Живой ламрим: как жизнь Кхена Ринпоче отразила учение о ступенях пути (2005, Аризона), занятие 1

[Говорящий 1]
One of the best ways to learn Lamrim is simply to observe the behavior of a great lama who's been taught the Lamrim, right? And who is a master of it. So since Rinpoche has passed on, and I don't really feel so bad, I see him in many forms for many years.

And so I don't grieve. You know, I miss him, but I don't grieve. And so I don't have a problem.

He's with me all the time, literally. But I feel very bad, especially for the people who depend upon that emanation so much. So, you know, we lived together for 20 years.

And so I learned the Lamrim. He taught liberation in the palm of your hands two or three times through. It took 20-something years, right?

He taught it, I think, twice in Howell, and he taught it once in Washington. And then I was his driver, I was his cook, I was his financier, we built his house, and watched the baseball games with him. And so I had a unique opportunity to hear everything he taught for the 20 years.

But I thought you might like to hear the inside scoop of how he was practicing Lamrim. So I thought every time we meet, I'll give you some stories. And they're mostly funny because he was like that.

So the first Lamrim is shen yin sangpay ten tsul and shen yin jorway ten tul, how to honor your Lama in your thoughts, how to think about your Lama, and then how to act towards your Lama, how to behave towards your Lama, right? So how did Rinpoche practice this particular step, right? You know, so I knew him for 30 years, and before that he was 12 years in India.

And in that 42 years, he never went anywhere without his Lama telling him to go. You know, like wherever he went, it was because one of his teachers had instructed him to go, right? So 42 years, right?

I don't know before that, you know. So when he came out of Tibet, he ran away with the Dalai Lama, when the Dalai Lama ran, 1959. And when he got to India, most of the monks went to Baksa, which is a British prison that was built for Gandhi and other revolutionaries.

And then it was abandoned for a long time, in the worst part of the Bengal jungles, right? Like, miles from anything. And the Indian government put most of the monks from the Three Great Monasteries there, and lots of other monks.

And then many of those monks got very ill with tuberculosis. But a few monks were chosen by His Holiness to come to Masuri and then Dharamsala, which were the refugee... it's where he was stationed.

So he asked Rinpoche to come with him, and Rinpoche never went to the refugee camp. So he asked Rinpoche to take care of the education of the young Tibetans, refugees, many of whom were orphans, whose parents died. So for 12 years, he and Genak Rinpoche, they wrote the curriculum, they wrote the textbooks for all the elementary schools and high schools of the Tibetan refugees.

And it was beautiful, and we studied a lot from those books. Then the Dalai Lama called him and said, there are these strange Mongolian people in New Jersey, in the United States, and they need a priest there. There was a project to translate the Abhidharmakosha auto-commentary by Master Vasubandhu.

So he asked Rinpoche if he could go. So Rinpoche just always obeyed His Holiness. Rinpoche's root lama was Khyabje Tichar Rinpoche, which is the tutor of the Dalai Lama.

But he considered the Dalai Lama to be one of his main teachers. And also Pabongka Rinpoche was one of his early teachers. Pabongka Rinpoche passed when Rinpoche was 20, but he received teachings from Pabongka Rinpoche on the Lamrim.

Like what you see in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hands, Rinpoche received those teachings from not that particular time, which was earlier, but later on it was repeated and he received those teachings from Pabongka Rinpoche. And there was a famous incident when Khenpo Rinpoche was in charge of the he was the nyerpa of one of the nyerpas of Serame at the age of 19 or 20, which means like a quartermaster. And then, so he set up Pabongka Rinpoche's room and all the food, and he made sure the cooks came, and then Pabongka Rinpoche called him in and touched him on the head and said, this one will be special.

So then he came to the United States and we lived in fear every time a letter came from the Dalai Lama. We had discussions, should we hide them, should we throw them out, you know? And they came like every four or five years, right?

And if he said, come, he would have to leave, you know? And so every four or five years he would get a letter, the stamp on the outside, and we were all afraid, and we would open it together. But usually it would be some request to help with something, and then I can remember one.

See, people around the Dalai Lama write letters in his name to all these Lamas, and, would you support this project, you know? And if it had the Dalai Lama stamp on it, like Rinpoche considered it, he had to do it, right? So I remember once when they needed training for teachers in Dharamsala for the Tibetan schools, and they needed $10,000, they're trying to raise $10,000.

Rinpoche cleans out his account in one day, sends all the money for the whole project, you know? And he would keep doing that all the time if His Holiness wanted something or needed something. We couldn't get a visa for His Holiness to come to the United States.

He was considered untouchable by the American government. And we had a throne in Howell, and we were all ready for him, and he was refused a visa over and over again. Then suddenly it came true, and Rinpoche cleaned out his account again, and so did all the people in Washington, D.C. And they rented Daughters of American Revolution Hall for $20,000 in 1979 money, and we brought him, and that was his first talks in the United States. I remember he came to the airport, there was like six of us, and this was how he saw him, you know, as a deity. And then when the thing actually occurred, they put Rinpoche in the back, and all these congressmen took credit, and it was really funny. But he didn't care.

It's like he did his thing, you know? And it was very beautiful. Later we got, every six years at Seremey, they choose a new abbot, and the way the abbot goes is the monks propose a list of maybe ten people, and then that goes to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and then he will choose the next abbot.

So it's sort of a democracy from the list. And then every year, every time it came up, Rinpoche would send this long letter, don't put me on the list. I don't want to be abbot, I don't want to be a big shot.

So for like 20 years he kept writing these letters, don't put me on the list. And then he got to be 70-something, and he was very ill with diabetes, and his legs were bad, he couldn't walk much. So he said, well, I guess by now they all realized I shouldn't be on the list.

So he didn't write the letter. And then we get this new letter from the Dalai Lama, and it says, you've been selected abbot of Sera Mey. So he said, I can't do this.

And we're all like, no, you can't go. You can't go. So Ard and I and a bunch of people, we had a meeting, and His Holiness was going to be in Washington, New Jersey, at Geshe Wangyal's old place.

So Rinpoche got permission to go meet him. And he was allowed to take along one attendant, so I went. And then Ard and all of us, we made a plan that I should go up to the Dalai Lama and say, could you make the abbessies shorter?

You see, could Rinpoche do a short term, like a year or two years or three years or something? You know, not the six or sometimes twelve years. So we had this plan ready.

So we went up there and we were ushered into this nice room. And I was sitting like where Kat's sitting and Rinpoche's sitting where you're sitting. And His Holiness says, well, are you going to try to get out of that or not?

Is that why you came? Because everyone gets out of it. Nobody wants to do it.

And it's thankless. It's hardened. So Rinpoche said, I'm seven years old.

You know, I can hardly walk. I got bad diabetes. But I'll do whatever you want me to do.

And His Holiness said, you're the only one, you know, all the people who went overseas, you're the only one who always does what I ask you to do. And he used to call him Old Man Tarjan. I met him later in DC and he said, oh, you're Old Man Tarjan's student.

Yeah, yeah. So, then he said, yeah, well, be the Abbot. Then he looks at me and he says, and you should only be Abbot for a year, okay?

I just want to get your name on the books, you know, in the lineage of the Abbots. And a year is fine. You can come back.

I know your students need you. And it was like this weird moment. And I think of another one.

I mean, he was very devoted to Chidram Rinpoche. And whenever Chidram Rinpoche's name came up in a book, he'd start crying. And the first few times I thought it was corny, you know, I thought he was faking it or something, really, because he would just suddenly start crying.

And he never did that, you know. And, but then after like 20 years of that, you think, you know, he would just stop his teaching and start crying, you know. And he always carried around this little scrap of paper, like this big.

And he had asked Chidram Rinpoche about the heart chakra. How does the heart chakra look? And he drew a drawing.

Chidram Rinpoche was a great artist. And Rinpoche carried that around all the time. And sometimes he'd pull it out, let me hold it for a while, and then he'd give it back, you know.

we sent Art with Chidram Rinpoche to ask, when he went to see Chidram Rinpoche one time, for a long life prayer. And so the long life prayer in the dakye, and also the verse for long life, in the lineage verse, was written by his teacher. And if you read it, it's pretty extraordinary that someone's teacher would confirm them as a high lama.

It's very rare. And it's very beautiful. We got that without asking Rinpoche.

We got someone to go in. I put a diamond on the altar. I hid it behind a picture.

And he came to me a few hours later and said, Did you put that diamond on the altar? I sold our car and I put the diamond on the altar. And he's like, OK.

Then he said, I'll give it to Chidram Rinpoche, OK? And I said, yeah. And then he flew to India.

He gave it to Chidram Rinpoche. I tried to get out of him his early lamas, and he wouldn't tell us much. So when I was driving him to Washington DC, I would pump him.

If you stick a tape recorder in his face, he would never talk about his early life. But if you just kind of brought it up driving the car, he would talk. And then when I got to where we were going, I'd write it all down.

And so one of his early lamas, I don't remember his name. This was right after Rinpoche. Rinpoche was a bad student in the monastery.

He was a troublemaker. He was always getting disciplined. He was not a good scholar.

And around the age of 17, he met Pabongka Rinpoche. And then Pabongka Rinpoche touched him, right? And then he came home, and he told his lama, I'm going to start studying for real now.

He's like, yeah, right. And he says, I'm going to become a Harambha Geshe. His teacher said, the day you become a Harambha Geshe is the day I become the Ganden Tripa, which is the head of all galupas.

So Rinpoche did become a Harambha Geshe. And the way it happened was, the next year, I think, his lama got an appointment in a monastery down south, Tibet. And it wasn't a major place of study.

It was like one of those small monasteries. But it meant a lot of income to be the abbot, you see? If you got that position, it was considered like a plum, because then you would have a big income and a big name.

So his lama was appointed the abbot, and Rinpoche was expected to go with him as his attendant. And then when the time came to go, he went to his lama and said, I can't go. And he said, why?

And he said, I'll get behind in my studies. You have to be in the debate ground every night to really learn. So he refused his lama.

And the lama left, and Rinpoche stayed in the monastery. So I always thought there was some kind of message there also. You know?

Like, he always did what his lamas asked for the 42 years that I knew about. But he refused the first lama, you see? So I don't know.

But those are my lama stories, okay? I think he had perfect lamrim, right? I think he had perfect behavior towards his lamas.