Endless Riches

Palzang

Another great quote by Trungpa Rinpoche:

ENDLESS RICHNESS

If you study with a teacher who acquired his understandings by information alone, that person may tell you very wise things, beautiful things, but he won't know how to handle the gaps. He blushes or he gets embarrassed or he fidgets around between stories, between the wisdoms that he utters. But if you are dealing with somebody who is completely competent, who is actually LIVING the information, the teaching has become part of his whole being, so there is no embarrassment. It goes on and on and on, like the waves of an ocean. There is endless richness. You receive a lot, but at the same time, you don't feel that he emptied out all his information to you. You feel there's much more to be said.

From "Endless Richness," in DHARMA ART, pages 116 to 117.

Palzang

Arctic-Stranger

that is one thing I like about Buddhism, vs the Christianity I was raised by. In Christianity we talked about faith, and someone was "deep" if they could say interesting things about the Bible.

I have yet to hear a Dharma Talk that I would rate as Very Good. Most were mediocre at best. But the practice is what makes it real for me.

Palzang

Arctic-Stranger wrote:

I have yet to hear a Dharma Talk that I would Very Good. Most were mediocre at best.

Really? You should check out some of Jetsunma's teachings. You can get them online from www.palyulproductions.org. They're definitely not boring!

Palzang

Nirvana

Thanks for the Link, good, dear Palzang. I couldn't get on to the Teachings By Subject area. My Mac hung up and it took me more than a minute to exit. I'll try again later.

This thread hits a deep chord in me. My own Teacher, a Vedantist from the Order of Sri Ramakrishna, is a Living Buddha for me. Indeed, at my best it is he that lives in me and not myself.

He had so much love for the Teachers of Humankind, especially the Lord Buddha and Jesus. He is a fountain of wisdom and love, and the spiritual son of Sri Ramakrishna, being a direct disciple of a direct disciple. And Sri Ramkrishna was a saint-maker, unlike the world's many goon-makers.

Thanks for the thoughts and the rose of memory that attends them.

not1not2

And I wish I could attend lectures by this guy myself:

http://www.intrex.net/chzg/edbrown.htm

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=mediatype%3Aaudio%20AND%20collection%3Adharma_talks%20AND%20subject%3A%22Ed%20Brown%2C%20Hartford%20Street%20Zen%20Center%2C%20San%20Francisco%2C%20Issan%20Ji%22

metta
_/\_

not1not2

Oh, and there's another talk by him here:

http://www.audiodharma.org/talks/EdwardBrown.html

and by a lot of other zen teachers here:

http://www.audiodharma.org/talks-zen.html

metta
_/\_

not1not2

An excerpt from that first link:

Irmagard Schloegl, who teaches Zen in London, uses a metaphor about a dog to bring up what Zen practice is about. It goes something like this:

Once upon a time you were living with a dog in a big house. Sometimes the dog did not behave properly, especially when guests came over. So one day you locked the dog in the basement. The dog howled mournfully, barked loudly, so you moved up to the second floor. Occasionally, you could still hear the dog, so you moved up to the third floor, and finally the attic. What a nice view! And no need to be bothered by barking, misbehaving dogs. The house is neat and tidy--no problems here!

But one day it occurs to you, "Oh me, oh my, I locked the dog in the basement and just left him there. How awful, and he was such fun to have around. My life has been rather empty since then, rather dry and predictable. I wonder if I could ever be friends with him again?"

So you make your way down to the basement. You get down there and the dog snarls at you. "But I want to be your fiend," you say. The dog just snarls. He only knows you have locked him up. I f you want to make friends with the dog it takes some time. You'll need to be patient, you'll need to be inventive. You push the food over to him with a long pole. You arrange to let him out into the yard. Little by little, you make friends.

Do you understand? That dog in the basement is not just a dog in the basement. That dog is not inherently a dog, but is a dog because of the way we have treated ourselves. We snarl when we have locked ourselves up in the basement. But that dog is our great energy, our tremendous vitality, our pain and hurt that we have pushed away. Then we wonder why we feel so unalive!

What would it be like to welcome yourself home, to welcome home your whole body and mind. To make it all right to be here? No more worry about not being good enough, no more worry about not being perfect. Welcome home. What would it be like? Think about it carefully. What kind of mind would that dog open up to? What kind of mind would you be willing to feel vulnerable with? You can't just barge up to the dog, and say, "What the hell's the matter with you anyway?" Maybe you say to the dog, "I'm going to be sitting quietly, and if you have anything to tell me, drop by. I'd love to see you."

So we have to watch what we say to ourselves, what we call things. Suppose my neck hurts and I say, "you really are a pain--get lost." How am I going to feel? Terrible. My neck will hurt: "He hates me. He wants me to just go away. He doesn't want to have anything to do with me. I'm going to bark and howl, and when that gets no response, I'm going to lie down and dog it! To hell with him. He just bosses me around and expects me to do what he says. Well, forget it!"

But try calling the pain Buddha, try calling it Dharma. Your neck is hurting. That is the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. Gee, and we thought it was a pain in the neck!

...

metta
_/\_