News

The past week has been quite busy. First was the passing away of one of my teachers - Geshe Jampa Gyatso. I counselled a dying person days before their death. The funeral is tomorrow and I have been asked to say a few things and conduct a short prayer service.
You already know my feelings about funerals so

We also had a visit from 250 school kids from Ballarat Grammar. The kids ranged in age from 13 to 15. I spoke to them about Buddhism and meditation. They seemed to enjoy it, well they were attentive at least. We spent some time meditating on the breath, with no laughing or giggling. I think the teachers were quite surprised how quite they were.

After the session, I was asked if it would be possible for me to visit Ballarat Grammar for a week to give presentations on Buddhism and meditation. We are trying to get this to happen sometime next year.

I think having a monk visit schools for an extended period of time is a fantastic idea. I would like to see more schools participate in this exchange of knowledge. I guess all they have to do is ask.

Geshe Jampa Gyatso has finished his meditation on Clear Light almost 7 days after he stopped breathing. This means his mind has left his body and in Buddhism this is the actual point of death.

It is believed that only holy beings can remain in meditation on the Clear Light for this period of time, and so it is very inspirational to see Geshe-la show us his skill as a final teaching.

In another event related to death…
In the last couple of days I was asked to counsel a Buddhist student dying of cancer and who had only days to live. We did Medicine Buddha puja together, recited his mantra and meditated on Lojong - a meditation where one visualizes taking on the suffering of all living beings and giving ones happiness and good qualities to others. She also passed away today.

In Tibetan Buddhism there is a detailed description of the death process. How the mind dissolves from course to subtle levels of consciousness and how that relates to the body.

As it has been a week for death, I thought it timely to write something about the death process, which I will do in an upcoming post.

Geshe Jampa Gyatso is still meditating on Clear light almost a week after he stopped breathing. Below is a message from one of his students in Italy and a couple of photos.

Update from Venerable Joan in Italy

In an extraordinarily exceptional event for Italian law regarding the handling of the deceased, Geshe Jampa Gyatso arrived at the Institute in an unsealed casket on Tuesday, 27 November, at about 2:00 PM, less than 12 hours after he had passed away at 3:40 AM in hospital in the nearby town of Cecina. Prior to his arrival the Tibetan lamas and monks present at the Institute had begun to recite the sadhana of Yamantaka in preparation for performing the self-initiation upon his arrival. Geshe-la was welcomed by a silent group of about 60 or 70 monks, nuns, and lay people, all holding katas. The casket was brought into Geshe-la’s room, which had been cleaned and prepared for his arrival, and set on the bed. It was opened to reveal Geshe-la entirely covered in his namjar (the monk’s saffron shawl). The Tibetan lamas and monks returned to their recitation, while slowly his disciples entered the house to pay their respects, pausing briefly with folded hands at the door to his room. Upstairs in the main gompa his disciples continued the recitation of the prayer Calling the Lama from Afar, interspersed with the chanting of Tara’s mantra, others performed the Yamantaka self-initiation. Everywhere people embraced each other, sharing their sorrow but also giving each other strength and encouragement in a moment that united us all as a family that had lost their spiritual father. At 18.00 Gomo Tulku and Geshe Tenzin Tenphel joined us in the gompa to recite the Lama Chopa and offer tsog. Extensive offerings had been made of water bowls, lights, and food and the gompa was extremely beautiful. At the end the lamas were asked whether they had extensive advice. Geshe Tenphel asked Gomo Tulku to speak and he proceeded with much “American” charm, but also with much clarity and forcefulness, to give us a scolding regarding our lack of respect for each other and the need to develop this respect as, without it, there is not the slightest chance of our developing compassion or bodhichitta. 
The next days, Wednesday and Thursday, were much the same. Tulku Gyatso verified that Geshe-la continued to remain in meditation on the Clear Light, the Tibetan lamas and monks performed the Vajrayogini and Yamantaka self-initiations in Geshe-la’s house and recited many other texts, while his Western disciples performed the self-initiations in the Institute. Other disciples continued the recitation of prayers and mantras in the gompa, while circumambulating or prostrating to the altar that had been set up in the center of the gompa for the 24-hour recitation of the Long Life Sutra some days previous. Statues of Buddha Shakyamuni and his two disciples in the center are surrounded by the texts of the Kangyur (the teachings of Buddha Shakyamuni), beautiful offerings, and many photos of Geshe-la.

I’ve tried to start this post several times but, I am lost for words.

Geshe Jampa Gyatso one of my teachers has passed away.

Geshe Jampa Gyatso was born in Dham in north-central Tibet in early 1932. At the age of 7 he received the novice vows from the famed Purchog Jamgon Rinpoche of Sera Je Monastery. Rinpoche, recognized as the manifestation of the future Buddha Maitreya, gave the boy the name Jampa Gyatso which means Ocean of Love.

I met Geshe-la when I attended the Masters Program at ILTK an FPMT center in Tuscany Italy in 1998-99. Geshe-la made such an impact on my life that I never felt far from him although I lived on the other side of the world and I continued to study his teachings. Unfortunately I was unable to see him one last time before his shock passing yesterday.

I had always planned on going back to see him again, if only just for a holiday and so his passing has knocked the wind out of me. It was so unexpected I’m still shaking my head in disbelief. So to try and make sense of this I thought I ponder the question.

How does a Buddhist deal with the process of grief and lose?

All meeting ends in parting.
All things are impermanent, be it persons or events. If one has a realisation - an internalised understanding - of this then the pain of grief will be diminished. Now this is not a case of putting a positive spin on things, or trying to feel better about a bad situation. Its simply stating the truth…all meeting ends in parting. The Buddha was quite good at pointing out everyday facts, that can on the surface seem quite simple but have massive implications on mental health if practiced.

We tend is hold things as if they are permanent, not even realizing that is what we do. I always felt that I had time left to see Geshe-la, after all he was only 75. But the truth is none of us know how long we are going to be here for! We could die tomorrow.

The best way to deal with grief and lose is not to dwell on missed opportunities or what if’s. To understand that lose is something that is a natural part of life, and of course in the end, all Geshe-la would want is for his students to practice what he taught them.

So with that in mind, its off to my meditation cushion I go.

And to all of Geshe-la’s other students my heart goes to you.

The weekend went well and the weather was beautiful. The blessing ceremony was particularly good this year. Personally sometimes I feel the invited politicians who speak during the blessing ceremony tend to be a little political in regards to the content of their speech’s. This year however they kept their speech’s less politically charged. Ironically I think this is because of the pending election. I believe they didn’t want to appear like they were selling their sides views and as a result the speech’s were focused on the festival and Buddhism.

The temple tours were well attended. I had four sessions over the weekend, two on Saturday and two on Sunday. Each session had roughly 50-70 people.

The session went something like this…From the front of the temple a brief history of the Tibetan Buddhist Society and the founder Geshe Loden.
A brief description of the the ornaments on the outside of the building. Then we would move up to the front of the temple where I spoke about the various aspects of the door and the 8 symbols of good fortune. Then into the meditation hall.

Here I would start by adding a little bit of the history of the Buddha and a quick overview of the Buddhist path. I tried to related the different aspects of, for example the Buddha statue, and how they related to our every day ordinary lives. This was by way of setting a context for the listeners, as many had little to no previous contact with Buddhism.

For example, the Buddha sits on a lotus, the lotus symbolizes renunciation. Just as a lotus grows out of the dirty water of a swamp, the mind wishing to be free of suffering and suffering and the causes of suffering (renunciation), naturally develops from the recognition of the human condition - the dissatisfactory nature of life - and how we naturally experience problems. Many people think this is just a fact of life…get over it they may say. The Buddha said that while this is true, it does not have to be that way. There are in fact methods for removing these dissatisfactory issues we experience and so there is something you can do about it. Meditation is a tool used in this process of getting over it!

So, all Buddhist art, either directly or indirectly, is a reminder of some aspect of the process or what we call the path. And what is that path? One could say, in it’s most simplest form the path is the process of replacing dysfunctional states of mind with functional states of mind.

Taking this approach to the tours seemed to be appreciated by the attendees.

Anyhoo I enjoyed myself and in particular I enjoyed the question/answers at the end of the sessions. My favorite question of the weekend was by a 5 year old boy who asked where do the Buddha’s live? He asked this question without any assistance from his father who was sitting near him…it was very funny.

This weekend is the Tibetan Buddhist Society’s annual Buddhist spring festival. If you are in Melbourne, Australia you are invited to attend.

The weekend is jam packed with dharma lectures, temple tours, market stalls and more.

PDF Poster Here is a post of what is on over the weekend

Directions

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HHDL is coming back to Australia in 2008 to give 4 days of teachings on the famous text by the 9th century Indian Buddhist saint Kamalashila called Stages of Meditation.

For anyone interested, there is a book available entitled Stages of Meditation published by Snowlion or you can get it from amazon here

The tour dates are 6-16 June 2008 although the teaching is only for 4 days. I’m not sure on the happenings of the other days at this stage.
HHDL did say that he would prefer to teach for 10 days in one spot. Hopefully the organizing committee were listening!

More updates as they come

I’ve decided to move back to my old domain lodenjinpa.com mainly because I couldn’t find anyone’s to help me blog at Buddhistbloggers.com

See Buddhistbloggers is plural but, I was the only one blogging there, so this made it felt a little strangle. By blogging here under my own name though, I can more openly discuss more than just Dharma and I will also be able to promote forth coming books and teaching engagements etc.

I hope no one is too inconvenienced by this, and of course please don’t forget to update your subscription.

The new RSS feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/LodenJinpa or if you prefer email Subscribe to here

That all for now, thanks

I’ve just added a polling widget/plugin on the blog. It’s on the sidebar just under the sponsors box.

The first poll we are conducting is how long have you been a Buddhist?

I will run the poll for a while and then post about the finding with nice little graphs.
If you have any poll questions you think we should run let me know.

Ok what are going waiting for…go vote!