Reflections on the passing of the Queen, and recent Sangha events
Dear All
Like so many others I sobbed at the news of the Queen's passing - I couldn’t help it. As many of you will know I have for many years felt a deep and personal love for the Queen and all she stands for. I get tingles every time I hear again her vow to serve us for the whole of her life and her request for us to help her. And she has done this with such dedication, love, grace and sense of humour, always thinking of others and caring for all she encountered. We went outside to offer lights at the stupa soon after the news broke and there was a rainbow behind the stupa in the direction of Snowdonia. I always think of Snowdon as the Copper Coloured Mountain where Guru Rinpoche resides - so that seemed particularly appropriate at such a moment. This morning Deden sent this link about rainbows at other places connected to the Queen. Did we need any more evidence for what an exceptional person she was and will continue to be as she continues on her Bodhisattva way?
Later in the evening we recited the Samantabhadracharya pranidhana together in the shrine room, dedicating the punya especially to the Queen and the Royal Family. We will continue to do this at least once a week for the next 7 weeks (probably on a Thursday evening during puja) and some of us will try to do it daily or at least as often as we can either individually or together whenever possible. The good wishes, gratitude and pranidhanas of millions of people will speed her on her way into her future life and lives devoted to the welfare of all beings. May we all meet with her again and again in all our future lives serving her as she has served so many of us in this life. May we always work together in our Bodhisattva enterprise to bring all beings to complete and perfect Awakening. May the adhishtana of all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas throughout time and space speed her on her way and bring peace and comfort to all of us so devastated by her passing and especially King Charles III and the whole royal family. May the King find all the strength and support he will need to step into his mother's shoes at such a difficult time of crisis for this country and the whole world. May wisdom and compassion prevail and may he be able to advise Liz Truss well in her role as Prime Minister. May she too be guided by wisdom and compassion and choose the best path forward for our country and the world at this dangerous time.
This month had quite a few events, particularly there was the Discovering the Heart of Buddhism retreat on confidence. It was well attended, and very nicely taught by Tara, Younten and Namka with Younten focusing on some of the body awareness work that she's learned from me. They worked very well as a team, and I gave a teaching on the last Friday.
Each of the teachers contributed something very special. In particular, I think we were all very struck by Tara's contribution where she demonstrated the art of teaching by being very present in the way she described how she can use the pain that she experiences in her daily life as the path and what helped her with that. it was very moving to hear her talk in such an honest and open way and it demonstrated confidence.
The retreat went very deep into what is meant by trusting or having confidence in your own power of discrimination, your own ability to evaluate a situation or your experience and to respond in a sensitive way. This is something that we have within ourselves and that we need to learn to have confidence in, rather than treating the teachings as some sort of manual of how you do it. It’s more like listening to the teachings and applying them to our practice and having confidence that we CAN apply them. And having confidence in what we discover within ourselves, in our own experience. We talked about pitfalls, how we sometimes make mistakes, which, of course, is the theme of the year, how we make mistakes is how we learn. We learn to trust and have confidence in our own experience through giving it a try and noticing what happens and finding a better way if it's doesn't feel quite right. That decision as to whether something feels right or not, is ours, it's not for someone else to judge us really, although they may guide us. So, it was a very rich week, I enjoyed very much the storytelling in the evening and the questions that came through were very meaningful and worth discussing.
That was followed quickly by another retreat in which Katie was taking the lead. It was quite wonderful to see her again and catch up after she's been away so long in America looking after her mother. We look forward to her coming back again soon. I wasn't quite sure how much it would be a conversation between herself and myself, but we had several interesting conversations during the week, that led into the weekend. On the Thursday evening I gave a short talk, introducing the topic of expression from the heart or Dharma art. We had sent a question out to people before they came, asking them what they understood by the terms "expression from the heart" or "Dharma art". And we were both very impressed with the kinds of things that people were saying, which were interestingly very close to the kinds of things we had been saying during the DHB week on confidence, as having a confidence in our ability to discriminate and to evaluate ourselves, trusting that within ourselves.
Even before I or Katie had said anything, people were already talking about that in terms of expression from the heart and in terms of Dharma art and what they understood by art. Most people seemed to have a very experiential sense of what art was, and many of them mentioned art being the way we live our life. So it's very strongly connected to the theme for this year, daily life practice. Several people, though, did mention that the word art conjures up for them a kind of specialist area that they are somehow excluded from because of their lack of ability. So Katie and I were both very keen to lead the group, the whole weekend away from that way of thinking about art, and more in line with art as how we live our daily lives. This was clearly the way Trungpa Rinpoche was meaning it to be taken, even though he was very interested in the arts.
I recorded some of the one-on-one conversations I had with Katie, which I think are probably worth transcribing. Katie had prepared for the few days quite meticulously with many quotes and slides. What impressed me, and I think all of us, was that she brought a strong sense of Trungpa Rinpoche and his emphasis and understanding of the importance of Dharma art. He talks about it as the way to bring Dharma awareness into our daily life. And that raises a question of what exactly do we mean by Dharma awareness? How does that connect to an aesthetic sense? I think it does, but I think we need to be careful that we don't spin off into a kind of performance art. Of course, that has its place. But this weekend was more about the quality of awareness that results in a beautiful artistic production. But we're more interested in how that aesthetic sense is a way of discovering something about the truth of the nature of awareness itself, and is therefore intrinsic to the path to awakening. Our meditation practice needs to have that same inner quality that we recognise within ourselves, of being able to find that place within ourselves. Rather than thinking or treating our meditation as a performance that somehow, I've got to try and get right according to someone else's standards. We're looking for something that's true within ourselves, that we recognise within ourselves in the same way that we recognise truth and beauty in a work of art. This is a lot to do with what we mean when we look at something beautiful or we perform an action that's truly satisfying it’s the quality of our awareness that is very satisfying. When we find that happening, we know that. It’s a kind of inner knowing, an inner knowing of something that has a sense of significance and rightness.
Katie introduced several exercises that she learned from Trungpa Rinpoche via the teachings that they deliver in Shambhala or at least very akin to those exercises. The aim was to find that place or spot in ourselves and to notice to what extent it corresponds to how we talk about the heart. Like when we see a beautiful piece of art, we tend to sense something almost viscerally whether it's in the guts or the heart. At the same when we're trying to express that in the way we live our life and the way we simply arrange things around us or respond to people or situations, we can get that same sense that we're acting in a genuine way that seems to come from the heart somehow and is recognised in others. Again, a kind of heart response, they're touched or moved in their heart.
One of the things that we noticed was that the first thing we need to do in order to relate in that way is to find a place of relaxation. That inspiration to come from the heart somehow comes from being much more relaxed and not so much in the busyness of what's going on in our thinking, but something more visceral. When we say relaxing, it's not particularly physical relaxing, although that does tend to happen but not always, but it's letting go of preconceived ideas, being much more relaxed in the sense of more open, with more of a sense of being able to be freer in the way we make our responses. Not too closely attached to a particular outcome. But more creative, I suppose you'd say. And again, this is how we need to approach our meditation, although not everybody recognizes this similarity. This was an important theme of the few days. Our tendency is to try to control a situation and make it come out how we want it to come out. Which then leads us to trying too hard or starting to rebel inwardly - being very attached to whether we're going to succeed or fail rather than simply being there in the moment open and sensitive. So, you could say the whole of the DHB is about expression from the heart and Dharma art. But it was very interesting to spend a few days noticing how we already think about expression from the heart and Dharma art, almost without perhaps having noticed previously that, this is what DHB has always been about.
The weekend ended up with us all contributing a line to a poem which Katie then read out, as if it we did all together as one piece. She read it beautifully. It read as if it was a single poem and that felt very warm and creative. So we ended on this very happy note with each of us determined to bring more Dharma art into our daily life practice. Katie promises to take this theme forward for us in the Awakened Heart Sangha as the years go by, so I'm really looking forward to that. One of the applications is of course, not only in meditation and daily life practice, but also in the way we approach mentoring and teaching Dharma. Trungpa Rinpoche mentions this specifically - that this is a way to approach teaching Dharma. Its not about ‘I'm going to tell you how it all is and you've got to pin it down’ but it's much more a sense of opening up a space, a creative space.
The following week, Tara went down to London to see her cousin who is unfortunately unwell with advanced cancer. Alan was able to take her down and Norbu to bring her back, which was very kind because I don't know how else she would have been able to do it, because she doesn't really have the energy for such a long journey. During the week that Tara was away I decided to take a whole week to relax and meditate, study, read and absorb the insights that had come up over the weekend with Katie
So now we're waiting for Tulku Sherdor to come and to teach us about the Great Mipham’s teaching from the Guhyagarbha tantra on Mandala principle and how this applies at different levels of practice. Then we've got several other events this month, including inviting our neighbours and local friends around for tea and cake. I've spoken to one or two of them, and they said they often meant to come visit but hadn't known when a good time would be to come.
This last weekend, Dorje came from Bridgend in South Wales, where he's got quite a flourishing group. He says he's got about 40 people on the books and at any one meeting they're having something like 18 people turning up. They are also doing practice weekends together. He came up with six students and also Karin who he has been mentoring near Porthmadog. So even though Eli, Tara and Norbu were away, we still had a full shrine room over the weekend, which was nice.
We're looking forward to Karl Brunnhölzl’s visit at the end of this month. He is coming with his wife, Stephanie, who's also a Dharma teacher, and we're going to be having a live streamed conversation about the Guru Principle and teacher / student relationship in line with the series that we've been having with different teachers.
So that's the news for this month. Wishing you all the best with your Dharma practice. Keep up the good work. Thank you, everybody, for your practice and commitment.
Love Shenpen