Author: Lama Lekshe

This will likely be quite good.

The Benefit of Reciting and Practicing “The Heart Sutra”

“The Sutra of the Heart of the Transcendent Perfection of Wisdom” or “The Heart Sutra” in short, encapsulates the topic of the Prajnaparamita (Transcendent Perfection of Wisdom) Sutra on the unerring paths of methods taught in all Sutras. The infallible meaning of the entire essence of the vast and profound Prajnaparamita Sutra is brought together here in this one Sutra—The Heart Sutra. Thus, it is that when listening, contemplating and meditating on The Heart Sutra are practiced to their ultimate end, the great unsurpassable knowledge naturally and directly manifests. All sufferings are completely pacified. The unequalled states of liberation and omniscience of Arhats, Bodhisattvas, and Buddhas are attained. As a result, one shall definitely abide in the undeceiving Genuine Reality.

The teacher is DRUPON KHENPO LODRO NAMGYAL has a combination of immense learning and intensive meditation that is clearly evident in his teachings. His way of making the most complex and subtle Dharma subjects immediately accessible is a constant inspiration to all. 

The link is at the top of this page. It has free options and donation options.

a poem by Mary Oliver

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.

One of three journal posts I wrote on the three and a half years I was in long retreat.

Little bird tracks. Squirrel tracks. Mouse tracks. Slippers and boots and some large, unidentified paw prints. There is a fine dust of snow on the breeze way, and there is a map of who’s been where since the last snow fall. It’s January and we leave nuts and seeds for the animals.

Somehow the birds know exactly when to come. The Stellar Jays are looking for butter. They will find it and when they call out, their companions will join them. They are electric blue, noisy and smart. Some of the animals come in the night. The small ones. The vulnerable ones that can’t run fast enough to escape the swift and shadowy birds of prey. They have taken tiny bites out of the tormas. They have taken their time in the luxury of darkness. Two friends have stopped for a conversation on their way to their cabins. I know the imprints of their shoes. Maybe it was uncomfortable; they shifted a lot. Maybe they were cold.

In summer, these same animals come and go, but their wandering is invisible. But in winter, every step leaves a trace. Their footprints are a kind of calligraphic map of their movement.

I go to my room. I stop at the door and look back down the breeze way. There are my footprints:  same old slippers as last year, mouse-eaten wool. The soles are worn on the outside edges. I can see I stopped near the big tree and turned to face the kitchen. I had forgotten something.

It’s all there in the footprints, frozen for anyone to see.

(On three year retreat I thought I would keep a journal. There was no time. Well, perhaps there was time, but it soon became clear that there were better things to do with the time. But I did write two essays. this and one other.)

I am mid-way through a three and a half hour Vajrayana ritual service, and I am standing in front of the shrine. The group is chanting at lightning pace. I have approached the shrine in my role as ritual master. I have pulled my tsen–my shawl–up over my left forearm, but I realize I have no idea what comes next. I am asleep. 

The shrine is crowded with tentors–colorful, abstract sculptures that are the deities we practice. There are offering bowls and ‘skull cups’ and spoons and candles and incense. There are flowers and food and water–perfumed and plain. There is an endless variety of brocade and piles of rice and dough and brass thing-a-ma-bobs. There is no clue what comes next.

I count. There are fifty things on the shrine. I know the function and meaning of each one, at least to some degree. I have used them, and I know in which hand they are held, and the arc and angle of the hand as it performs its ritual task. Though I have some comfort–and unfortunately, some pride–in knowing these things, this knowledge does not tell me what comes next.

I am listening. The music was cleverly arranged, centuries ago, to give me a narrative clue, wasn’t it? We are living a vajra life in this service. We are born, we meet beings, we do things together and then we dissolve back into nothingness; just as we do in our embodied lives. The music tells the story. The words, chanted in Tibetan, tell the story. The mudras and mantras and even the structure and sequence of the ritual all have embedded meaning as a support for the intended experiences.

We live and die in this world of mind–but ritually, with explicit intention. We create it and we know it. It is an exercise, created by enlightened beings, to bring us out of sleep and into awakened mind. The chant leader picks up the rolmos, the heavy, solemn Tibetan cymbals, and begins to keep time with the chanting. I feel the vibration in my chest. Suddenly my right hand knows what to do. Only seconds have passed since I stood up and came to the shrine. I am awake. 

Form is a container inside which we practice. Every moment has meaning and consequence. We practice a form over and over–thousands and thousands of times. Inside the form, each person expresses their individuality. A simple gesture like an offering held in two hands above the head is different for each of us, and different each time we do it–but only if you look very carefully.

It’s possible to do an entire ritual while sleeping. I have done it, I think. I have woken up while extinguishing the candles in an empty shrine room and wondered how it was possible to sleep while standing, while walking, while reciting long passages of un-memorized text. Is it possible to live an entire life like that–completely asleep? The body knows what to do. The mouth speaks, but spiritual intelligence is absent. We are vacant. Automated, but empty. The whole culture moves and carries you along, drowsy and anesthetized. It is possible, I think to myself. I have narrowly escaped it. I am sweeping the rice from the shrine room floor. I feel the weight of my body shifting from left foot to right, the small muscles of my hands guiding the broom. The handle is smooth and worn.

It is snowing outside. A small bird sits on the fence, its head tilted, as if to listen. My breathing is even and relaxed. I like sweeping, and I say to myself, “I am awake.”

Someone sent me this photo just now. This is Jan “Chozen” Bays, Roshi, a bright star of the Buddhadharma, a living, breathing example of “the Great Vow” of compassion.

Many of my closest dharma friends are approaching their twilight years. Nearly all of them have devoted their last five to six decades to serving the dharma. These lights are at their most brilliant. Are you seeking out their retreats and teachings? Are you engaging with their their books, their podcasts, their YouTube videos? Are you getting this nectar while it is dropping like dew onto your path? I would trade 10 minutes with any of these teachers for a whole day with most people I respect and admire.

I remember having a conversation a few years back with a dharma student of my own generation. She said something along the lines of, “All those years I had such generous and free access to (our teacher). I so wish I had known then what I know now: that that great realization, great compassion, that was available to me for years was slipping quickly away.” She went on to say that he was so ‘ordinary’ that she had not appreciated the preciousness of contact with his awakening mind. She had treated their relating like an ordinary friendship and had frittered away time with trivial conversation about movies and boyfriends. Suddenly, sitting on retreat, she realized this, and felt a great shock and sadness at her innocent mistake. She was grieved by having been offered unfettered access and having treated it like the most mundane meetings on her schedule: no preparation, no follow through, not much gratitude or depth of engagement.

Time is marching onward, friends. There are people in your life who are great benefactors, but only if you reach for what is being so freely offered. Contact with a living teacher is a hundred times more potent than a book. That candle burning so brightly?

It will not last. It will not last. It will not last. Wake up.

What are the primary roles of the lama in a dharma community? The answer depends, of course, upon the community. Let’s consider Dekeling, the community some of us know best.

You might remember in my talk on Sunday with Ken McLeod that we briefly touched on this; so let’s rewind to that. Both of us agree that the three key roles of a teacher are

1. To illuminate the potential of awakening for the students. This is done by in large part by example, by embodying the dharma in that teacher’s individual way. It can also be done in meditation, by helping the student meet certain practice experiences, for example, by the teacher giving ‘pointing out’ instructions or leading the student in a particular kind of meditation. The teacher could also connect the student to inspiring stories or writing that connects students to their own Lama or lineage masters.
2. To train the student to increase their capacity for spiritual experience. This can be done by leading the student along a gradual path of knowledge, skills and experiences that support their awakening. In our community, we do this very intentionally and very explicitly.
3. To point out to the student their internal obstacles (habit-patterns, mind-sets, etc.) that get in the way of waking up. Though the obstacles to awakening are somewhat universal, and well documented in Buddhist literature, people’s obstacles and habit-patterns shift over time as the student evolves, and are also quite individual expressions—one person’s anger might look quite different than another. (This is one of the reasons that committed students work one-on-one with the Lama, if they wish to do so, at Dekeling.)

In order for all of these functions to work, there must be authenticity, intimacy and trust in the student-teacher relationship and both the student and the teacher must have some potential and intention to fulfill their role. The teacher needs to be able to skillfully navigate this journey with the student and the student needs to be open to the work. This third role of the teacher is why I often say, “We can be friendly, but I cannot be your friend.” The student-teacher relationship is a different relationship. Even in a best-case scenario, it will not all be roses and joy.

As Ken pointed out in our talk, these roles could be carried out by more than one teacher, but somehow all the teachers must lead in the same general direction, at least. Some students find all this in one person.

In addition to guiding in these three ways, the teacher also does their best to create a fruitful and rich learning environment through meditation, dialogue, classes, retreats, and even volunteering—all aimed at supporting the student’s awakening.

One other aspect of the Lama’s work, from my perspective, is to create the causes and conditions of a healthy practice community. At Dekeling, I emphasize transparency, honesty, equanimity, and other related qualities among us as a community.

Community members who wish to have a strong and rich community as the container for their practice must exert quite a bit of effort to provide the structure and ‘glue’ of the community over time. Individual and community needs evolve over time, so it’s a long term effort. The work of community usually involves reaching out to sangha, volunteering, contributing to help the sangha survive, helping each other in practice, caring for each other, mending disputes in a timely and skillful way, and refraining from disruptive behavior like gossip and so on. For students who genuinely want to awaken, the caretaking of the ‘jewel’ of sangha is necessary.

As Dekeling’s Lama, I also contribute to pastoral care:  attending at weddings, funerals, births and am often called to be present at times of illness and death. I respond to requests for help from families and those in distress and try to help connect them to services and opportunities when dharma is not what they actually need. I stay connected to dharma teachers in the wider community and nourish our relationships with our Asian teachers. I participate in Dekeling’s board meetings and strategic planning as an advisor. I help integrate new volunteers and work closely with the Board President to make sure we are not missing important obligations, challenges, or opportunities. I write some of our communications (like this blog) and more than 90% of our dharma content, for in-person teaching, our blog and our podcasts. In addition, I do my best to keep up with my own awakening, retreats, and my personal ‘work’ of learning to be a good human.

From my perspective—and I hold this softly as I learn—the vision for shaping the nature of our community comes mainly from the students themselves. As long as the forms of our community center on awakening, I am happy to support their evolution as suits the changing times.  

I have a deep wish to create enough stability and pliancy in the community that it will long outlive me. I have a dream that I will return to be a student in your strong and powerful community of spiritual awakening that works tirelessly for all beings, and finds joy in the process.

Thanks for Eric Platzek and Mary Woods for taking photos at the Medicine Buddha retreat. Watch for more info on sangha news in our newsletter, coming out mid-October, thanks to Teri Gelber. To see more photos, click here. We’ll have another Vajrayana retreat in 2023—see you there!

Someone on retreat this weekend asked me to post this again since fire season is coming. Is here. Thank you for your practice.

You can watch this excerpt from a talk by HH Dalai Lama here. His spirit really shines here.

In the Tibetan tradition of Buddhism, we often talk about the triad of view, meditation, and action as a framework for practice. View is the perspective from which we live and practice. The wider the view, the better. For example, the widest or highest view includes notions about the truth of things—such as impermanence—and the fact that all things are inter-connected.

Meditation is the practice of steeping one’s attention in the view moment by moment—noticing the truth of how things are—and action is carrying the wisdom and compassion that one acquires into daily life. Our Dekeling mind/heart training (Lojong practice) is one of the ways we practice the ‘action’ part of this formula. Another way that action and wisdom and compassion combine to nourish our awakening is in performing service to the sangha.

To support awakening and the causes of awakening one should practice generosity as much as possible. Included in this generosity is generosity to the three jewels, including the sangha (community). So, it is not just to keep Dekeling going that we ask for your participation as volunteers. It’s because it is part of our practice toolbox. Volunteering requires that we direct our attention to the needs of others. It inevitably brings us into situations where we meet the edge of our practice, thereby extending our patience and skill in living the dharma, gradually teaching us many things.

Dekeling has diverse volunteering needs—gardening, board members, fixing things, community member support, AV work, errands, fund-raising, website work, marketing and more. There are tasks that must be done from Portland and those that can be done online from afar. If you’d like to expand your practice by helping make the dharma available, please email Nan Whitaker-Emrich at nan5910@gmail.com. It’s a great way to meet new friends and deepen your dharma practice.