Sarah Deming: The Dalai Lama's 'Kalachakra for World Peace': Day 7 -- Monks and Nuns

HuffPost blogger Sarah Deming is writing daily from the "Kalachakra for World Peace" event in Washington D.C. Scroll down for all of her updates from the event.

Tuesday 7/12: Monks and Nuns

Twelve monks in high headdresses revolve about a thirteenth, chanting in a reverberate bass. Beneath their gold surcoats, three of them wear red robes, three yellow, three white, and three blue. The leader is in white, and over his surcoat he wears a gold mesh with red fringe. They hold bells in their left hands, "diamond scepters" in their right. On the floor before them, a line of Tibetans dance in place.

There is something ponderous about the way the monks move, as though every step is weighted down with significance. Or maybe it's just the robes. The Ritual Offering Dance reminds me of lots of things: the one-legged balance of the dancers of Nrityagram; the circular hand movements of Tai Chi; the prayer dance of Muay Thai boxers; Godzilla crushing cities.

A banjo-type instrument joins in, and then - oh wow! - the dancers on the floor are a choir. A sweet descant floats over the monks' bass.

His Holiness sits in a chair off to the side, watching the dance and smiling. The camera zooms in on his hands, which hold a sheet of yellow paper.

Next to him, the mandala has gotten some new accoutrements. Banners and windsocks hang from the pavilion roof; flowers and tapestries surround the base.

The choir falls silent, but the monks chant on, pivoting and pacing and ringing their bells. I'm close to the stage today, and it's pleasingly loud. I can feel the vibrations going through my stomach, like sitting close to the pipes of a good organ.

At the end, His Holiness and crew put on those crazy yellow hats that look like bird crests. Cymbals clang and a horn honks as the choir sings a last, fierce verse. The dancing monks exit, and two non-dancing monks give white shawls and red necklaces to the choir, who are singers from the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts. His Holiness exits through the vomitory.

I spend some time trying to find the singers so I can interview them, but no one will tell me where they are, so instead I work up my courage to interview some nuns. I'm sort of used to monks, because I see Khen Rinpoche whenever he's in New York, but nuns remain rare and exotic and I'm a little scared of them. Fortunately, I pick two of the nicest ones around.

Ani Thupten Dronma lives in California, where she works as a homeopathic M.D. Her friend Ani Thupten Chodron is a purchasing agent for the government at a satellite tracking station in Alaska. The two met while studying with Ven. Khentrul Lodro Thaye Rinpoche.

"I attended a Kalachakra before I was ordained," says Ani T. D., who is quick and birdlike, "They told us, 'You have to have enough teaching that you can understand it. You really have to understand emptiness.' That motivated me to seek teachings. But there are many levels to the Kalachakra. Even if you're you're just here to watch, you will get many blessings.'"

I ask Ani T. C. how she balances government work and nunhood.

"It's wonderful," she says. "I wear my robes to work, and I talk to so many different people every day and get to have different experiences of loving-kindness. People love to come to my office."

I can see why. Ani T. C. is restful. If I worked with her, I'd always be stopping by for some nun-on-one.

"Ooh!" Ani T. D. grabs my arm. "Look! You need to interview her."

A nun has appeared a few feet away and is thronged by admirers. They bow and offer gifts and thank her for her teachings.

"I don't think so," I say. "She looks pretty busy."

"Yes, you have to! Come on!" On a scale of one to ten, my embarrassment is an eight as Ani T. D. pushes me forward through the throng to the elbow of the famous nun.

I clear my throat. Everyone looks at me.

"Um, hi! I was wondering if you have any thoughts on the Kalachakra. For my blog."

The famous nun's eyes are like lasers. "You have been attending His Holiness's teachings every day?"

"Yes."

"Then what more do you need to know?"

I am cowed. "Okay, thanks, um..."

"She doesn't know who you are!" announces Ani T. D.

"Khandro Rinpoche," says the nun. When she sees I can't spell it, she takes away my Moleskine and writes it down herself.

"Thank you," I croak, and even though I'm a little disappointed in the quote, I'm too scared to think of anything else to ask.

Then she relents and starts talking. My pen, which has been low on ink all day, picks this moment to die. I close my notebook and gaze into the eyes of Her Eminence Mindrolling Jets?n Khandro Rinpoche.

"We all have this tremendous potential within us," she tells me. "It's time we started using it. You have a blog. Make sure you do good things with it." She says other things, too, but my mind is rolling and I forget them. At the end she says, "We need the young people. We're getting old."

"You don't look old," I say. Everyone laughs.

But it's true. She looks less like a middle-aged woman and more like an all-knowing child. The Ani Thuptens and I vibrate with joy as we watch her leave the Verizon Center.

"That was so great!" says Ani Thupten Dronma. "For anis, she's our hero. She's clearing the path. And I think she might have blessed your blog!"

Ani Thupten Chodron says, "Stand in the right spot and the world comes to you."

Monday 7/11: It Grows on You

A vase of fat white orchids sat at His Holiness's right elbow. He told us a story about a Catholic friend who said that emptiness, for him, was total submission to God. The Catholic then asked the Dalai Lama to define the Buddhist conception of emptiness.

"I told him: This is not your business. This is Buddhist business."

Everyone laughed. H.H. explained that he'd put his friend off the scent because Buddhist teachings might have distracted him from his single-pointed focus on God.

A long talk followed about emptiness, selflessness, morality, the interdependent nature of things, bodhicitta, samadhi, and the workings of the mind. Here's a few orchids from the pot:

"All the negative emotions are ultimately riddled with self-grasping."

"Grasping, I, I, you become very stiff. Letting go of I, you become looser. You get more friends. You get more smiles."

"Altruism is the best way to counter an enemy. If a mad dog comes, maybe you have to run away. But verbal abuse or mental criticism can never hurt you. Then your enemy will have failed. You should maintain your calm, and use the time to calculate the enemy's weakness. Then you can strike back! But strike back out of concern for their well-being, because if they continue to harm others, it will be bad for them. With a sensible enemy, it is possible that they will become your best friend."

"Emptiness is difficult to understand. It's difficult to become comfortable with the tension between appearances and the reality of a world that is empty of independent existence."

"If you make a constant effort on a daily basis, the mind can definitely change. That I know. Here is the lab." (points to himself) "No need for a technician."

Stanza 9 of the Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva ...

The pleasures of the three realms, like dewdrops on a blade of grass,
Are objects that perish in an instant.
To strive for the supreme state of liberation
That is never changing is the practice of a bodhisattva.

...reminded me of a poem by Kay Ryan (whose new collection is magnificent):

"Dew"

As neatly as peas
in their green canoe,
as discretely as beads
strung in a row,
sit drops of dew
along a blade of grass.
But unnattached and,
subject to their weight,
they slip if they accumulate.
Down the green tongue
out of the morning sun
into the general damp,
they're gone.

At one point His Holiness was trying to work out a theory about the unity of cognitive processes. He questioned his translator, but wasn't satisfied with the answer. Some hurried, sharp exchanges followed between him and the monks. There were sheepish looks and laughter.

The Dalai Lama explained, "I remembered this line, but I wanted to know the rest of the quote. Nobody remembers it. This one," pointing to one of the monks, "says he knows it, but the sentence was not so nice, so I think it is his own creation."

He led us through a breathing exercise that was something like the yogic pranayama nadi shodhana. Then the talk was over and the curtains were pulled back from the mandala. ?
Oh, I wish I could see it up close! I would be very careful not to sneeze.

The square middle was astoundingly detailed. Paths turned into paths like a maze filled with gems and animals and flowers.

His Holiness rose from his throne, and the whole amphitheater rose with him. It always makes me a little sad when he gets up. I forget his age when he's sitting, bright-eyed, swaying gently with the rhythm of his words; I remember it when he starts to walk.

Attendants straightened his robes, draped a gilded shawl over his shoulders, and handed him various sacred objects. He sprinkled rosy liquid on the margins of the mandala platform, and a monk followed after, spreading white flower petals. Someone put something that looked like jars full of nuts at two of the corners, and His Holiness situated several lingam-like objects -- I later learned they were phurbas, protective daggers -- at the four corners.

Gongs and cymbals rang as the monks reprised the houseplant parade. After a certain number of perambulations, they placed the plants around the pavilion's edge, giving it a cool magic-forest vibe. His Holiness came to the front of the stage and waved to the crowd, not forgetting those in the nosebleed seats: He has a heart as wide as the Verizon Center.

Which is a great place to work, according to Pamela of Hillcrest Heights, Maryland. She's been a doorkeeper at the venue for six years and taught me an exciting new word: vomitory.

When I ask what she thinks of Buddhism, she says, "I was informed that they don't believe in Jesus. The only thing they have is that little bald guy."

"Have you been in to see the Dalai Lama teach?"

She nods. "I don't understand half of what he says. But I read some pamphlets. I see how people pray for him. I saw this guy with kneepads on, and he's outside bowing down, and I'm like, 'Isn't he gonna hurt his knees?' But that's just what they do. They really love him. Especially his people."

"The Tibetans?"

"Yeah. He's important for their culture. One day I brought home some of their soup. It had macaroni and chicken, and I heated it up for my husband, and he says, 'What's this? Where's the meat?'"

"Twenty minutes later, he said, 'Heat me up some more.'"

Sunday 7/10: Epistemology

From my rightful place in the nosebleed seats, I caught about every third word of today's teaching. I should have gotten a hearing impaired headset. All my neighbors had one, except Andrea.

"She has good ear karma," said her boyfriend Dan.

The young North Carolinians are staying in a tent at Greenbelt National Park. Like many of the attendees I've met, they work in helping professions: he as a substance abuse counselor, she at a store that benefits an animal shelter.

"It doesn't matter how many lifetimes it takes." Andrea told me. "It's like His Holiness is saying, here are the tools, and here is the instruction guide. It's complete hope."

Dan praised the Dalai Lama's compassion for everyone, "even the Chinese." He told me a group of Chinese nuns led the morning offering prayer, which I slept through.

I couldn't be sure from so far up, but I thought there was more diversity of robe color on stage today - saffron, ochre, even black - indicating that monastics of other traditions are being given places of honor. Early in the talk His Holiness announced, "Some people make a big distinction between Mahayana, Hinayana, and Vajrayana. That is a clear sign of ignorance."

He went on to criticize rote observance empty of understanding and religious hierarchy that revels in status distinction.

The initial goal of our practice should be to use the mind to purify the emotions so we attain a higher rebirth. The eventual goal is moksha or liberation. "Buddhahood is the final destination." In order to attain these goals, we need to understand karma, the law of cause and effect.

Next came some fun epistemology:

What is ignorance?

There are two kinds, the run-of-the-mill kind, like not knowing your ABCs, and "distorted ignorance," like believing that the letter A is the letter B. The latter kind of ignorance is worse, and I suffer from it frequently at cocktail parties.

"The opposite of ignorance is not prayer or meditation. The opposite of ignorance is awareness."

What is truth?

There are two kinds of truths, conventional/intellectual and ultimate. Ultimate truths are the best kind, and we should all try to get some.

How do we get some?

The shallowest truths are easy to apprehend through the senses. The deeper ones take reasoned inquiry. The really obscure truths you might need to receive as a gift.

An example: the date of your birth. You don't remember it and you couldn't reason your way there. You trust your parents, or maybe you trust the birth certificate. Obscure truths come from wise teachers or scriptures.

What's truth done for me lately?

If you engage in critical inquiry into deep stuff (like karma or the theory of dependent origination), you will develop firm conviction. You won't get confused when you run into an apparent contradiction in a text or at a cocktail party. You'll reach a level of understanding where all potential for doubt will be gone.

In closing, he cautioned us to avoid sensual distractions like music, sports, and all of my other favorite things.

The whole avoiding-music-and-frivolity thing is the part of Buddhism that I always find hardest to digest, seeing as how I'm a frivolous fiction writer and my husband plays jazz. There's not much room in the Verizon Center for art that isn't in some way didactic.

Where's the blues? Where's the absurd? It's the elephant that is not in the room.

Then again, per Thupten Jinpa, "Tensions aren't bad things. The cognitive dissonance that results from two opposing paradigms can lead to creative solutions." He was talking about Buddhism and science, but maybe it's also true for Buddhism and science fiction.

And speaking of art, the monks on mandala duty worked away through the whole talk, Eight of Pentacles-style. They were no longer kneeling on the platform but standing around the edges to fill in the outer layers. A spotlight on the sand gave it a lavender glow.

That night I rode my invisible elephant to the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue, where Sharon Salzberg and Krishna Das led an evening of kirtan and metta meditation. These two make an ideal team, her teaching stories setting the perfect context for his heart-opening chants. He's the song, and she's the silence, and they're really the same thing.

Sharon told us, quoting the Buddha, "Develop a mind so filled with love that it resembles space."

Special guest star Lama Surya Das chanted an almost cantorial-sounding blessing for His Holiness. Surya is another superb teacher from the Das family that also includes my hero Ram Dass and the mind-scrambling Bhagavan Das. Neem Karoli Baba must have been everything they say and more.

I was amused by Krishna Das's instructions to the room to, "Just chant, don't worry about what it means," since His Holiness had given the exact opposite advice earlier in the day.

Different strokes for different folks. Bhaktas don't need epistemology; they just need something to give. As Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, "If one offers Me with love and devotion a leaf, a flower, fruit or water, I will accept it."

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-deming/kalachakra-for-world-peace_b_892466.html

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