ANOTHER WAY TO LIVE

ANOTHER WAY TO LIVE
Counting my steps backward  now,
when the winds recede
and silence speaks
of the language fallen
out of the reach,
a time to pause and look around
mountains of clouds,
hang overhead,
the mist feels,
the arid land.
Nothing grows,
but what has grown,
neither dries nor wilts.
Everything is at a standstill.
Fear from the abyss
grips.
What portals these, what sadness,
what dark mist
awaits me there!
A sad mist, a dark mist, the peace in the mist baffles.
Everything else, out of the focus,
the body answers, not the spirit.
The body recedes, the spirit ascends.
I hear the word I am afraid to speak.
I am a child retracing steps.
Like an astral vision
I can grasp a candle beyond the range
as easily as the one within my reach.
It's the candle now I easily see;
the rest of the things are vaguely seen.
My desire has become the will,
this is another way to live.
 

Padmasambhava; From 'The Tibetan Book Of The Dead edited by Dr. W. Y. Evans-Wentz

The Manuscript copy of the Bardo Thodol edited by Dr. W. Y. Evans-Wentz

The copy was procured by the editor in the early 1919 from a young lama of the Kargyutpa Sect of the Red Hat School attached to the Bhutia Basti Monastery, Darjeeling who said that it had been handed down in his family for several generations. It was illustrated by paintings in colour painted on the folios of the text. When procured, the manuscript was in a very ragged and worn condition, now remedied by each folio being inserted in a protective frame of the Tibetan paper of the same sort as the one on which it was originally written. Though faded , all the folios were in a fair state of preservation.  Folio number 111 which was missing, was replaced by a fathful copy of the from a Block-print version of Bardo Thodol belonging to Dr. Johan Van Manen, Secretary of The Asiatic Society, Calcutta.
The manuscript was far older than the modern Block-print and seems to have been copied from an older version of an earlier manuscript.
It is undated but the translator judged it to be from 150 to 200 years old.
From the Block-Print, and also from other Tibetan sources, we learn that the Bardo Thodol text originated, or, was first committed to writing in the time of Padmasambhava, in the eighth century A. D. ;was subsequently hidden away, and then, when the time came for it to be given to the world, was brought to light by Rigzin KarmaLing-pa.
The Block-Print account is as follows :
This has been brought from the Hill of Gampodar on the bank of the Serdan (Tibetan meaning ' Karma Land ' If Rig is the word correctly intended, the name means a Knowledge-holder, a caste or class designation in another small section of a Bardo Thodol in possession of the translator Rigzin Karma Ling-pa is otherwise called 'Terton' (Tibetan Gter-bston), or 'Taker-out of Treasures'. The Bardo Thodol is therefore, one of the Tibetan Lost Books recovered by Rigzin of Karma Ling-pa, who is held to be  an emanation or incarnation of Padmasambhava, the founder of Lamaism.
It was in the eighth century A. D. that Lamaism, which we may define as Tantric Buddhism, took firm root in Tibet. A century earlier, under the first king to rule over a united Tibet, King Song-Tsan-Gampo (who died in A. D. 650), Buddhism itself entered Tibet from two sources : from Nepal; and from China, through his marriage-in the year 641-with a princess of the Chinese Imperial Family.
The King had been nurtured in the old Bon faith of Tibet, which, with its primitive doctrine of rebirth, was quite capable osf serving as an approach to Buddhism; and under the influence of his two Buddhist wives he accepted Buddhism, making it the state religion; but it made little headway in Tibet until a century later, when his powerful successor, Thi-Srong-Detsan, held the throne from A. D. 740 to 786. It was Thi-Srong- Detsan who invited Padmasambhava ( Tib. Pedma Jungne, i. e. 'The Lotus-Born'), better known to the Tibetans as Guru Rin-po-che, 'the Precious Guru', to come to Tibet. The famous Guru was at that time a Professor of Yoga in the great Buddhist University of Nalanda, India, and far-famed for expert knowledge of the Occult Sciences. He was a native of Udyana or Swat, in what is now a part of Afghanistan.
The great Guru saw an opportunity which the King's invitation offered, and promptly accepted the call, passing through Nepal and arriving at Samye (Sam-Yas), Tibet, in the year 747. It was to Samye that the King had invited him, in order to have exorcized the demons of the locality; for as soon as the walls of a monastery which the King was having erected there were raised they were overthrown by local earthquakes, which the demons opposing Buddhism were believed to have caused. When the Great guru had driven away the demons, all the local earthquakes ceased, much to the wonder of the people; he himself supervised the completion of the monastery, and established therein the first community of Tibetan Buddhist lamas, in the year 749.

The Secret Of Shambhala

That is the secret of SHAMBHALA THE SECRET OF SHAMBHALA

A bed in a disarray, a pizza box in a corner,
right into the midnight
teenagers work, are working feverishly at the computers,
struggling with decisions,
working on the energy into which they were thrown against their dreams of a better life , of youth and love and growing into knowledge , of the holy secrets
of brotherhood, procreation and sustaining life on earth.
Their dreams disparaged, rejected by peers of demonic strength,
they are now working feverishly on the strength of anger.
The tussle of desires,desire to be accepted, loved,
desire to expand and spread love...
the desires are held against an opposite pattern...
the desire to rule, defeat, conquer, spill hate...again the outcome is anger.
Anger is the god that has come to propel the world of the young.
It starts in schools, goes into institutions, grows into mighty task-forces at work .

The boy you see working feverishly into the night
will pick up a gun...
his inside will burst before the gun will explode.
You will hardly have time to count the moments in between.

Time is running out; homemade bombs will be growing like mushrooms everywhere.
Temples are collapsing behind us; the temples where guardians were sending energies of prayer to control anger and convert it to love;
it sounds so hopeless, the whole endeavour ending in a sinister laughter, the disaster
a gigantic irony that could not be controlled.

Prayer-fields, we need to create more prayer-fields,
We had ceased to believe in belief.
Creating more prayer fields, by words and deeds,
until we see only beauty and feel only love,
uplifting men and women into awareness, incapable of evil.

There is no time for the doubt; we are running out of time.
it's not enough to acknowledge the angel
we must empower them to act.
Call into this world the kids of light,
bigge, stronger, intelligent in a whole new way.

Make a note of every struggle that is happening anywhere
every struggle when someone is fighting between the dark and the light
and is hopelessly suspended in between, and take the time to intervene.

A Review Of Erato's Lives: i--viii By C. J. Leadbeater

A Review Of Erato's Lives: i---viii By C. J. Leadbeater

With his eighth life we come to the close of a minor cycle of soul-evolution. In his earlier life in Chaldea he was thrown into surroundings which made a good life eminently probable for him. Born in the priestly caste, he encountered none but virtuous examples. Virtue was universally expected of him and was made easy for him. To have been sinned seriously would have been difficult; it would have been to fly in the face of all comfortable conventions; it would have needed a determination in the direction of wickedness which our hero happily did not possess.

A Review Of Erato's Lives: 1--8 By C. W. Leadbeater

 The Miracle

The blue was about to conquer the eye and at the fading moment
the mind and the heart strayed away.
The jewel dropped from the blue, suddenly in my lap
when nothing was in its place.
Neither the mind nor the heart, neither the thought nor the act of seeing,
The jewel shone out of the sky it brought the word
and I heard!
The Master speaks and that's the miracle
which happens only once!

The Soul's Growth Through Reincarnation: C. W. Leadbeater

From the Introduction to 'FROM THE SOUL'S GROWTH THROUGH INCARNATION; LIVES OF ERATO AND SPICA BY C. W. LEADBEATER
The introduction is by C. Jinrajadasa.

The Theosophical answer to the question: " What is the meaning of Reincarnation?" is that each soul has, as his purpose in existence, to give a noble contribution of work to the fulfilment of the Great Plan. The purpose of existence is not postulated as any kind of Nirvana which brings the final consummation described in the phrase, "the dewdrop slips into the shining sea." On the other hand Salvation or Liberation is certainly postulated in Theosophy as the union of the soul's consciousness with that of the Divine; but at the same time, the wonder and beauty of that union is to be continually manifested in noble creations for the helping of the souls , the young souls just entering their career to Deification.

In the many lives of Erato, wherever there is an opportunity, he is drawn to art.

There are four lines of Tennyson which suggest the meaning of life as seen in the light of Reincarnation:
"Act first, this Earth, a stage so gloom'd with woe,
You all but sicken at the shifting scenes.
And yet be patient. Our Playwright may show
In some fifth Act what this wild Drama means.

Tulkus The Realized Souls Who Return To Earth Out Of Choice

A Tulku

There are those who have mastered the Law of Karma, and are here to show the path to those who are struggling to understand the riddle of Karma.
In Tibet, there is a tradition of recognizing such Tulkus. The tradition has existed since the thirteenth century to the present day. The purpose of this tradition is to ensure that the wisdom memory of the master is not lost after the transition from one lifetime to another.

This is what Sogyal Rinpoche has to say on the concept of the Tulku
"What continues from life to life is the blessing, a grace. This transmission of a blessing and grace is exactly tuned  and appropriate to each succeeding age, and the incarnation appears in a way potentially best suited to the karma of the people of his time, to be able to help them most completely."

Jamyang Khyentse: A Tibetan Master Installment 2 Meditation

 An Extract From 'Tibetan Book Of Living And Dying' By Sogyal Rinpoche

When Jamyang Khyentse was living in Sikkim as the guest of the Maharaja of Sikkim, Apa Pant, a distinguished Indian diplomat and a writer, was one of his students. One day, Apa Pant saw Jamyang Khyentse watching a 'Lama Dance' in front of the palace temple and chuckling in amusement at the sight of the clown who was providing comic relief in the gaps between dances. Apa Pant apprached him with a question. He pestered Jayang Khyentse with the question how to meditate. Finally the master replied as if he was answering the question once and for all.
He said, "Look, it's like this: When the past thought has ceased, and  the future thought has not yet arisen, isn't there a gap?"
"Yes," said Apa Pant.
"Well, prolong it. That is meditation."

A Tibetan Master Jamyang Khentse

A Tibetan Master : Extract From Sogyal Rinpoche : 'The Tibetan Book Of Living And Dying'

Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro, the mentor of Sogyal Rinpoche, died in the summer of 1959. Dzongsar, the monastery where he lived in Tibet was a centre of great spiritual activity. Almost everybody was his disciple. His moral power was such that he could stop civil wars by threatening to withdraw his support from both the fighting sides. Unfortunately under the threat of the Chinese invasion he had to decide to migrate and escape to India on a pilgrimage to the ancient Indian shrines. He had a longstanding invitation to visit Sikkim, one of the small countries of Himalayas and the sacred land of Padmasambhava. Jamyang Khentse was regarded to be an incarnation of the holiest saints of Sikkim. Soon the palace temple where he lived in Sikkim became a great spiritual centre of learning. With the impending fall of Tibet to the invasion of the Chinese more and more Lamas were drawn to the safety of Sikkim and gathered around him as their spiritual leader.
Sometimes great Masters who teach a lot are said not to live long. It is as if they attract towards them all the obstacles there are to the spiritual teachings.  There were prophecies that if he had given up teaching and had travelled more or less anonymously he would have lived for many more years. Sogyal Rinpoche says that he in fact tried to stop teaching. Sogyal Rinpoche had accompanied him on his last journey from Kham. During that journey he left"all his possessions behind and went in complete secrecy, not intending to teach but travel on pilgrimage. Yet once they found out who he was, people everywhere requested him to give teachings and initiations. So vast was his compassion that knowing what he was risking, he sacrificed his own life to keep on teaching."
It was at Sikkim that he finally met with his end He fell ill at the same time as when Tibet had finally fallen too. His disciples pleaded with him not to leave his body so soon. He just lay in bed and laughed and said, "All right, just to be auspicious, I'll say, I'll live."

Masters

Sogyal Rinpoche on Masters : From 'Tibetan Book Of Living And Dying'

 Khyentse Rinpoche himself, which express perhaps more eloquently than any other passage I know the vast and noble qualities of the master: "He is like a great ship for beings to cross the perilous ocean of existence, an unerring captain who guides them to the dry land of liberation, a rain that extinguishes the fire of passions, a bright sun and moon that dispel the darkness of ignorance, a firm ground that can bear the weight of both good and bad, a wish-fulfilling tree that bestows a temporal happiness and ultimate bliss a treasury of vast and deep instructions, 

Thinking again of that wonderful day in ,Sikkim and of those great masters I have known, these words of a Tibetan saint that have inspired me return to me: "When the sun of fierce devotion shines on the snow -mountain of the master, the stream of his blessings will pour down," and I remember the words of Dilgofulfilling tree that bestows temporal happiness and ultimate bliss, a treasury of vast and deep instructions, a wish-fulfilling jewel granting all the qualities of realization, a father and mother giving their love equally to all sentient beings, a great river of compassion, a mountain rising above worldly concerns unshaken by the winds of emotions, and a great cloud filled with rain to soothe the torments of the passion. In brief, he is the equal of all the Buddhas. To make any connection with him, whether through seeing him, hearing his voice, remembering him, or being touched by his hand, will lead us toward liberation. To have full confidence in him is the sure way to progress toward enlightenment. The warmth of his wisdom and compassion will melt the ore of our being and release the gold of the Buddha-nature within."  

FromHis Holiness the Dalai Lama; Science and Buddhism ; Tibet and India

The Visit to India in 1956

In 1956 I went to India to take partin the 2500^th anniversary of Buddha’s death, whose main event took place in Delhi. Later the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru became something of a counsellor to me and a friend as well as my host in exile. Nehru was scientifically minded; he saw India’s future in terms of technological and industrial development and had a profound vision of progress. After the final celebration of Buddha’s passing away, I saw many parts of India-not only the pilgrimage sites like Bodhgaya where Buddha attained full awakening, but also major cities, industrial complexes and universities.

It was then that I had my first encounters with spiritual teachers who were seeking the integration of science and spirituality, such as the members of the Theosophical Society in Madras. Theosophy was an important spiritual movement in nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries that sought to develop a synthesis of human knowledge, Eastern and Western, religious and scientific. Its founders including  Madame Blavatsky and Annie Besant, were westerners but spent much time in India.

I noticed certain similarities between science and Buddhist thought which I still find striking. The scientific method proceeds from the observation of certain phenomena of  in the material world, leads to a theoretical generalization which predicts the event and the results that arise if one treats the phenomena in a particular way, and then tests the prediction with an experiment. The result is accepted as part of the body of wider scientific knowledge if the experiment is correctly conducted and may be repeated. However, if the experiment contradicts the theory, then it is the theory that needs to be adapted-since the empirical observation of phenomena has priority. Effectively science moves from empirical experience via a conceptual thought process that includes application of reason and culminates in further empirical experience to verify the understanding offered by reason. I have long been gripped by a fascination with the parallels between this form of investigation and those I had learnt in my Buddhist philosophical training and contemplative practice.

Although Buddhism has evolved as a religion with a characteristic body of scriptures and rituals, strictly speaking, in Buddhism scriptural authority cannot outweigh an understanding based on reason and experience. In fact, the Buddha himself, in a famous statement, undermines the scriptural authority of his own words when he exhorts his followers not to accept the validity of his teachings simply on the basis of reverence to him. Just as a seasoned goldsmith would test the purity of his gold through a meticulous process of examination, the Buddha advises that people should test the truth of what he has said through reasoned examination and personal experiment. Therefore when it comes to validating the truth of a claim, Buddhism accords greatest authority to experience , with reason second and scripture last. The great masters of the Nalanda school of Indian Buddhism, from which Tibetan Buddhism sprang, continued to apply the spirit of the Buddha’s advice in their rigorous and critical examination of the Buddha’s own teachings.

In one sense the method of science and Buddhism are different: scientific investigation proceeds by experiment, using instruments that analyse external phenomena, whereas contemplative investigation proceeds by the development of refined attention, which is then used in the introspective examination of inner experience. But both share a strong empirical basis: if science shows something to exist or to be non-existent (which is not the same as not finding it), then we must acknowledge that as a fact. If a hypothesis is tested and found to be true, we must accept it. Likewise, Buddhism must accept the facts-whether found by science or found by contemplative insights. If when we investigate something, we find there is reason and proof for it, we must acknowledge that as reality – even if it is in contradiction with a literal scriptural explanation that has held sway for many centuries or with a deeply held opinion or view. So one fundamental attitude shared by Buddhism and science is the commitment to keep searching for reality by empirical means and to be willing to discard accepted or long-held positions if our search finds that the truth is different.

With regard to Buddhist investigative traditions, we Tibetans owe a tremendous debt to classical India, the birthplace of Buddhist philosophical thinking and spiritual teaching. Tibetans have always referred to India as ‘The Land of the Noble Ones’. This the country that gave birth to the Buddha, and to a series of great Indian masters whose writings have fundamentally shaped the philosophical thinking and the spiritual tradition of the Tibetan people- the second century philosopher Nagarjuna, the fourth century luminaries Asanga and his brother Vasubandhu, the great ethical teacher Shantideva and the seventh century logician Dharmakirti.      

From 'His Holiness: The Dalai Lama'--An Autobiography

From ‘His holiness: The Dalai Lama

I was born into  a family  of simple farmers who used cattle to plough their field and, when the barley was harvested, used cattle to trample the grain out of the husk. Perhaps the only objects that could be described as   technological in the world of my early childhood were the rifles that local warrior nomads had probably acquired from British India, Russia and China. At the age of six I was enthroned as the fourteenth Dalai Lama in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and embarked upon an education in all aspects of Buddhism. I had personal tutors who gave me daily classes in reading, writing, basic Buddhist philosophy and memorization of scriptures and rituals. I was also given several tsenshap, which literally means ‘philosophical assistants.’ The primary job was to engage me in debate on issues Buddhist thought. In addition, I would participate in long hours of prayers and meditative contemplation. I spent periods in retreat with my tutos and sat regularly for two hours at a time four times a day in a meditation session.This is a fairly typical training for a high lama in the Tibetan tradition. But I was not educated in maths , geology, chemistry, biology and physics. I did not even know they existed.

The Potala palace was my official winter residence. It is a huge edifice, occupying the entire side of a mountain, and is supposed to have a thousand rooms—I never counted them myself. In my spare moments as a boy, I amused myself by exploring some of its chambers. It was like being on a perpetual treasure hunt. There were all kinds of things, mainly belonging the belongings of the former Dalai Lamas and especially of my immediate predecessor, preserved there. Among the most striking of the palace’s contents were the reliquary stupas containing the remains of the previous Dalai Lamas, reaching back to the Fifth, who lived in the seventeenth century and enlarged the Potala to its present form. Amid the assorted oddities I found lying about were mechanical objects which belonged to the thirteenth Dalai Lama. Most notable were a collapsible telescope made from brass, which could be attached to a tripod, and a hand-wound mechanical time-piece with a rotating globe on a stand that gave the time in different time-zones. There was also a stash of illustrated books in English telling the story of  the First World War.

Some of these were the gifts to the thirteenth Dalai Lama from his friend Sir Charles bell. Bell was the Tibetan-speaking  British political officer in Sikkim. He had been the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s host during his brief sojourn in British India when he fled in 1910 at the threat of invasion by armies of the last imperial government of China. It is curious that the exile in India and the discovery of scientific culture are things bequeathed to me by my most immediate predecessor. For the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, as I later found out, this stay in British India was an eye-opening experience, which led to a recognition of the need for major social and political reforms in Tibet. On his return to Lhasa, he introduced the telegraph, set up a postal service, built a small generating plant to power Tibet’s first electric lights and established a mint for the national coinage and the printing of paper currency. He also came to appreciate the importance of a modern, secular education and sent a select group of Tibetan children to study at Rugby school in England. The thirteenth Dalai Lama left a remarkable death-bed testament, which predicted much of the political tragedy to come and which the government that succeeded him failed to understand fully or to heed.     

Randomly chosen from Memory and Its Nature : Papers by Annie Besant and H. P. Blavatsky

"We must think, then,of a conscious self dwelling in vehicles that vibrate. The vibrations of these vehicles  correspond, on the side of matter, with the changes in consciousness in the side of the self . We cannot accurately speak of vibrations of consciousness, because vibrations can only belong to the material side of the things, the form side, and only loosely can we speak of a vibrating consciousness corresponding with vibrations in sheaths.
The question of the vehicles, or bodies, in whichconsciousness, the self is working, is all important as regards memory. The whole process of recovering more or less remote events is a question of picturing them in the sheath-of shaping part of the matter of the sheath into their likeness-in which consciousness is working at the same time. In the Self, as a fragment of the Universal Self-which for our purpose we can take to be the Logos, although in verity the Logos is but a portion of the Universal Self-is present in everything; for in the Universal Self is present all which has taken place, is taking place, and will take place in the universe; all this, and an illimitable more is present in the Universal Consciousness. Let us think only of a universe and its Logos. We speak of Him as omnipresent, omniscient. Now, fundamentally, that omnipresence and the omniscience are in the individualized Self, as being one with the Logos, but we must put in here a but-with a difference; the difference consisting in this, that while in the separated Self as Self, apart from all vehicles, that omniscience reside by virtue of his unity with the one Self, the vehicles in which he dwells have have not yet learned to vibrate in answer to his change of consciousness, as he turns his attention to one or another part  of his contents. Hence we say tht all exists in him potentially, and not as in Logos actually: all the changes which go on in the consciousness of the Logos are reproducible in this separated Self, which is an indivisible part of His life, but the vehicles are not yet ready as media of manifestation. Because of the separation of form, because of this closing in of the separate, or individualized Self, these possibilities which are within it as part of the Universal Self are latent, not manifest, are possibilities, not actualities. As in every atom which goes to the making up of a vehicle, there are illimitable possibilities of vibration, so in every separated Self there are illimitable possibilities of changes of consciousness.
To be continued.