Some Jews in Germany, France and Sweden have stopped wearing skullcaps for fear of reprisals.

Teachers of children learning under the academy system in England are not obliged to teach their pupils about the holocaust, but i think it is vital that we keep looking, to see what great harm we are capable of inflicting on each other (and ourselves) on the basis of our beliefs. If you can, do go to see the film ‘My Nazi Legacy’ which clearly shows this.

I recommend it also partly as an example of how through a distorted form of love/fear/blindness truly horrific objectification can be accepted as appropriate and normalised and for seeing how the ramifications of past turbulence continues to manifest through time, but also for what can happen when we try to force another to look through our eyes, trying to reach resolution on the basis of reflections. I think it will make you weep for all concerned.

Our certainties around the definitions we hold about what we are and how we behave – what other people are – what we can infer about them from their behaviour – and how and why the world is as it is – all should come under scrutiny within a dharma investigation.

Often there is unwillingness to carry out this investigation into the origin and validity of these definitions – for some this seems to be because any suggestion of a miss-take on the ego’s part  would be too destabilising to countenance, so they fearfully tighten up against the invitation.

Others, equally understandably, are just pretty happy with their take on the world. In knowing what’s what, there is a sense of certainty which feels powerful. The ego likes  a sense of being knowledgeable and powerful, it feels secure.

However these opinions are shaped by the karma of reactivity to past situations, to reactivity to situations encountered during this life. They form a distorting lens through which we view  all manifestations, pulling them into a shape which is recognisable to our own internalised matrices.  At the same time we ourselves are pulled into a position as ‘shapers’ and we become more rigid as a result of this repeated activity.

So we need to undertake this investigation with kindly curiosity. We won’t be able to work with what we are holding on to, and let go of that which is not helpful, without seeing what is under the covers. One man i spoke with thanked me as he left for exposing a prejudice of which he was unaware.  I had explained  why i did not really think the world would be a better place if we put all the fat people and stupid people in a rocket and send them out to space! He was not being ironic, he had just formed this quick opinion at some point and held onto it without really looking at the non-sense of it. Meditation can allow the appearance and release of all the buried….erm.. ‘treasure’.

As dharma practitioners, and I’m talking to myself here, in taking that which is transient and impermanent, lacking in inherent  self-nature, to be solid and real… and then hanging our own ‘Home-made’ label around its neck… we continue with the stupidity of the slavemasters who were able to debate philosophy and write the hymn ‘Amazing Grace’ on the jetty while the nearby slave ships were being cleared of bodies and disinfected.

‘Though the heavens may fall let justice be done’ was the statement preceding the judgement which led to the act abolishing  slavery in the UK. This judgement was about whether a slave was inherently a ‘slave-thing’ or was a ‘human-thing’ with potential.

From a dzogchen perspective, there are no ‘things’ per se and so labels cannot be applied in any enduring  sense – “Birds which live on the Golden mountain take on the colour of the sun.”

The desire for a simple label – hero/villain – denying the multiplicity of behaviours and capacities  can be seen in the film  ‘My Nazi Legacy’ and  heard in the radio programme The good Goering. It seems that, with brotherly love, even the ‘bad’ Goering did some good…and I also remember being struck by an interview with the daughter of Idi Amin who really loved her dad and found  it so hard to believe that he really had perpetrated such acts of violence…with her he was different.

If  we can see that the ‘bad’ and the ‘good’ are mixed in together… in ourselves as well as others… then hopefully our own judgements can soften and dissolve. People act as they do,  dependent on past and present causes and conditions, not in isolation, and in their relating to us own own behaviour is also implicated.

I think it helps to soften our view to think that, in the future or the past, despite our current beliefs and assertions  we may behave in the same way as those we label as ‘monsters’ and that, although we are not defined by our behaviours, if they are coming from the position of the ego then we will inevitably experience the effects of the karma created. Paying attention to the details while practising to realise the ground openness is the move needed to expand justice, which at its worst is just-ice, to the warmer waters of ‘just-as-it-is-ness’ and the arising of an appropriate response. With liberation from mental slavery the heavens may indeed fall… along with the hells!

A few days ago i heard that His Holiness Chatral Sangye Dorje Rinpoche attained parinirva at the beginning of this month, at the age of 102.

When i received this news i was very struck by these photographs of him.

These are images of a great Lama, a Lama of Lamas…an embodiment of the dharma, the result of intense unwavering practice.

In the beginning Chatral Rinpoche undertook the starting/ Ngondro practice fourteen times in all. This is a practice which is normally undertaken just the once (and completed with great relief  as each of the five constituent ‘nails’, or re-orientations, is repeated a hundred thousand times). So this would involve making a commitment of time, i think, well in excess of seven years but each time he came to the end of the practice he felt clearer and stronger and so began again.

Following this he received many profound teachings from the great teachers of his time and then set about putting them into practice.

At first living with the goal of attainment of the dharma for the benefit of all beings, and then living to bring the benefit of that practice into our troubled world in the manner appropriate to his way of being, he had different roles including that of a wandering practitioner hermit, a teacher to the most fortunate, a liberator of beings in captivity and also, later in life, as a husband and father. All this was accomplished with integrity – the  activity of compassion which arises directly as the expression of profound wisdom.

As far as possible he avoided worldly entanglements, would not waste his time teaching those whose hearts were not ready to accomplish what he could offer, and he was highly disciplined in his practice. Going to sleep at ten and waking at three, the day was filled mostly with practice… fitting in what else needed to be done in the late afternoon and evening. On retreat in the mountains he would use the practice of tumo to keep from freezing and lived on tsampa (ground barley flour) rations and whatever plant matter was edible when supplies ran short. However it would seem that like others i have met living under somewhat similar conditions his ease of being far surpassed those used to haut cuisine.  His ‘retreat centre’ was his little tent or a cave for shelter…no heating, air conditioning or piped water.  He lived very simply and the donations which he received were used to benefit others…no ‘lining of his pockets’ – no pockets to line! Also he completely eschewed politics.

So self-cherishing was long gone, realisation achieved, and his commitment to all beings could not have been greater….how many like him remain in the world?

His feet no longer walk the earth but, in those he taught and teaches – those touched by his heart – his legacy continues.

James received teachings from him and said that he found him to be very impressive and at the same time very kind, helping him a great deal.

Hopefully, for those of us who are practising the dharma, knowing a little bit more about this great being’s way of life is more inspiring than daunting and perhaps highlights what is of genuine value in the way we spend the remaining precious hours and energy of our own lives.

Whilst direct imitation is unlikely to be the way for (m)any of us! … any move we make towards a whole-hearted commitment to the welfare of all beings, to practicing so that we are bringing the dharma through and as us into each moment of the day, will act in some measure as a counterbalance to, or dissolution of, the turbulence of these times… and move us more and more in his direction.

With great sympathy for those close to him who feel bereft, and especially kind wishes to his wife from whose interview much of the above information was garnered.

Sarva mangalam

Here are some words of advice from a talk he gave at Bodhgaya posted on the Shambhala blog.

Some years ago I remember imparting some ‘definite knowledge’.  At the time I was talking to someone else as well as James, and i had my back to him. However I remember noticing that the quality of his attention had changed. Because, at the time, i was pleased at knowing something a little unusual, i could have imagined that this was because he was surprised or impressed.

Since then i  have had the experience of listening to many people telling me, and other people, the truth about me, about others, and about how things are, or how they should be done, and I suspect that he was in fact  noticing the tightening of the voice and body which goes with having the sense that ‘this is how it is, I know! ‘.
At that point i had lost touch with the ground and gone into a ‘world of one’… speaking out my confident assertion, with actually no particular regard to the listeners. So he was more likely to have been registering that change in me… from an openness to closed certainty.

There can be an artificiality, a tightness and lost disconnectedness, when someone is regurgitating ingested ‘facts’ with a desire to be the ‘one who knows’.  Although its quite understandable to want to be someone who knows, particularly in our culture where becoming a library of information is confused with wisdom, and especially if one’s ‘offerings’  have been disparaged in the past…however it is the discourse (monologue!) of the ego seeking recognition/affirmation.  It can be not very welcoming to others and can come with a, not very tasty, seasoning of pride.

Communication which is really addressed to the other, attuned in seeing and feeling how they are and what is helpful, cooked just for them… not too much and not too little… Even if it perhaps needs sometimes to be directive, it will be received and digested much more readily than a shower of ego driven ‘spears’.

BTW There is something very uncomfortable about the visual image of having a point of view and sitting rigidly upon it (oh…brings tears to the eyes!)

a nice flat bed of nails seems inviting by comparison.