet. But if you’ve ever been to Tibet, you can or if you’ve seen pictures of it, you can absolutely understand why the religion, the indigenous religion, would be so connected to the elements, because life is so fragile and it’s so harsh there that it is imperative that everything go smoothly. And so there is a lot you want to do, everything that you can to make sure that all of your elements go smoothly and that there aren’t any little beings or spirits that are causing mischief around because you misbehaved. So those are the traditions. So you’re immersed in both teachings and then practice the whole business of learning. This is to be taught what the teachings say to think about that and then to meditate on it so that what you’re learning becomes experience and show within you. And so reading about it is not good enough. Thinking about it is not good enough. You have to meditate on it and experi. It’s what the teachings were. Then you come back to the text again and say, okay, it was the experiences that I had while I was meditating. How do they match up with the teachings and with what? And so then you, you, this circular process occurs until you become more and more stable with your meditation and you understand it better and you’re not headed down some rabbit hole in your meditation, which is the other reason for a teacher. It’s very helpful. And in most of the texts say imperative for you at some point along the way to get a teacher so that you make sure that you’re not making mistakes in what you think you’re supposed to be doing in meditation when you’re not, it’s not woo woo. It is a strict curriculum of what to do to tame your mind.
Visualization Practice
The first teaching I went to where that was, so that hooked me was tantric practice. Share of trauma. It’s much like the enigma, the Tibetan Buddhist practice of Torah or the Zen practice of cognition, or so. It’s very feminine energy that is peaceful healing and also protective. So in this practice, you in a tantric practice, you imagine you transform yourself into this perfect being. We call them deities, but they’re not God. They’re just enlightened. And so you transform yourself. And so you sit pretending or imagining actually transformed as this. And I always think of it as I get to practice being perfect. And so with that, you can feel that energy within you. And then when you’re done with meditation, the interesting part of that is to try to remember what that felt like so that you can carry it with you throughout your day. So with trauma, you would feel this loving wisdom presence that allowed you to be generous with other people, allowed you to be patient with other people, allowed you to understand what’s going on with them and what are the best choices you can make to either help them or not. And so that was a resonated with me in the kind of in the job that I was doing as a veterinarian and also in my life in general. So then as I got more into it, I began to be more attracted to other tantric practices over the search and which I found to be very difficult. It is difficult, but tantric practices seem to resonate with me more. The second one that I learned that really was helpful to me was read Garuda, which is a very powerful, full healing practice where you imagine yourself as this extremely powerful being with wings and claws and fire going out every place. And it’s and the power that they have is for healing. And so but that energy is within us individually all the time. And so at times when I was a veterinarian, if I would be facing a surgery that I was nervous about or I had an animal that was really, really sick and it was critical that I get an I.V. catheter in them in order to help them. And so I would just sing the seed syllable of the red Garuda, and I could feel that power and energy manifest within myself and would give me the confidence to be able to carry out the duty said I needed to do. So it was in it. I suspect that there are people who would say, well, it came from the outside, but it never felt like it was coming from the outside. It felt like there was a clearing of the fear, a clearing of the nervousness to allow the confidence and the power of the healing to come forth. So those are the tantric practices are the ones that, for me fit into my life the best and helped me to grow into being what could be considered a better human being, a more peaceful one, and a one that was more able to figure out the right ways to help other beings. The Zen practice has been one that and the basis for all of that were the physical practices that move the energy in the body, the the causal vehicles, the song and other practices like the breathing practices which help you to get your mind in your body. Set the Zen practices. I am now in the process of practicing those open practice and trying to integrate it into my meditation as well.
The Book
After studying the being in the tradition and studying for well I guess it been about ten years I began to you’re as with anything as you begin to be a more comfortable with it, then your vision begins to widen up just a little bit and I begin to realize and maybe it was because my mother, who was elderly, was also approaching the end of her life and we were dealing with that. I begin to realize that our teachers were older, not not some of our teachers were much older. And and I would hear little snippets here and there that there were only four of the master’s who left are the lamas who left Tibet in 59 still alive. And I got to thinking that it was really important to get their story down or I would be lost before they passed, or they would be lost the details of their story. And of course, in my egocentric way, it felt like we were the best ones to do. The teachings hadn’t gotten to me that much yet, but we my husband is a newspaper writer, and so I approached him with the concept of writing the book, a book about their escape from Tibet. And he was intrigued and thought it would be a good idea to. So we started into the process of asking for permission and blessings to do this, so which we were very fortunate to get and as the time went on, I feel more and more blessed to have been able to have been granted that and that permission to do this. And what it resulted in was us being able to go to these teachers and interview them in person and them being open and generous with their stories. So we’ve had a great adventure going to India, Nepal and Tibet and France and a good number of places because they’re the story of their escape and diaspora and their settling of the urban community in India. In exile and exile is a magical story full of interesting thing, such situations as well as tragic ones with the death of a number of them in in Tibet by the Chinese. So we how is that we what has happened in writing this is that the the devotion that became so apparent in the telling of the stories. And I’ve often told my husband, we should name the book devotion, but it’s it’s not very descriptive of what’s in it, but the devotion of the monks and the lamas to each other and the devotion of them to the tradition and to the culture is just it’s just their time after time after time after time after time. And every just permeates the relationship of the people there in the story. And that has deepened my devotion to the tradition and to these people. The His Holiness, the 33rd His Holiness Long taught Temple Nyima, who is the head of the urban tradition. He carries the same name as His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He passed away in 2017. We were fortunate to be able to interview him before he passed and then went to his funeral ceremony. The one tradition does not appoint their leaders by reincarnation. The Guardians choose the new tradition and there is a big ceremony where the names are put into the balls and prayers are done, and then they pop out and so forth. So they have we have a new not new now. It’s been several years, but the 34th His Holiness now is working in memory ministry there in Delonghi, India. So he’s working and the tradition has been continued with a smooth transition from one generation of leaders to another. So the urban tradition is alive and well and healthy and moving on. We were able to capture that in one little section of the book so that there what that continuation is of their story is there as well. The monks left Tibet as the Chinese began to suppress a religion in Tibet. So they fled and when they got out, they met up with a Tibetan allergist there and Snelgrove from England who chose them to go to England on a Rockefeller grant to learn more about blood and for them to learn about the West. And they stayed several years in London and then came back and from there built the the village, them, the community, the Bonn community in exile in Delonghi, India, which is near so long hours, similar up in the northern part of India. And well, the journey of writing the book has been amazing. We’ve had great adventures traveling and also in speaking with people and then in digesting what they say and then writing it out and seeing what is there. The it’s I can remember sitting with Young’s interns and non doc in on the patio in Kathmandu at the monastery there. And he was talking about his his escape. He was shot and spent ten months. Fortunately, he survived. It was a miracle. And the survivors spent ten months in camp and then escaped over the Himalayas, walked out over the Himalayas. And but he in talking about it, he he can’t talk about it without getting emotional. Still, 50 years later, when he talks about and the ambush where he was shot and his friends were killed right in front of him and he saw them shot and killed right in front of them. And he mentions them every single time. And the other monks that were lost in the in other journeys, not they were journeying to get to him that were lost along the way. He has somewhat of he there is a training ground, Nepalese army training ground not too far away where they practice their weapons. And he still has reactions to the gunshots going off over there. So it’s he you can feel the emotion in that. You have all of the excitement of the adventure and the amazement of being able to observe them walking through this. That’s the Chiang Tong is this vast plateau between 15 and 20,000 feet, elevated feet with rocks and open spaces in mountains and rivers and all this kind of stuff. And they walked through all of this. And then over the Himalayas, the tallest mountains in the world, mountain range in the world, snow all the time. And so it’s not just the hardship of the journey, but also the connection to the people that they were journeying with and the stories that went along about that, the people that saved him when he was shot, he was shot. And then his attendants had jeopardized their safety by hiding themselves nearby. So that they could come and find him after the ambush. And they took care of him for a couple of days and then circumstances occurred, blah, blah, blah. And so he ended up without an attendant. And the he asked these people to take him down by extreme and to leave him there to die by water, near water. And so he was there. And in the night he heard noises and and and he couldn’t see anything because it was pitch black. And eventually he called out and there was a man, a Tibetan, with a herd of yak who was on his escape. Also. And he stopped and stayed camped there by the river with the young son for 16 days, nursing him, didn’t know him, was in any reason delayed his own escape. But that’s what he did. And he saved him. He wasn’t bumped either. Those were the the kinds of stories. That’s just one of many stories like that that we were able to hear and weave into this book, which is a true story. The book Ambush in Murari is the current title of it because Morrow is a mountain in Tibet where a young son was shot and it centers around three of the fathers of modern bumper, citing Karma, a Tibetan scholar and His Holiness, the 34th long taught Temple Neema and then Young’s intended non Doc Rinpoche. So we follow their journey and have ancillary stories of other monks around as well, so that they are. There’s the it’s a complete history of the of what’s going on from their childhood up through almost to today. It’s we are hoping to have it published next year. I don’t know if the publisher want to change the name or not, but we have a website and if you want to follow along to get updates on when it’s going to be published and look for the book, please, you can go online. Ambush at Morrow Wycombe.
Enlightenment
Well, you know, that’s the whole what is enlightenment is is a whole another subject. But in the urban tradition, enlightenment is a realization of your true nature. And your true nature is pure and awe and clear. And it has to do with there being no separation from anything. There’s no everything is interdependent and therefore always changing. And so it is the solidity and the attachment and or the aversion to that. Solidity is what sets us up. Our expectations is what sets us up for disappointment and pain and suffering, so that if we can, then the curriculum for training our mind is to teach us to be able to recognize the clouds, the cloudiness, the discussions that are we think are real, which are and in essence are not real and be able to live, rest, live with the clarity of our natural state. Our thoughts arise from the natural state, our emotions arise from the natural state. But if we can recognize them, then we can be a little clearer and wisdom arises from there our love, our joy at all and anger arises from there. We the point being to train ourselves, to be able to recognize that so be it. When you were writing about it, it’s often when we when I well, like my husband, I are writing a book. So when we write about enlightenment, it’s you have to be careful that we say they achieve enlightenment because you don’t achieve enlightenment. It’s more likely that you recognize the enlightenment, the recognize the clarity of your own nature. That’s what that’s what the point of it is. And the all of the teachings are different paths to help you be able to recognize it or realize it.
Fruit of Practice
So what’s the difference in my life with my vampire practice and before? And that’s a good question. And it’s hard to answer because it’s slowly but surely become integrated. And so it’s difficult to look back and see what the differences my friends in my book club say I’m a more peaceful person. I met my husband late in life. I was already in the middle of this and he considers himself a Buddhist. So I can’t say that it’s it. Maybe it was an energetic connection there. I don’t know. But we both consider ourselves very lucky to have found each other. I can say that they. Why do I do this work? Why do I stick with it? And I think the answer is that it’s for one thing I can recognize through the teachings the importance of this work and for my own well-being. What’s going to happen when I die? What’s going to happen in the rest of this life? Both the relative reality and the ultimate reality. And so the relative truth and the ultimate truth. And it also helps me to be a better person, a kinder person, a more patient person. And those are qualities that I always wanted in my life, raised a Girl Scout. And so it’s a it’s a the work that I do in my own tradition helps me to be a better person. The other part to this is that there are stories in the book tradition about how, as we become more and more immersed into the ability to do this, we become lighter. We begin to realize the the space in our bodies. And it’s not just the space in our spiritual being, but actually in our bodies. They talk about people being able to walk through walls, putting their hands down an imprint in the stone and flying. So my scientific mind says, Wait a minute. But when we start to learn more and more about the science, our instruments get more and more precise and can measure smaller and smaller things. Everything that’s in these texts is being proven out scientifically. And so it’s interesting to study this to say so another reason I stay with this is because I’m curious about it. How did people thousands of years ago with no instruments, no knowledge or anything, be able to put together these systems of medicine and of energy, work and breathing that are now being proven to be correct by these instruments that are just now coming online in our civilizations. So curiosity is a whole nother reason why I study this stuff.
