Retreat time

The sun is not so strong here, at this lower elevation and with the winter coming on. I’ve been studying the Tibetan alphabet in a patch of sunlight on the front patio, bees buzzing around a mongoose picking up kitchen scraps from the meadow below, where they get thrown.

At home I have been studying Buddhism mostly in the Kagyu tradition, which is rather well-established in the West. The high Kagyupa lamas enjoy quite some celebrity among Westerners, as many Kagyu teachers have gone to the West and ‘planted the dharma’ there (as Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche said). Wednesday I went down to Sidhbari, a town below Dharamsala, which is the current home of His Holiness the Karmapa. Though he is mostly devoted to study and practice, twice a week His Holiness holds a public audience, at which westerners and eastern devotees attend and receive his darshan (blessing).

I laid eyes on His Holiness one other time, when he gave a public talk at the Waldorf Astoria in New York during his visit to the United States last Spring. In that venue, he held a crowd of hundreds, in opulence and with grace. It was quite some change for him, spending young childhood in Tibet and the past 10 years or so in India in intense monastic life. On Wednesday he appeared well, settled, and as always, bright-eyed.

Kagyu lamas and practitioners were out in force in Kathmandu when I was there, celebrating the enthronement of Urgyen Jigme Rabsel, the reincarnation of beloved teacher Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, who passed away in the 1990s. The young tulku, recognized several years ago, is now 8. I attended one event, at Nagi gompa, the tulku’s monastery in Shivapuri Park on a hill outside the city. The monastery was in a festive mood. Reincarnate lamas as children are still children, yet often with a special calm and grace. Through great ceremony the young tulku sat, at one point with lollipop in hand. It was nice to spend the day in the presence of so many people who are there to wish the world well — and nice to have without so much Western dharma circus.