Disdain

Hello,

I am writing to express my disdain for those who would do away with the vajra master and raise some questions from an outsiders perspective. I am currently a student at Naropa University and while I have the good fortune to be studying Zen meditation under the excellent Kobun Chino Roshi I have not even taken formal refuge vows or had a real oppurtunity to connect with a Buddhist teacher. I consider myself blessed to even be able to sit in the presence of a master however, and I cannot understand those who would seek to downplay the importance of realized teachers. To me it is the ultimate act of egocentric stupidity. I say this because as a young teenager I had the oppurtunity to connect with and be taught by my grandfather, a powerful healer in the Native American tradition. My grandfather appeared outwardly to be a rather unremarkable old indian, always smoking cigars and cursing just a little too much, but to spend some time with him was to come in contact with an unmistakable spiritual power. He didn't even have long hair, or wear any fashionable "Indian" accessories, but his eyes would shine like crystals and he always seemed to be two steps ahead of me. Many times he would address issues I was having with spirituality or life in general before I even had a chance to say a word to him. He had the powerful ability to deflate me, to pierce like a needle to the very heart of whatever overinflated ego drama I had wrapped myself up in. If I was having some trouble or conflict (which is most of the time when you are thirteen years old) he always had the ability to leave me feeling competely open and refreshed after talking to me even if he only said three words to me. Once I was planning on getting in a fight at a country fair and on a whim decided to stop up at my fathers house, where he was living at the time. When I got there my grandfather was in the backyard with my younger brother, showing him some boxing moves (my grandfather was a bare knuckle boxing champion in his youth) and he proceeded to call me over and show me a few simple techniques I could use if I ever got in a brawl. It was strange because he addressed the issue of what to do if you were ever in a fight involving many people, which was precisely what I was anticipating that evening. He then proceeded to sit me down and tell me about some of the consequences of fights that he had been in in his youth when the only course of action he knew was to hit first and ask questions later. After that he had me lay on the green summer grass and stare at the sky and allow the earth to absorb my pain and negativity. We talked for a while longer about the spiritual path and the courage it took to walk it and then I left, feeling totally peaceful and refreshed and not at all like fighting. I never wound up going to that particular fairground to fight that night. The strange thing was I never told him about my plans for the evening until right before I said my goodbyes. In fact I hadnt mentioned them to anybody. To me he truly exhibited the timely qualities of a spiritual master, and his compassionate actions knew no bounds. Sensing that perhaps my spiritual path would take a different direction than his he never pressured me to take up the Native American path, although at this point I would love to attend sweats and pipe ceremonies. His guidance came in many forms, from formalized lectures on spirituality to humorous stories from his youth. Once he snapped me out of a six month cycle of self rightousness and depression by making me eat a turkey sandwich. I am forever indebted to him and should I have the the good fortune to encounter other realized teachers in this lifetime I will always consider him my first. That said I have some questions for those American Buddhist "practitioners" who would seek to undermine the authority of sublime spritual teachers.

1. what is it that you are afraid of losing By humbling yourself before a realized master that is so precious? What house of cards have you constructed over the aeons that is so wonderful you cannot bear its destruction, even if it means liberation from cyclic existance and gaining the ability to be of true benifit to all sentient beings?

2. Who do you think you are? Do you think you are better somehow than all the great beings of the past who had to rely on spiritual guides?

3. What poisons do you contain within you that you are so resistant giving up your precious illusory ego?

4. How can you ever hope to be totally compassionate if you cannot be totally humble? When is it that you will be able to cut through the countless aeons of karmic buildup and truly be able to put the welfare of others before your own?

5. If you cannot see the Buddha in the teacher how can you ever hope to see the Buddha in your own mind?

6. Do you truly feel that your own ideas and those of your noxious peer group of self adulating ego worshippers, the very same ideas based on the ego's self preservation which have kept you wandering in samsara since beginningless time will liberate you in this lifetime?

7. Humans rely on teachers throughout their entire life, from the day they first learn to walk to the day they start school to the day they take that first corporate job. Without others to lead, explicitly or by example, we would never understand the complexities of daily life in human society. The fact that we do not even venerate our own mothers or fathers, the ones who taught us the most basic survival skills we will use for the rest of our lives, is rather sad. That we would plunge headlong into the most profound of spiritual paths with the view that we do not need to rely on a perfect teacher is more than sad it is disturbing beyond belief. If you wouldn't just walk into an office building or a karate school and attempt to take over, why would you attempt to practice the dharma without a trustworthy guide?

8. If you cannot understand that Chogam Trungpa Rinpoche, who dealt with many physical and cultural difficulites to present his teaching in this country and in the style that he did, drank himself to death for our benifit how can you ever hope to become the stone bridge that others use to cross over to the other shore of liberation? He died, young and crippled, from liver problems. His neglected his own wife to attend to the needs of his students. He gave up a comfortable life in England, where he could have lived with only his wife, his attendants and a few personal students, to spread the true dharma to American students. Students who consumed him faster than alcohol ever could, who used up his very essence. His power was great, and his sacrifice was greater and yet there are those out there who profess him to be a power monger and a cultist. If this is so why do all true masters, even those such as Shunryu Suzuki Roshi who had no political reasons to support him, venerate him as a great mahasiddhi? Is it that you feel that your realization, your assesment of the situation, is more accurate then theirs because you attempt to measure Trungpa Rinpoche according to a set of arbitrary "spiritual" standards?

In conclusion (and I apologize for the rather lengthy nature of this email) I would like to say that whenever I picture a sangha without a lama all I see is a circle of scowling faces, each pushing its own agenda, passing them through each other in a circle. A never ending circle of ego debate. A constantly revolving wheel of conflict if you will. In other words a manifestation of samsara. Without a realized master to break the chains this wheel of samsara continues to revolve, travelling through crystalizations of all six realms. Also on an unrelated note, in defense of Thich Nhat Hanh, I feel that grouping him in with the rest of the social activist buddhists is rather unfair. This is because while his goals may be similar to those who would use buddhism to affect social change rather than realization I feel that his reasons for doing so are different. First of all in hearing him speak and reading what he has written I feel there is very little doubt that he is a true master. Second of all, unlike the weekend workshop Buddhists, Thich Nhat Hanh is steeped in a true monastic tradition. I feel that his actions and his support of engaged Buddhism are a result of his having experienced first hand the horrors of the Vietnam war, not a result of some desire to bend Buddhist thought to serve trendy social causes. Unlike the writings of say Lama Surya Das, his writings spark. They spark self investigation and the developement of insight. A friend of mine who is a Sufi master commented on the power that dwelled in the simple words of Thich Nhat Hanh. That said I thank you for putting up with the ramblings of one as inexperienced and deluded as myself. Thank you