Compassion Fatigue, part 2

I work in a business which is mostly powered by stupidity -- I take care of people who drink and drive and then run their cars into kids on bicycles, who think it's smart to text while they drive, who ride donorcycles ... uh, motorcycles in shorts and flipflops and of course without a helmet.  You get the idea.  Then there's the guy who decided to smoke after cleaning his grill top with gasoline.  In a closed garage.

I even have a t-shirt that says "Your stupidity is my job security" -- and another one that says "Hi, I'm your nurse.  What stupid fucking thing did YOU do?"

That's one big reason why I started to investigate Tibetan Buddhism.  After all, the Dalai Lama is all about compassion.

And heaven help us all, it might actually be rubbing off!!

Today at work I was leaving the bathroom when I noticed a woman who looked as if she'd been crying, and was dabbing her face with a cold, wet paper towel.  Some evil spirit seized me and I put my hand on her elbow and asked, "Are you OK?  Can I do anything for you?"

And I didn't even have my hospital ID on!!

A Little About DBAH

DBAH is Discovering Buddhism at Home, the FPMT program that I'm studying.  Today, out of abject curiosity, I decided to see how many root texts I'd read in translation as part of the 5 modules I've either begun (3, 5, 14) or finished (1 & 2).  It's a pretty amazing list, considering that this is a VERY basic program:

• Essence of Refined Gold (Dalai Lama III)
  
• Principal Teachings of Buddhism (Je Tsong Khapa)
  
• Lamp Thoroughly Illuminating the Presentation of the Three Basic Bodies (Yagjen Gaway Lodro)
  
• Wishes for Release from the Perilous Straits of the Intermediate State, Hero Releasing from Fright (Losang Chelkyi Gyeltsen, Panchen Lama I)
  
• Confession Sutra  with commentary by Arya Nagarjuna
  
• A Significant Sight, Commentary on the Bodhisattva's Confession of Downfalls (Sangye Yeshe)
  

Of course this is not all: the reading list just for the five modules I've worked or am working with includes 10 required books, 18 recommended books, and more than 30 articles or reprints, plus 4 - 8 hours of recorded classes for every module.  Each also has practice requirements, and a final retreat of from one to three days.  

FPMT expects that it will take at least two years to complete the course.  I expect it will take longer, if only because of those pesky 100,000 prostrations and mantras that have to be completed for Module 14, along with one two-week retreat and three three-day retreats just for that module.  However, the idea isn't speed, it's quality.

Back to my practices ....

Compassion Fatigue

This new book I'm reading says that what I suffer from is "compassion fatigue" -- the weariness of the full-time caregiver.  I suppose that's what I am, although right now I'm nursing the Electronic Medical Record at our place instead of actual people, and I'm not sure what bodhicitta means in relation to a computer.

There are days when I miss actually taking care of patients, when it's almost a physical ache.  There are days when I'm so fed up with people whose carelessness and stupidity winds up hurting themselves or others (see Darwin Award) that I wouldn't mind never seeing one again.  I guess that's why I'm doing the Buddhist thing.  I miss being enthusiastic about what is actually a privilege:  people let us into their lives when their lives are in the crapper, and we walk with them as they climb out.

Too Far Too Fast

So typical of me -- to want to run before I can walk.

One of the requirements for the Discovering Buddhism course I am taking from FPMT is attendance at three Nyung Na retreats, three-day partial fasts that celebrate Chenrezig, the Buddha of Compassion.  Chenrezig comes in two manifestations, one with 1000 arms and one with four.

In order to participate fully in a Nyung Na, one has to have a Tantric empowerment in the name of Chenrezig, and one is usually given before the retreat begins.  These retreats are held on a yearly basis at Deer Park, shortly before the celebration of Buddha's birth and enlightenment. 

But do I want to wait?   NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!  So I found out that the Karma Kagyu folks in Chicago were having a 1000-Arm Chenrezig empowerment this weekend and immediately signed up.

But why in the world do I want to undertake the six-times-daily practice commitment involved in that empowerment now???  I'm having enough trouble doing the once daily practices I committed to with my refuge and bodhisattva vows ..

I'm not going to the empowerment (nor am I banging my head against a wall nor shooting myself in the foot, which would be the equivalent in terms of generating trouble for myself).  Someday I'm gonna learn.

Another Flower from Deer Park

The teachings from Deer Park are suspended for two weeks:  Ven. George, who teaches the newbie class on Thursday evening, I presume, is at Kadampa in North Carolina with the rest of the resident sangha to hear Lama Zopa talk about Atisha's Lamp for the Path; Geshe Tenzin is at Namgyal (HHDL's official seat in the US) for two weekend programs.

So I just thought I'd post this flower here -- it's such a wonderful metaphor for life in samsara...

Making Heads Fall Off (with apologies to Gus di Zerega)

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the 80's, when I was living in northern California and teaching the western esoteric tradition, a friend had a student named Gus.  Gus kept saying that he wanted to "learn to make heads fall off."  My friend, Don Frew, had many wonderous stories about things he had seen or been party to, and Gus was hell-bent on learning to see and do the same.  I was always jealous, because I'd never seen or otherwise witnessed anything that I could not rationally explain.

These occasions seem, from my reading, to be fairly common in Tibetan Buddhism.  Here's a typical description, from Portraits of Tibetan Buddhist Masters by Don Farber:

"That same year in Los Angeles I had a profound experience during an empowerment called the 'Black Crown Ceremony' given by His Holiness the Sixteenth Karmapa.  As I stood in the crowd inside the Shrine Auditorium, I watched the Karmapa as he sat on a throne, a black hat on his head and his hand on top of the hat.  To the sound of Tibetan horns and gongs, he slowly lifted the hat up above his head.  Suddenly, he appeared to become transparent, while his clothes and the hat remained opaque.  He appeared this way for nearly a minute, until he placed the hat back on his head" (p. 1).

I'm still waiting to witness the unexplainable, but just today I had an AHA! experience about why in all my spiritual wanderings this has never occurred.  It is from something written by Lama Thubten Yeshe, the guru of my guru, in his book Becoming Vajrasattva.  He is speaking in the context of initiations and empowerments, but I think the idea can be generalized to other circumstances in which some witnesses have experiences of mystery and others do not:

"Receiving initiations has more to do with your own level of development than with the qualities of the guru.  You don't receive an initiation just because the guru is special -- in fact, it's the other way around.  You receive initiation because of your own qualities.  Due to your mind's capacity to attain higher states, during an initiation it can somehow meet, or merge with, the guru's mind, such that you both experience the same thing.  That sort of experience can really be called receiving an initiation" (p. 187).

(This also explains why, during my many years of involvement in Western esotericism, I seemed to be able to bestow experiences I had never had myself.)

If anything, I am now more a scientist than I was twenty-five years ago.  Because of my naive embarrassments of the past, as an extremely credulous youth, I am deeply fearful of being deceived by appearances.  (Whether that's good or bad can be debated.)  With the many tales of wonder that surround the practices of Tibetan Buddhism, the future could get very interesting.

Prayer Wheels and Tsa-Tsas and Beads, Oh My!

Well, I've had a week to process my interaction with Rinpoche and I'm still on TILT ... I've been reading like a house afire and the more I learn the less I know.

I'm sort of back to the ostensible subject of this blog, ngondro, the preliminary practices of Tibetan Buddhism.  Preliminary to what, you might ask?  Well, I'm not exactly sure.  The textbook answer would be, preliminary to practicing Vajrayana, the Diamond Vehicle, also known as tantra -- and yet when I read Rinpoche's published correspondence with his students, many of them to whom he's giving advice on ngondro practices have already received various and sundry Vajrayana empowerments.

The more I learn about ngondro the bigger it seems.  In the Gelugpa tradition, to which Rinpoche (and the Dalai Lama) belong, there are four "ordinary preliminaries" and five "extraordinary preliminaries".  [My reference-at-hand here is Geshe Rabten, The Preliminary Practices of Tibetan Buddhism (Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1974).]  The "ordinary preliminaries" are subjects for meditation, specifically:

1. the Perfect Human Rebirth
   
2. Impermanence and Death
   
3. the Law of Karma
   
4. the Misery of Samsara.
   

The "extraordinary preliminaries" are practices, each of which is to be performed at least 100,000 times:

1. Taking Refuge and Generating Bodhicitta
   
2. Confession of Downfalls and Prostration to the 35 Buddhas
   
3. Vajrasattva Sadhana
   
4. Offering of Mandalas
   
5. Guru Yoga.
   

My feeble understanding is that meditation on the ordinary preliminaries is supposed to lead one to the spontaneous realization of shunyata (emptiness), and performance of the extraordinary preliminaries is supposed to purify one's old negative karma sufficiently for the Vajrayana to lead one to enlightenment in a single lifetime.  One of the lineage gurus (Padmasambhava?  Je Tsongkhapa?) is said to have completed the process and achieved enlightenment in only three years -- but I'm sure he was a full-time retreatant with no rent to pay and no day job  LOL

The more I read, the more I conclude that 100,000 of something basically means "start doing this every day, NOW, and continue until they feed you to the vultures."  In his correspondence, Rinpoche gives students huge numbers of repetitions to do and then turns around and says, don't worry about the numbers, just start and keep on keeping on.

So I shall make haste slowly.  Start with the 35 buddhas, get that safely in place, then add the Vajrasattva practice.  I hope.

I never noticed all these ants before

..but as I was coming in to work this morning there were a million of them on the sidewalk leading up to the hospital!!

Now this would not usually be a problem, but when I took refuge on Monday, one of the vows involved is never to kill. Anything. Including ants (which is why the flower below looks a little scruffy ...) It has to be *conscious* to count, mind you -- if I don't see the ant before I step on it, no harm, no foul -- but that only means I'm looking for them more than I was before.

There are five lay (pratimoksha) vows that one can elect to take as part of a refuge ceremony: not to kill, steal, or lie, and to refrain from "sexual misconduct" (variously defined) and "intoxicants" (also variously defined). I hate the taste of alcohol, so that last one is a no-brainer. The others are also not that difficult when one comes from an observant Jewish or Christian background, all being covered in the Ten Suggestions.

But not swatting mosquitos is going to take some getting used to.

From the gardens at Deer Park Buddhist Center

I have no idea what this is -- but I loved the colors.  You can see that, as a Buddhist center, insects are allowed to do their thing; but sometimes imperfection is beautiful.

4th Time Was the Charm!!

Yesterday I found my refuge master -- and root guru.  I was privileged to spend two hours in a private meeting with Rinpoche, receiving many teachings in his characteristic enthusiastic manner ("Totally a hallucination!!  Completely!!")  I feel that it would have been rude, and made it much more difficult to concentrate on what Rinpoche was saying, to take photos while he was talking, but I really wish there had been a fly on the wall to take some, because watching him talk is a genuine experience.  He gesticulates constantly, waving his arms around, making a chopping motion with his right hand every time he refers to "cutting the root of samsara".  

On Sunday when I spoke to Roger, his assistant, Roger asked whether in my letter I meant to request that Rinpoche perform the actual refuge ritual, or whether I was just saying that I intended to take refuge at one point.  When he mentioned Rinpoche performing the ritual I responded, "Oh that would be WONDERFUL if only Rinpoche had the time!"  Roger indicated on Sunday that finding the time would be difficult, and I never dreamed that it was Rinpoche's intent to do so on Monday!!

I had left work at 2 pm so I could be at Deer Park in time for our (fourth) scheduled meeting at 4 pm, and actually got there at 3:20.  I waited in the designated place, on a bench outside the annex where Rinpoche was staying, until 4, and then called Roger's cell phone to let him know I'd arrived.  At 4:30 I called again and asked Roger to return my call when he received the message.  At 4:45 I had pretty much given up, and asked one of the monks to take a message and leave it in Roger's room; the message said that I was going to stay on the grounds until 6, and I went off to take some photos of the stupa marking the place where His Holiness the Dalai Lama had performed the first kalachakra initiation in the West.

I had just finished hiking up the hill to the stupa when my cell phone rang and it was Roger.  "Would you like to come upstairs?"  I practically ran back to the annex and hauled myself up the two flights of stairs to where Roger and Losang, my new French monk friend who had been trying to make sure I got to see Rinpoche, kept trying to pour water/tea/coffee/juice for me as if we were in the desert trying to prevent dehydration.  (The trouble was, I ALREADY had to pee but didn't want to leave the suite to walk down the hill to the rest rooms!)

Merry Colony, from FPMT Education, had warned me that I would forget everything I wanted to say and everything Rinpoche said to me, so I had brought a notebook with my questions in it and an MP3 recorder to capture everything Rinpoche said.  (To no avail, as it turns out, because he speaks so quickly and softly that I would have had to hang the recorder around his neck for it to get all of what he was saying.)  

I'll say more about our conversation after I have a chance to absorb more of it ...