Open heart, Empty Bodhi Leaf

I woke before dawn thinking about what have I brought back from India, the home of the Buddha. What teachings have I learned filming the 17^th Karmapa, the Kagyu Monlam, the 900 Year Celebration and the interviews with my teachers and other Rinpoches, the stories of those trying to make a difference in the endless sea of suffering.

Reels and reels of images are rolling through my mind. I think this may be why I find it so difficult to sleep at night. The desperate unending plea of beggars still haunts me. Maybe I didn’t give enough, maybe I should have given those times I walked by. The vendors are still there selling the Buddha. The boys of Bodhgaya are still conning the “Dharma tourists” into thinking they can buy them a dictionary or sponsor them in school. The message is not entirely clear, but I think my experience may have made a small crack in my sense of who I think I am.

The outer Buddha presented itself in the form of Karmapa and the teachers who were there. The minds of open awareness and their hearts of compassion were not so difficult to see. Grace came to us through the Bodhi tree supplying the blood that flowed through everyone’s veins. Every moment seemed to present some teaching, some nudge to open further to the world, to let go of your never-ending agendas and your ideas of what was sacred and what was profane. I think I have had a small glimpse of everpresent dharma – transforming itself into every experience that comes our way, speaking again and again through the lips of the symbolic guru.

In our interview with Tsoknyi Rinpoche, one of my outer gurus, he said, “When your mind becomes frozen you cannot find space and openness and without space and openness, compassion cannot come out. The whole point is to experience detachment.

If you are attached to your [bottled] mineral water – that means the mineral water is very important to you and if you let that go, the object of attachment, that creates a lot of merit…I think things happen here because of Bodhgaya’s blessing.”

I encouraged him to tell the story of his own experience of working with bodhicitta under the bodhi tree. Even though I have heard this story many times and I knew he was reluctant to tell it again this time it was the best.

“Five years ago I thought I needed to change something so I looked into my whole Buddhist practice – what I needed to change, what I needed to improve and I realized what I needed to improve is bodhicitta. I think the comfortable Dharma practice, I usually call California dharma practice, in which you make yourself very cozy, mindful, relaxed, aware, love, love to others – all this makes you feel happy. All the things that make up a dharma practitioner I have – if I have a little bit of stress, the environment is not so good, then I think Ok this is impermanence and then I practice. Oh this is the Buddha realm, so I make myself very joyful and cozy for Dharma. But one needs to be willing to suffer for others. Real compassion is not afraid to suffer. One needs to think I need to help, I’m going to help, but along the road of helping I will face a lot of difficulties, but I am OK with that. I’m willing to take that risk. Bodhicitta activity is not comfortable, it is a rocky journey along the path, but if you are willing to take it then I think the first seed of bodhicitta is growing in your mind.

So I thought this time in Bodhgaya I would like to take the bodhisattva vow again, so I went to the Stupa around 5:00 o’clock, the best time for me. I circumambulated around the Stupa one time, two times, and on the third time under the bodhi tree, the exact spot where Buddha became enlightenment I was there taking the Bodhisattva vow and at that moment one bodhi leaf fell from the tree, touched on my head and feel to the ground. People are sitting on both sides of the path, chanting, meditating. I thought they were doing practice, but in fact they were waiting for the leaf. So when the leaf touched the ground, on both sides of me hands, about 10 hands, came together. My hand also went down automatically. My hand was faster than the rest and touched the leaf first and their hands touched my hand so I got the leaf and I felt good .WOW. The moment I took the vow the leaf touched my hand, now I have the leaf so I feel very good. Then I walked a little bit and after one or two seconds I felt very bad. Three seconds ago I wanted to take a vow for all sentient beings, I wanted to dedicate my life for all sentient beings, but right now I cannot give one leaf to them. I thought I took the bodhi leaf, so I am a terrible person. There was a strong contradiction. I almost crushed the bodhi leaf but then a second thought came that maybe this could be a very important reminder for my bodhicitta practice. So I took leaf, put in the paper, and now it hangs framed behind my bed.

So I think the real authentic feeling of bodhicitta is not so easy. I am still working on that. Always selfish, absorbed in self interest, I want to chant mantra for myself, I want to sit down and have peace for me, I want to do some Tonglen so I feel good, last night I didn’t sleep so good so I didn’t help so many people. Now sit down to practice, so I give my dharma, my virtue, take their suffering. At the end of 25 minutes – WOW I feel great. So all Dharma is all about me, I want to feel great, including bodhicitta, including taking refuge to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha – there is always a “me” behind everything. If we cannot transform that “me” I think Dharma is not going to work at all.

Some times I feel very good going to the Stupa, sometimes I feel very sad. Because there are hundreds of thousands of people going around the Stupa, focusing on “me”. I want to do prostrations, I want to see the face of Buddha…“me”. “Me” chanting, dharma helping me – me, me, me. I saw very few with no “me”, letting go “me”. Ha, letting go Dharma. Behind this there is a “doer, an “experiencer”, a “practitioner”. If that “er” doesn’t transform, then Dharma is not going to work, it’s all about me. So then I thought WOW – I am doing the same thing. So sometimes I go there and don’t do anything, just sit there and see if I am trying to do something for myself  – contemplation, bodhicitta, emptiness – for what? I want to feel good. Until you let go of that, real bodhicitta might never happen.

I am solid and this solidity of “me” is practicing solid dharma and “I” would like to experience solid happiness and “I” would like to get rid of the source of suffering. Everything is serious, solid, and obvious. I don’t want the solid suffering. I want the solid happiness. Maybe if I practice serious dharma I will get serious happiness. Behind all this is a tiger holding back. You have to die to “me”. First you have to experience this reified “I” then you have to contemplate whether I exist, or I does not exist. We call this analytical meditation, which is very important. Analyze everything and then you see that everything is mere existence, not like a solid giant. Even include that life and death is sort of a joke, within that joke there is cause and effect. Cause and effect is also part of the joke – the grief, the tightness, the solidity  – you have to loosen up and within that looseness we have to function. But not too loose, that’s what Nargarjuna calls the unity of two truths – relative and ultimate.

Until that is realized it is very difficult. If you cannot bring the two truths together as a unification it its very difficult to understand Dharma, it becomes black and white – relative solid, ultimate nothing. Ultimate and limited come together like milk and water. Ah, we have lost the art, the dance, and the movement of Dharma. Either nothing or either everything, either the world exists or non-exists. So how can it be – this existence and non-existence together, spontaneously? As Nargarjuna always mentioned the unification of two truths is really important. The more I think about dharma, not nihilism, not realism – empty awareness. Form is empty, empty is form. When these two things don’t conflict in your mind – then you know dharma.”

Excerpts from and interview with Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Bodhgaya India, 2011

I’m getting ready to fly down to Mexico City to start editing our film with Fernanda. I’m trying to raise the money for the plane ticket, which will be around $500.00 If anyone has that kind of spare change and wants to donate that amount I will send you a framed Bodhi leaf from the Bodhi tree in Bodhgaya – not Tsoknyi Rinpoches but my own. Thank you.