Report from the Midwest -- NSDW Sangha

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Date Posted: 13:15:15 09/25/02 Wed
Author: Ngakma Shardrol
Subject: Report from the Midwest

Dear Everybody

I've just returned last night from my trip to Milwaukee & Ann Arbor, which all went very well. I stayed in Milwaukee about a week, giving two teachings at the Shambhala Center, one on working with emotions as the path & the other on yogic song. They both went well & I met a lot of interesting people including some old Shambhalians like Robin Kornman whom I had been hearing of for years but had never encountered & Lama Jinpa, a Kagyud monk whom I'd previously met at Tsogyelgar who is a friend of Jason's. Some of Ngak'chang Rinpoche & Khandro Dechen's Chicago apprentices (Dorothy, Joel & Martha) came for the teachings & stayed around the whole weekend so it was kind of a mini-retreat. Jason & his girlfriend Tyan were wonderful hosts to anyone who appeared. Jason seems to know everybody in Milwaukee & wherever we went he was saying hello to people.

I enjoyed looking at old houses made of cream-colored brick & eating in many good restaurants. Milwaukee seems like quite a pleasant city full of delightful people. They have a very fancy-looking Shambhala Center with a lot of people interested in Buddhism but not many teachers, so it will probably turn out that I visit there again, maybe in April or May of 2003.

Then Jason drove me to Ann Arbor, which is about 6 hours away from Milwaukee. On the way we stopped & bought a quantity of spectacular fireworks in Indiana, where they are legal. We went to a football-field sized warehouse completely full of all kinds of fireworks & an extremely unhelpful clerk eventually revealed where they kept all the 'rockets' (things that shoot high into the sky & explode in a shower of sparks). We bought a bunch of these for the February apprentice retreat in Ann Arbor since Ngak'chang Rinpoche had told me he wanted fireworks on that occasion. As I was paying I found out that all these fireworks are illegal in Michigan so I don't know what will be their ultimate fate. The people at Tsogyelgar may decide to use them anyway but in the meantime they are ensconced in Craig & Linda Donegan's basement.

Jason was able to stay for a few days in Ann Arbor & Naljorpa Bar-che was visiting from Holland so we had another mini-retreat at Craig & Linda's house. Not too many people attended the teachings in Ann Arbor, possibly because there was a football game on the same day & football is a very serious thing, apparently. But the ones who did attend appeared to be interested. This time the topic was vajra relationship & the 14 Root Vows. Linda's sister & her husband came. They had attended some teachings I gave in Chicago a year or two ago & they may be interested in becoming apprentices. In fact you may soon have a new vajra sister but I will tell you about that later.

While in Ann Arbor I was able to attend some teachings by Traktung Rinpoche & A'dzom Rinpoche. At one of them Traktung Rinpoche told us he had been rethinking his role as a Lama. He said that there were two different manifestations of the vajra master, which could be called the sun phase & the moon phase. In the sun phase the teacher has such a strong belief in the efficacy of the dharma & the truth of the teachings that he believes all he has to do is tell people about it & they will immediately see this too. Traktung Rinpoche said that the sun phase vajra master figuratively grabs people by the lapels & shouts in their faces all in an effort to get them to just pay attention to the obvious truth of the teachings. If the teacher sees the student going off on some wrong path he forcibly drags him back. If the student is uninterested in practice the teacher tries to encourage him & even maybe to threaten him or bully him into practicing.

The moon phase vajra master, however, takes a longer view. He figures he is karmically connected to all the students & if they want to fart around for endless lifetimes not practicing or having doubts or going against his advice then he will let them do that without interference from him. As an example Traktung Rinpoche said that he is going to post teachings on tsa-lung exercises on the student-access part of his website. Previously these were secret & you needed a special password to get to that section of the website because it's not a good idea to practice these things without the proper preparatory background. You can create obstacles for yourself even by reading or hearing about these exercises if you are not in a condition to be able to practice them because hearing about them will cause you to form concepts about them that will be troublesome later. So it is thought to be better not to hear about them at all until you get to the point when you can actually practice them. A'dzom Rinpoche said that this would be their only warning to their students & that after this they would post these teachings & any student who wanted to could read about them & even try to practice them if they wanted to. And if they created obstacles for themselves that was their responsibility. This is the moon phase vajra master.

For as long as I've known him, Ngak'chang Rinpoche has always operated as a moon phase vajra master. He gives advice usually only in the most subtle way & in fact a lot of the practice of being a disciple consists of refining one's awareness to the point where one even notices that advice is being given. We have a great tendency to ignore & in fact not even hear things which go against our view. It's a kind of tunnel vision of the mind.

Ngak'chang Rinpoche & Khandro Dechen will let people trundle on for a long time without commenting on their behavior if they don't invite comment. It has always been up to the student to solicit advice rather than that advice is imposed on them. Some people prefer to make all their own decisions, including practice decisions, & they are mostly allowed to do this. If someone approaches the Lamas & asks, "Is it okay to do [ ]?" they will usually say yes, unless [ ] would be harmful or hurtful to someone. In this way people think "Rinpoche told me to do [ ]" & often don't realize that the idea actually came from them. In this way the east coast & the west coast sanghas have evolved very different styles of managing retreats, both thinking that they were 'doing it the way Rinpoche wanted it'. It's an interesting thing to think about.

Traktung Rinpoche, A'dzom Rinpoche & quite a few of their students at Tsogyelgar were all following the Atkins diet, which involves consuming mass quantities of protein & fat with no sugar or carbohydrates. I have been trying to lose weight myself for some time but with only sporadic success & I decided that the radical over-the-top quality of this diet appealed to me, so I will be starting on it on Monday. At least I'll still be able to eat cheese.

I hope you are all doing well & that your practice is thriving. The November apprentice retreat in New York will be the first time we will all be together at the same time & I am greatly looking forward to that. See you soon.

Much love,
Ngakma Shardrol

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