Живой ламрим: как жизнь Кхена Ринпоче отразила учение о ступенях пути (2005, Аризона), занятие 6

[Говорящий 1]
Mīrā-bhārata-mahāyana. I told the teachers they had to have their students do a book before the class, and I keep forgetting. So we'll continue with the adventures of Khen Rinpoche.

Okay. And you tell me. First, lam-rim.

How to think about your lama. Second, serve them.

[Говорящий 2]
Third...

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, like leveraging your... Whatever you're born with, leveraging it well. Maybe less, maybe more, but you leverage it well.

Yeah. Three lower realms. Then what's next?

Yeah, refuge, logically, right? I'm going to die, I might go to the lower realms. If I don't use my resources, I'm going to die.

I might go to the lower realms. I need refuge. So, just the last couple of days, I've been thinking about refuge in terms of...

My father, when he was 15, Pearl Harbor was attacked, right? He was living in Michigan, in a little town in the middle of nowhere. And everybody ran to sign up, to fight, to serve, you know?

And so, he was too young. He was, you know... I think he had to be 16 to sign up.

And... But he lied. And he went to the recruiting office, and he faked the papers, and he got in.

And they put him on a submarine in the Pacific, which in those days was like, literally a can that didn't hold very well together. And I think, I don't know what percent, just disappeared, just fell apart in the water. They don't know where those are.

You know what I mean? It wasn't like they were hit by enemy fire or anything. They just leaked and sank, and they're just gone, you know?

So it was a very frightening place to be, the whole war. And he's 15 years old, you know? But ever after, he really loved boats.

So he always had a boat. He lived in San Diego. And if his business went well, he had a big boat.

And when his business didn't go well, he was a builder. He had a very small boat, like a rowboat. But during the good years, he had this big fishing boat.

And just a little bit, they would take, you know, a PT boat? Patrol torpedo boat or something. John F.

Kennedy was on one. But these were like, I don't know, 40-foot boats, pretty good size, 40, 45-foot boats, that would hold two torpedoes, and they would go up to an enemy destroyer and hit it and try to get away. So he had one of those.

You know, this is a big deal. Most deep fishing people would use those boats. Like albacore.

We used to go albacore tuna like that. But I always liked how when you come into the dock, if you have a big boat, you come in and... So that's the dock, okay?

Right? And he was really good at this thing. Like you come up here and then you cut the engine and then you go into reverse.

And the whole thing is like... We watched one day, we were in a sailboat watching the Enterprise come in, the aircraft carrier. And we got too close to it and it cut the air, the size of it.

And it's like being under a skyscraper. And they can't stop it. It takes like five miles to stop it.

So if you're in a little sailboat under it, you just get crushed. They can't do anything. Anyway, we got away.

But you can't stop a boat. They just have momentum. Then you play the momentum and then you bring it into the dock, okay?

Like this huge thing. And then what I thought was cool is you think the boat is tied up, right? Like his job on the submarine, one of them, he was a machine gunner and the trumpet player in the band on the submarine.

But a big job was just when they got into port that he had to handle the ropes. And they throw these huge ropes off the submarine or off a boat. And I used to do that for him.

And then somebody has to leap across the water to the dock, get this thing looped without getting your ankle in there, and then jump out of the way when the boat tightens up against it. So then you have all these cleats, right? They're shaped like this.

And then you're supposed to get the loop over that and get out of the way as fast as you can. So then you have these ropes that go to each cleat. And it's kind of fun when you're like 15 years old to jump off the boat as it's still moving, you know, and try to hit the deck.

But the cool thing is the boat never touches the dock. It's never really tied to the dock. People think that.

It's suspended. You see what I mean? And if the wind is blowing from one direction, you tie it closer.

But the boat never touches, hopefully, because it's all fiberglass, it never touches the dock. It's just suspended, you know? So all these ropes that define where you are, where are you suspended?

And I was thinking about Rinpoche and refuge like that. Like, in a way, refuge, you know, what's the first refuge vow? Once you've taken refuge in the Buddha, don't take worldly refuge.

I think that's the main one, right? So what's worldly refuge? To me it's like you define yourself against the world.

You see? You define yourself like these ropes define you where you're floating. Otherwise you're just floating aimlessly, right?

Then you have different ropes that define you relative to the world. You see? You have different links to the world that define who you are.

And one of the big problems in Three Year Retreat was we just gave them all up suddenly. And then we all had these identity crises because you didn't have any ropes to the world. You just suddenly had no relation to anything.

And I thought I'd go through these, the common types of relations that define us in the world. Like we're floating in the water and then these ropes define a normal person. And the more they are, the more you have a support system.

They call, oh, I have a support system, right? Like I have people support me, people help me. I have relationships with people.

And all these things are a web or a network of support for your life. But in most cases they're worldly. You see?

They're all like a worldly kind of refuge. And then you die and suddenly they're all like ripped away. You know?

Like the last few years of your life or the last few weeks of your life, suddenly all these ropes are suddenly cut. And then just all of a sudden you come to this frightening floating in space where you're not anybody. And we had that big problem in three-year retreat.

There's nothing to achieve. No one knows how many mantras you're doing. Everyone's forgetting about you actually.

You know what I mean? And there's nothing to buy. There's no certificates.

There's no friends. There's no family. There's no nothing.

So I thought I'd go through what struck me about Rinpoche was how few of these ropes he had. I'd like to go through the common ropes we have. And what struck me about Rinpoche was as I thought about it more and more, he lived his life without any ropes.

You see? And that was like amazing to live a whole life like that. So what are our common ropes?

I'll put this up here. That's the PT boat, okay? I'd say one is like maybe...

I guess I'll just go off the top of my head. Family, right? And they define you.

Like that's part of your support system, part of your refuge system. You have parents. You have sisters, brothers.

You have a system like that of family. And Rinpoche had really given that up a long time before when he was seven or something. He entered the monastery when he was seven years old.

He took rabjung. Rabtu chowa means I left behind my family, my home, like that. And he didn't have.

He honored his mother, but he didn't see her much after that. And he honored his sister. Even after I knew him, his sister was still alive in Kalambong, Darjeeling.

But he didn't have much relationship with her. He helped her financially to fulfill that vow of gratitude towards those who have paid kindness to you because she had gotten into the monastery. And he had his nephew, half-nephew, Geshe Lothar.

And he helped him. But that was more of like a... Geshe Lothar was his representative in Sara, in his eyes and ears in Sara.

And there wasn't this family thing. He didn't have any family. He had kathat, Thar.

So he wasn't taking refuge. He wasn't putting any worldly refuge in family. He didn't have.

As far as family, he was flowing, free of family. I think a lot of us have friends, right? We're talking about things that can really help you, right?

We call them support system, but they let you down. They're false. They're, what do you call it?

False. They are a lie. They're not real support.

They let you down. You can't help them. They can't help you in normal ways.

So friends, I mean, this struck me. One time, Tsong Rinpoche came, and he taught one day. And this was the greatest tantric master of his generation.

He knew all the sadhanas for I don't know how many hundreds of deities by heart. He just sat up on the throne, and you said, can you do this one? And he'd just go off on it.

He had this long beard, and white beard, and he was very brilliant, very unusual. Lots of stories about Vajrapani and LNB. But just this extraordinary tantric master on the level of Tujan Rinpoche and Ling Rinpoche.

So he came one time, and then he and Rinpoche sat outside, and they started to talk. And it was like afternoon, and they were still talking like three in the morning. And then it dawned on me, Rinpoche doesn't have any friends.

Like he's been in this country, he was here 32, 33 years, and didn't have anybody to talk to. You know, like nobody on his level at all. And nobody at Saramay on his level.

When he went to Saramay, he was alone. You see, I mean, there was no Geshe at Saramay who had gotten his Geshe in Tibet, except for Rinpoche, Ken Rinpoche. That's all.

At Saramay. I don't know Sarajay so much. And it was lonely.

Like even Geshe Serpa in Wisconsin, who's pretty old now, I think 70-something, got his Geshe in India. So it was very lonely for Ken Rinpoche. Even at Saramay, he didn't have people he could hang out with and talk with, and things like that.

He didn't have friends in that sense. And I often think, he would confide somewhat in me and more in art, I think. And then he would joke around with Jampa, but what, Jampa's like 50 years his junior or something.

You know, so how much can you relate to these people? Some American teenagers, you know. What can you say?

And it didn't bother him. Like he didn't need that refuge. You see what I mean?

It didn't seem to bother him at all. I used to think it must have been terribly lonely, but he was fine. It's like some kid who was okay to play in the room by themselves.

And he didn't need that kind of refuge. So friends, you can wipe out that kind of refuge. Not that it's bad to have friends, right?

It's good to have friends. Friends can keep you doing Dharma when you don't feel like it. Things like good friends.

But he didn't need them as a refuge, right? Then there's like country, right? There's your country.

And like Christy and I were just in India for two months, and you get homesick no matter how many times you've been there, no matter how good, and I think so. No, we went to the supermarket a couple of days ago, and we're like, ah, America, you know? And you know, no, it's just something to live in a place.

Everyone's speaking a foreign language. Everything's weird. Everything's unusual.

Nothing is what you grew up with. We got really sick. We couldn't get comfort foods.

We sent a guy out, find any kind of American breakfast cereal. Don't care what it is. And I don't care what you pay.

Just find one, you know? And he scoured this big city, and he found one box of Kellogg's Corn Flakes from, I don't know, Spain or something, you know? And, you know, it's like, it's hard to be in a place where it's not your own home, right?

But Rinpoche, I don't know, in 1959, you know, he lived all his life in Plasa. He never traveled anywhere. You know, he studied at Serra.

He studied at Gume Tantra College. And that was it. He entered Serra Mae at seven years old, outside of Hwasa.

Then he studied at Gume, which is in Hwasa. And then the Chinese came, and that's all. He never went anywhere.

And then suddenly he's in this foreign country, and he never went home. And it didn't bother him. You see?

No sweat off his back at all. He didn't really care, you know? He was stateless, right?

I traveled with him a lot to other countries, and there'd always be this headache at the border. You know, he had this little Indian, it's called an IC, Identity Certificate. It's printed on this cheap paper.

It's just falling apart. It doesn't look like a passport. And, you know, hours and hours we'd stand at customs explaining to people, you know, he's state, look, stateless.

It says stateless, you know? And it didn't bother him at all. You can't become an Indian citizen if you're a Tibetan refugee.

They give you, if you pay enough money, they give you this commie little thing. And maybe they already knew it, maybe they won't, because no sweat off their back if you disappear. And you're nobody.

And then when he was trying to become an American citizen, he put Tibet as his birthplace. The thing came back. You're not allowed to put Tibet on your birthplace, you know?

You can put China if you like, you know? And he said, well, just on a principle, I'd rather not. And then there was this big court case and this big deal, and so finally they resolved that you can put Hasa, but you can't put Tibet.

You're stateless, you know? You're nobody. And it didn't bother him.

Still, a Tibetan can't put Tibet on their place of birth, on their passport. So he didn't bother him at all. You see what I mean?

He didn't care that he didn't have a country. You see? He didn't have that refuge.

And he didn't care about it. And there was this big thing of whether Tibetan refugees in America or other countries should take foreign citizenship. And His Holiness asked him not to for a long time.

Don't worry. We'll get Tibet back shortly, you know? And it would hurt our cause if people became Germans or French.

And for many years he obeyed that until the Dharamsala government said it was okay. He didn't take citizenship. So he was just stateless.

And he didn't have any papers. And he couldn't go to a lot of countries because he just couldn't get a visa on no papers, you know? And it didn't bother him at all.

It was really interesting. So he didn't care. A country didn't matter to him.

He stayed in America. He didn't really care. He didn't care what country he was in.

He didn't have that country. Dini's language, right? Your language.

I'm just writing them on the ropes. You don't have to see them. Your language is a big comfort, right?

You get back to America. Or you're walking through Varanasi and you're sick for five weeks. And it's like you're exhausted.

And psychically you've been over-meditating. And it's all too heavy. And you hear some, yeah, what, you think there's any pastries on the next street?

And you're like, oh, you know, someone's speaking American, you know? You know, some big, overfed American, you know, complaining about the flies, you know? You're like, oh, you know, my own tongue being spoken.

And there's a big comfort. Then you get back to the airport. You get to JFK and people are, you know, people are screaming at you in English.

And you're, ah, you know? And he didn't have that comfort, you see? He gave it up.

He didn't care, you know? If it was convenient, he would talk Tibetan to us. But it's like, I like to go to the store.

You know what I mean? He'd go, I like store, go to the. And he put up with that for 30 years, right?

I mean, those people who could speak a little Tibetan. Or he had to try to speak English. Or he spoke Kalmyk.

He learned Kalmyk. And he had learned some Hindi. But he didn't care.

He wasn't attached to even his language. You see what I mean? He didn't care.

He didn't even have that comfort. And he didn't care about it. He didn't mind.

If he needed English to teach Dharma, then he would have to speak English. And he gave up his own language. And didn't, no sweat off his back, you know?

And he spent hours, you know? Like he'd suck as much English out of me as I could give him. And then he'd like turn on the TV.

And I got to listen to the news. I said, Rinpoche, who cares, you know, about the 14th auto accident of the New Jersey tube bike? He said, no, I got to learn to English well enough to keep up with Roger Grimsby on Channel 4, you know?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so purposely he would like watch TV. And then he got sick of all the TV programs.

So he decided baseball was really good. Because the baseball announcers, Tim McCarver, these guys, they're old foot baseball players. And they just speak nice, slow English.

And they talk about neutral things. They're not talking about sex. They're not talking about violence.

They're not talking about politics. They're just talking. And sometimes baseball, but usually just ramble on, you know?

And so it was like a clean atmosphere. And out of all the things on TV, that was the only thing he could really stand was this boring, long, sleepy baseball games with some guy talking normal English that he could learn some new words, you know? So he didn't...

Not to have your own language. It's very radical for a person to just give up their own language, you know? And not have that support.

Not care about that refuge. It's very difficult. Then I think we take refuge in consuming.

And when you get back to America, like you're in the airport, John Brady's like there to pick you up. And even if you tell him 14 times, you don't want him to. He's there.

And then there's this... Right, John? There's always a Seattle coffee or a Starbucks right there.

Out of customs, you know? And it's like obscenely expensive. It's like double their usually obscene price.

It's like $8 for a hot chocolate, right? Which is 400 rupees. Which is two weeks' pay for the guy you just shook hands with.

And you're like, I'll take it. No, because you assert yourself. You see?

I'm me. You see? I'm somebody.

If you're spending, you're somebody. If you're speaking your language, you're somebody. If you got a passport from your country, you're somebody.

If you have friends, you're somebody. If you belong to a family, you're somebody. And if you're spending, you're somebody.

And that's a big deal for Americans. A lot of our identity, a lot of our refuge is wrapped up in spending. As long as I can spend, I'm somebody.

And you get this urge, like you're in India, and you're in retreat for a couple of months, and someone else is buying the groceries, and you just desperately want to spend something big. Give me something I can spend some money on. And I can...

Deep down inside, it's like, then I'm somebody. You see what I mean? If you go for six months or a year without going to the store, you feel like you're nobody.

It's a weird thing. If you don't have anything to spend, or you can't go spend something, especially as an American, then you feel like you're nobody. You feel like lost a little bit.

So here's Rinpoche, right? He just refused to consume. Refused to be a consumer.

Like, we all blah, blah about it, and then we go out and buy an $8 latte at Starbucks, right? But honestly, perfectly resisted all American attempts to make him a consumer. Beautifully, skillfully, objected.

You conscientiously objected to the consumer thing and just refused to participate in it. And I've never seen anyone that good at it. So he just refused.

He'd say, we're getting in the car. Why? Gotta go shopping.

He used to drive me crazy, because he'd spend... So we'd go shopping. We'd go to Food Town or wherever in Lakewood.

And so I'd drive him there, and then I'd have to stand there, and he'll stand in front of 800 kinds of cookies, right? And he'll carefully look at each one, and he'll pick up the bag, and he'll put it back, and then... And then finally I'm like, Rinpoche, we've been here 45 minutes.

Tell me what you want. I'll see if I can get it. And he says, sugar cookies.

The white sugar cookies with the ring, with the empty in the middle. But I don't want sprinkles on them, and I don't want them chipped or cracked, because they're for offering. And I said, Rinpoche, there's 16 kinds of sugar cookies here.

They don't have... And he said, that's too small. Those are too small.

And then I like the ones that are... Because all he's thinking is offering them. He's not eating them.

And he's totally oblivious to the other cookies. He doesn't care at all about the other cookies. He's not tempted at all.

If it's not the right shape, flat... I mean, these are in my mind all the time. Mothers, they've got to have this little thing around the end.

And then we would go to three or four stores and stand there. He didn't care about the variety. He didn't care about anything else.

He wanted a certain thing. And then I'd say, do you need anything else? He said, what are we having for dinner?

And I'd say the same old thing, because I was like on strike every night. I'm not cooking any good dinners. I hate cooking.

We're going to have tukpa. Do you know tukpa? Tukpa is Tibetan soup, noodles.

And then I'd say, could we buy some tukpa, some dried noodles? And he'd say, no. And I'd say, so I have to make them, right?

And he'd say, yeah. So you have to knead the dough really thin, like it takes a long time. And then you have to slice it just right.

And then you have to throw it in just right. And you know. But he refused to even go along with packaged tukpa.

Noodle, just plain noodles. Like plain old flat noodles that you can buy anywhere. Why?

Because it would spend like 60 cents more than if we made them. And that's 60 cents more for sermon. You see what I mean?

So he just didn't, he didn't care that they were available in a package and that they taste the same. He wasn't talking about the taste. He didn't care.

You know. He just said, that's 60 cents. You can make them.

So we made them. You know what I mean? So he, he was a lousy consumer.

And he cut that rope. You see? And that comfort of being somebody who's buying something.

I'm somebody. You know what I mean? Because I'm buying something.

Because I have an, what? Income. And he lived the 32 years I was with him, knew him, with no income.

No regular, no comfort of an income. No income. The comics offered him, you know, be at our temple and then we'll give you $100 a month or something.

It was $100 a month. And, 60, $60 a month. And they never paid it.

You see? And then he had to give them money. You see?

He supported the temple. He paid all the expense, most of the expense of the temple he paid. And then we, you know, we were like, oh, we'll rescue, we'll give you $30 a month from MSTC, right?

And I was the accountant, right? For like 10 years. And we didn't have any money.

And we couldn't give him any money. And then every six months maybe somebody gave some money then we'd give him like six months of his $30. And then he just put it on the altar and send it to Sarah Mae, you know?

But he, to live your whole life without the backup of an income and not care, you see what I mean? And it really was hard for me. The first eight years I had no income.

And it was really hard. I remember after we had a big fight, he sent me to work. That's a long story.

We'll tell it someday. But, then I had an income. Then I had a paycheck, you know?

And I felt like somebody. You see what I mean? Like there's this thing in America, if I have a paycheck, I'm somebody, you know?

Like if somebody cares enough to give me money, if they think I'm worth something to do something for them, I'm somebody, you know? If there's a check that says Michael Roach on it, and there's any kind of number on the other side, well, somebody thinks I'm somebody, you know? And it's just this comfort of having an income.

He never had a regular income. He never had any predictable income. He didn't know at any given time for 35 years if he would have any money.

And it didn't bother him. You see? It just didn't bother him at all.

And he never stressed about money. He never mentioned money. He was constantly loaning money to people, including me, you know, because he didn't care.

He didn't have that comfort level. And he didn't need it because he didn't have that refuge, okay? A long-run income is a position, right?

You know, in Rinpoche, you've got to understand, he had been a Harambha Geshe of his class. That's like, out of 10,000 monks, you make it to the top, you know? Out of 10,000 monks, you make it to the top.

Then they take the best from each Datsang, the sixth-grade Datsangs, two from each, Debung, two from Serat, two from Ganden. And they take the Harambhas, and they get to go to the Potala Palace, and they get to debate before the Dalai Lama. So, I don't know, the Dalai Lama must have been thirty-five, twenty, when Rinpoche did his debates in the Potala Palace.

And Rinpoche got the serpak. Say serpak. Serpak is a brick of gold, but it's a gold brick of tea, okay?

Like, the Dalai Lama presents the two best debaters in the country that year with a brick of gold tea. Rinpoche got the gold tea brick, you know, and the katak from the Dalai Lama. This is a big deal.

And from debate, you know, like twelve Harambhas debate. And he got this award. And then he was the giku of, the debate master of Gyumei Tantric College, which I mentioned before is a big deal because that is automatically you become the next abbot.

And then the abbot then becomes the Gandantipa, which is the head of all galupas, the throne of Jetsun Kappa. So here's a, they call him Angi Dambo. Here's a gold brick winning Harambha Geshe from Tibet.

He's coming to America, you know, and in Tibet he's respected as the highest scholar in the country, you know. It's like, I don't know. We don't have anything like that.

So he comes here and I go to serve him. And like the first weekend, this big comic guy walks in. And comics had lived under the Russians, right?

And when the revolution happened, they fought for the tsar, the whites, against the reds. And they lost. They were with the Cossacks.

So they were sort of outcasts in Russia. And then when the Germans came through, they declared independence. You know, they said, where's Kalmykia again?

You know. And then the Russians accused them of joining the Nazis. So when the Nazis were beaten back, the comics were killed or sent to Siberia.

And so these people had been locked up by the Germans also as being Asian in the concentration camps. So the only Kalmyks who made it to Howell were ones who had escaped from German concentration camps. So these guys are still wearing jackboots.

The guy's like seven and a half feet tall. He has jumped over a fence at Treblinka or something and gotten away. And this is the state of mind they're in.

These people are wounded, very badly wounded people, mentally. And many alcoholics, a lot of heroin and like that. And so he's like, he looks at me and he's like, Mokhan.

You know, and he puts his bag on the table and then he goes, Sol. You know. And then Mokha.

You know. And then I'm like, and he's this big guy with his German jacket. They still wear their German jackboots, you know, like 20 years later.

And I'm like, okay. And easy. Tra.

You, you know. Okay, okay. And then he left.

There's all these bags. It's like Rinpoche comes down and I said, Rinpoche, what's going on? He says, somebody must have died.

And what do you mean? He said, we got to make mahabotsig. And what's mahabotsig?

Mahabotsig is momos, okay? Tibetan momos. You know.

So like, Rinpoche's getting pots down, 200 momo pots down, and he's clearing off the table and everything. And I'm like, what are you doing? And he says, we got to make mahabotsig.

Somebody died. So when someone dies in the Mongolians, you have a wake. And you all eat as much as you can.

Momos. So I said, well, who's going to make the momos? And he's like, we do.

And he's like putting his apron on. He has his white apron over his robes. And I'm like, what are you doing?

And he says, we have to make the momos now. They'll be here in the evening. There'll be like 200 comics outside with a dead body.

And they'll want momos. And I said, well, why don't they make the momos? And he says, no, the priests always make the momos.

Not as an honor, but as, that's all priests are good for. You see what I mean? That's all monks are good for.

You see what I mean? You cook the momos. He's like, you cook them.

You cook them. I want them here by the time I get back. And I'm like, Rinpoche, you're the head of this temple.

I'm not the head of this temple. I'm a guest at this temple. I don't own this temple.

I have to do what they say. I said, you're a hamba geshe. You're a serpak winner.

You're the highest living scholar in the world, I guess. And you're going to make momos? And he says, I'm here.

I have to do it. So he didn't have this thing about, I'm the big man or anything. Even after he had been Abbot of Sereme, after classes at Rashi Gampaling, he'd be down there scrubbing the toilets that the students made dirty.

Year after year. Seichu was a disaster. Year after year.

It was such a pain. Everybody would come, eat everything and leave. And it would be just a terrible mess everywhere.

I hope we're not doing it to Kat. We shouldn't do it to Kat. But anyway.

And then we would clean up for like two hours. And Rinpoche would be mopping the floor and everything. And he had no pride.

No position. Didn't care. The government gave him a hamba geshe degree.

I found it one day in the closet on the floor. What is this? Oh, that's my hamba degree.

He didn't care. He just didn't care about it. One time a Zen master came.

This Japanese Zen master. They talked for a while. We never met him.

We didn't know who he was. And then it got around to, why did you come? And he said, I heard you have this geshe thing, geshe degree.

And Rinpoche said, yeah, yeah, there's a geshe thing. He said, can you give me one? And he said, well, what do you mean?

He said, well, I have all these degrees. I have a Ph.D. And I have an M.A. And I have a Zen master degree. But I don't have a geshe degree yet.

And I can give you a Zen master degree if you give me a geshe degree. So Rinpoche said, okay. And he got this nice piece of paper.

And he wrote, honorary geshe degree. And he gave him this degree. And then he left.

And then he got all these napkins. And he wrote all these extra geshe degrees. And then he gave us all a degree.

But he just didn't care. He just like, he said, he just didn't impress him at all. It didn't mean anything to him.

You know what I mean? Then we have a car, right? Your car defines you.

In America, it's not a small thing. You think it's a small thing. It's a big part of your refuge.

It's your car. Your car defines you. You know.

No, if you don't have any car at all, you feel like a schmuck, right? If you have to keep asking people, can I have a ride? You know, you feel like a schmuck.

And we had to rent a car in Oregon. And we just rented it in advance. We got the cheapest one as usual.

But we said it has to fit two sitar boxes. And we were with Sid Johnson in his barely mobile van. In fact, it broke down at the car rental place.

It died at the car rental place. He spent the night in a motel. And then they drive out this thing.

And it looks like Iraqi war mobile vehicle number 89. This huge SUV thing with huge bumpers, chrome bumpers, and antennas coming off, and like over-wide, like a semi-trunk. And these big plush seats.

And Sid's going like, looking at us like, are you all right? We didn't do it. We just rented it on the web.

But then you get in that thing, and you're like six feet above everybody. And there's this respect. Everybody's looking at you like, now that everyone's got this thing, they're looking at you like, there's somebody.

They must be somebody. Even the rental people are like, are you guys some kind of famous musicians or something? And you feel like you're, it makes you feel like somebody.

Even if you're poverty-stricken Buddhist people, somehow you feel a little more like somebody when you get in a real car. So Rinpoche had this Volkswagen, right? 200,000 miles.

I told you, finally it burned itself up. And then somebody gave him a Buick, a new Buick. And we went to pick it out, and we got the right one, finally.

They offered him a new car. He just had to go order it. And then he said, so I said, okay, Rinpoche, this is like these 10-hour decisions.

Everything has to be perfect. And he says, one more thing. The salesman's exhausted.

And he says, one more thing. I want it without the radio. And he's just like, we don't make them without the radio.

I don't care. I don't want a radio on it. And he says, well, they all have radios in them.

And he says, I want it without the radio. They special ordered from the factory. It took like six more weeks.

A car without a radio. And they had to design a flap to put over the place where it was. And so he got this car.

And then one day, there was a guy, Chini-la's uncle was driving some monks regularly to work. So Rinpoche said, you want the car? And he said, no, no, I don't want to borrow your car.

I'll probably wreck it or something. No, no, take it. Here's the keys.

Just take it. You can have it. He's like, what?

This is, what's his name, the uncle? Do you remember? Who is it?

Dorsha. Yeah, Dorsha. So he says, yeah, take the car.

And Dorsha's like, what? And he said, just take it. I don't need it.

You take it. And he took it. And then we got him, we raised money and we got him a new car.

Everybody put in $50. And we got him this Honda. And I said, Rinpoche, I think you should learn to drive.

Because if there's an emergency, if you have a medical emergency, I'm away, at least you can drive to the hospital or something. So I said, okay, I'll learn to drive. So he gets the manual, driver's manual.

He memorizes it. He memorizes it in like two days. And then I take him to the driver's license place and he gets 100.

Aces it on the first try. 50 feet from the corner on Thursday. And he said, oh yeah, that's question, that's on page 48.

And then it was really hard. It was two or three years of driving in this car. And he had no sense of movement or balance.

He had never ridden a bicycle. He had only walked into that. So he'd never done anything.

So it was like terrible. It was like torture. And finally, on the third attempt, we were at the motor vehicle place.

The guy, he comes out of the place for the driving exam. He's already failed like so many times. And there's this young tester.

He says, you're a Tibetan Buddhist monk? He says, yeah. He says, I'll pass you, okay?

Okay. And he passed him. And so he came back.

And there's his shining new Honda Accord. And beautiful new car. And I told Rinpoche, you should, it's your car.

The students have got you this car. It's yours. And it's a big deal in America.

We built a garage for you. We had it delivered on a big truck. They dumped it there.

The comics laid the cement. This huge truck backed up, put a garage there. You know, it's a big surprise.

In America, this is it, you know. You got your new car. You got a new garage to put it in.

Here's the keys to the car, you know. So he drove it home. And he got it out.

And he hands me the keys. And he says, I'm never going to drive again. And he never did.

Not a single minute. In 20 years, you know. He's like, take the car.

Use it. You know, everybody used it. It was Chibita.

Chibita means public horse. Anyone could use it. And he didn't care.

You see, he didn't care about the car. He didn't have this, he didn't have a name. You have a name, right?

Like, he didn't care what you called it. When he got to America, they misspelled his name. Fartin, right?

Okay, I don't care. You know, he went around for the next 35 years as Lapsang Fartin. And misspelled his name on all his papers.

And he didn't care. He said, okay. And then the comics said, what do we call you?

He said, I don't care. You can call me anything. They'll call you Baksha.

Baksha means, like, llama, you know. And so, the comics are calling him Baksha. Some people are calling him Geshe-la.

Some people later are calling him Rinpoche. In the monastery, they're calling him Ardhikensura, former abbot from America. And the point is, he didn't have a name.

He didn't have a regular name. He didn't even care enough about what he was called to ask people to all call him the same thing. You call me, you call me anything.

I don't care. Call me what you want. You know, so he cut this name thing.

And then his body, right, you relate to your body. You take refuge in your body. You know, like, I'm healthy.

I'm strong. I look like this. I look like that.

Or I dress this way. I dress that way. He just didn't care at all.

You see, I mean, he had this clinical thing to keep it healthy. But, he didn't care what he looked like. You see, I mean, and he wasn't aware of what he looked like.

You know, I remember Dalai Lama, I met the Dalai Lama when I was in India, and I said, I need to leave India because my mom is very ill. We have to go. And, is there a Lama in America?

He said, oh, study with Ken Rinpoche. Lobsang Tharchin. He's the one.

Study with him. You know, I said, where is he? He's in New Jersey.

Oh my God. You know, and then, so I came to New Jersey and I opened the temple door, you know, and here's this short man with a big nose and these huge ears and this big bump. He has this big bump on his head, you know, and I'm like, do you know where Ken Rinpoche is?

He says, I'm Ken Rinpoche, you know, and I'm, so I was thinking he would look like the Dalai Lama, you know, he'd be six something and all handsome, and then, and then he starts to talk, right? So for like 30 seconds I see him as this, a shorter man, kind of poorly, big ears, bump on his head, and a broken nose, right? And, and then suddenly he's like seven feet tall, eight feet tall, you know what I mean?

For the next 30 years, he's eight feet tall. You see what I mean? I could never remember how I saw him.

I knew I had seen him that way for a few seconds, but then ever after it looked like he's taller than me, and I always have to look up to talk to him. People tell me with Lama Zopa they have the same experience. Petra told me she always has to talk up to Lama Zopa, you know?

no, and, but, and I remember the people came for a Kundun movie. They were looking for monks to be high abbots, and they heard there's this high abbot in New Jersey, so Rinpoche's standing next to Geshe Losang Gyatso, who looks like his highness, and they all rush over to Geshe Losang Gyatso, you know, are you Ken Rinpoche? You know, because they don't have this vision of him, but he didn't care, and they said, well, would you like to be in the movie?

He said no, and they said, really? And he said, really, I don't, no, I don't want to be in the movie, and they just left, you know, and he didn't have this, he didn't care about his body, so here you got somebody, he doesn't care about his, he doesn't take any refuge in his body, he has no friends, he has no family, he has no national affiliation, he has no language, he has no consuming, he has no regular income to define him, he has no position anymore, he's willing to be an unknown, he wouldn't allow us to advertise his talks, he got offers all over the world, would you want to start a center?

He said no, I don't, I don't care, if you want to start one, start one, if you want to study, come here, you know, he doesn't even get his name right, and he gives up his car, doesn't want a car, so there's no thing to define him, he's just floating, you see what I mean? No refuge at all, except that when he goes into this room, like every day he'd go to the temple, and he would chīn-gyel, say chīn-gyel, chīn-gyel, chīn means what? Dharma, gyel means to meet the Dharma, chīn-gyel means meet the Dharma, so you say, I'm going to go look at the temple, they don't say that in the Tibetan, they say chīn-gyel, do you want to chīn-gyel?

Do you want to go meet the Dharma? They say yeah, oh here's the key to the door, you know, and then you, he would walk into the temple, and he'd come through the door, and he would turn to the right, and then suddenly he's in the mandala, you know, he's in a totally different world, you know, and you point to a thangka, and he says, just hit your hand like that, you say no, you have to go like that, you know, and then suddenly he's with all these friends, suddenly he's in his mandala, you know, and he's looking at each one, and he's with these deities, you know, and you're like totally out of it, you know, like what are you doing, you know, and he's like, shh, you know, and he's like, there, and that's the only refuge, you see, that's the only place that he had that was his home, was in the temple, and just in the, I mean the jik-je corner really, and Kali, fierce deities, right, and he's over in this Kali corner, and Mahakala, and Kali, and Maksorma, you know, these very fierce deities, and he's like, he's in that corner, and he's like there for an hour, and he's just standing there, and that's his only pivot in the world, you see, that's his only, what do you call it, cleat, that's the only thing that's tying him into this realm, he's in this mandala, you know, and he's in that corner of the temple with Maksorma, and Kali, and Ma, goddess, Lama, Pandan Lama, the goddess, you know, and he's in there, and he's like, that's the only connection he's got to this world, you see what I mean, that's the only refuge he's taking, no money, no house, no country, no clothes, no friends, no family, no language, no name, you know, he's just there, that's the only thing he really cares about, you know, is that little mandala, you see, and so that's refuge, okay, that's refuge, do we have the courage to cut all those other ropes, you know, and just float, you know, because then it makes you available to be something else, you see what I mean, when you cut them, I'm speaking to the choir because you already cut them because you're here, but anyway, then you're available to take refuge and to be in the mandala, you see, it was very beautiful to think about, no other kinds of ties at all, no other kind of identity at all, then when he's in the mandala, he's there, and then it doesn't matter the body is here, the body dies, doesn't matter, right, because you're in the same place, okay, that's all.