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Interview with Lama Traktung Rinpoche Flaming Jewel Dharma Center
Ann Arbor, Michigan, January 30, 2001
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I
entered the Flaming Jewel Dharma Center on Ann Street, in Ann Arbor, at
10:30 on a Sunday morning in late January. The Center offers
Tantric teachings of the Nyingma Lineage, the oldest school of Tibetan
Buddhism, and I had come to attend a public teaching with Lama Traktung
Rinpoche and Lama A'dzom Rinpoche. The lamas are Americans,
husband and wife, formally recognized as tülkus, or incarnations, of
great Tibetan yogins from the last century. They belong to
the Ngak'phang Lineage of White Skirt practitioners, a non-monastic and
non-celibate tradition of the Tantric path.
I
had little idea what to expect. The entrance hall was
already hung with dozens of coats as I came in, and the meeting hall,
colorfully decorated with Tibetan wall coverings, was packed with over
60 people, mainly sitting cross-legged on the floor, some in chairs
against the back wall. The two lamas entered, their palms
pressed together, fingertips pointed upward, in a traditional Eastern
greeting. They were dressed in broad, white skirts with
maroon sashes slung over their shoulders. Lama Traktung
Rinpoche was a heavy-set man in his early forties, with fair skin,
blonde hair, a moustache, short-cropped goatee, and wearing a pair of
ivory earrings. A'dzom Rinpoche, who preceded him to the
dais, was also very fair-skinned, almost Nordic in
appearance. The assembly bowed and began a chant that lasted
for five or ten minutes, some with liturgical books open before them,
but most singing the Tibetan words by rote in remarkable
unison.
Lama Traktung Rinpoche opened the meeting, and did most of the
speaking, his manner relaxed and informal. He began his
discourse by quoting a well-known aphorism from the Sufi
tradition. "In one's spiritual work," he stated, "one should
gauge the quality and level of one's activity the way a good camel
driver gauges the weight of the halter. If the halter is too
heavy, the camel will lay down and not get up and walk at
all. If the halter is too light, the camel won't listen to
any directions."
He illustrated this principle by recounting the history of the Tibetan
saint Milarepa, who began his spiritual search by choosing the swift
and seemingly facile Dzogchen path, but found that he could not even
begin to master it. Milarepa then took up the far more
physically demanding Marpa path, in pursuit of which he was given tasks
of mythic proportions. Lama Traktung's point was that a
so-called 'light halter' won't word for some people, and a 'heavy
halter' won't work for others. "Each person," he explained,
"has a 'soft limit' and 'hard limit'. If you don't go beyond
your soft limit you will not progress, but if you go beyond your hard
limit, you will be hurt, and feel crushed or ashamed about your
constant failure.
"Those who never go beyond their soft limit relax into their habits,
and sink into their slovenly, animalistic nature," he
added. "Those who go to the opposite extreme tend to be
people who want to be admired for their spirituality. Given
that we are all camels, we tend to limit ourselves both with our 'soft'
and our 'hard' behavior. Most of us do both. In
certain areas of our lives we won't go beyond our soft limit and in
others we insist on punishing ourselves by going beyond our hard limit."
A person in the group raised his hand and asked, "What can a person do
to negotiate these limits?"
 "All
external events can be taken as the communication of teaching," Lama
Traktung replied. "Over and over again we have to assess
what we're doing. We should immediately be shocked by our
ability to rationalize our own behavior. All fingers should
point to our self. When people undermine their whole life by
trying to do what they can't do, it's annoying to see. Our
whole culture is designed to make us forget what our potentialities
are. The constant stimulation that it creates never
ends. To disengage from that constant stimulation is the
first step to putting you in greater touch with your self."
Lama Traktung ended his
discourse by talking about the role of faith in this
process. "To have faith," he said, "is to risk everything on
the hunch that the Divine exists." He used the Alcoholics
Anonymous program as an analogy. "In AA they tell you that
if you work the program, you will not drink. But part of the
program is: 'Do not drink.' It's a
tautology. Faith and perseverance are the keys to
success. A person may appear to be technically working the
program, but you can tell that they will fail."
After the teaching was over, I went up to Lama Traktung, introduced
myself, and asked for an interview. He agreed to meet with
me the following Tuesday. He arrived right on time, dressed
in regular street clothes, and was no longer wearing the
earrings. We sat cross-legged on meditation cushions in the
middle of the meeting hall, a pleasant incense wafting above
us. I started by telling him of my interest in visiting with
different spiritual groups, and looking for the common spiritual thread
between them.
"I have a degree in comparative religion," he replied, "and I spent
quite a number of years in my late teens traveling from center to
center, community to community, group to group-a Sufi group, a
Gurdjieff group, a Zen group, Dheravada groups, Mahayana
groups. So my own early background was very
diverse. I have a complete love for the beauty of
realization, and also the particular paths displayed throughout
history, and throughout time, and throughout cultures. We,
in our group, don't particularly manifest the tendency to think that
other groups, other paths, and other cultures are not as
good. They're just different. There are people
with a high degree of realization, with a mediocre degree of
realization, as well as downright mean and nasty people in almost every
spiritual tradition, in almost every spiritual group throughout history
and throughout cultures."
"These groups are made up of human beings," he continued, "and a
well-functioning group will almost necessarily include some people with
fairly strong distortions, because spiritual life is meant to help
those people. Most groups are mirrors of
society. They are organisms. The group doesn't
control the psychodynamics of any individual, but each individual
contributes to the dynamics of the group as a whole. The
group develops an ethos, an overall Gestalt. Groups and
their members are like a river and the banks of the
river. The banks shape the river and the river shapes the
banks."
"So there's an individual consciousness, and there's a group consciousness," I suggested.
"Right," he replied. "I started out in university as a
political science major. Are you familiar with Herbert
Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man? His analysis of technological
society is that society shapes the apparent needs of people, and then
people are bound by what they feel to be their needs. It's a
very good description of our commercial society."
We got onto the subject of the recent election and the television
coverage of it. "For some reason, I felt personally affected
by it, which I shouldn't have, but I did," I admitted. One
good thing it did for me is that it has gotten me away from watching
the TV news and reading the papers. I just took a vow of
celibacy from the papers and the news."
"You don't watch TV for a while or read newspapers or listen to the
news for a month or two months or three months, and then you turn it on
again, there's nothing new. It's the exact same thing with
new names, maybe. It's very funny. I once went
three years without watching TV, reading the newspaper, or listening to
the news in any way, shape, or form, and then at the end of the three
years, nothing was different. It was the same hype, the same
hoopla."
"I'm a TV
junkie," I confessed, "but I can get along fine without
it. The only reason I watch it is because it's
there. As soon I'm taken away from it, I don't miss
it. Sometimes I'll be watching some old rerun from years
ago, and I think how I've spent a good portion of my life viewing this
stuff, and it's sort of appalling. I'm in a mode right now
where I would really just like to get away from civilization."
"If you could only have back all the time you spent watching TV."
"My God, yes. The only thing to do is to get busy now."
I returned to the subject of
the teaching from the previous Sunday-the Sufi aphorism about the
camel.
"This is actually used in a series of instructions for teachers," Lama
Traktung explained. "The idea is that if you lay a halter
upon your students that is too heavy for them, then they won't be able
to function at all, and all they will become is
despairing. But if one has no discipline whatsoever in one's
life, then the mind wanders about randomly without even any ability to
tell that it is wandering. In our particular tradition of
sitting practice, it's a very delicate thing in the beginning to even
recognize what distraction is. If there is no discipline at
all, we can spend our whole lives distracted without realizing that we
are even distracted. Once we try to rest our attention on
one thing, let's say within concentrated sitting meditation, then
suddenly the mind goes crazy because it's like a mad elephant that's
never been staked to one spot before. The mind doesn't
actually go crazy. It's always been that
crazy. It's just one never really knew it
before."
"So it's just that you have
to be careful not to burden people with too much, not to tell people
that they have to take on all kinds of disciplines that they're not
capable of taking on, which are beyond their ability at that phase of
their practice. Sadly, in some groups this happens on
purpose. You cause the person to feel broken and incapable,
which is a very good thing if you want to exert control over other
people. First, you make them think there is something that
their life depends upon achieving if they're going to be worthwhile
human beings, and then you make sure they can't achieve
it. They depend, therefore, for the achievement of the thing
on you, or on your system, your teaching. No other teaching
will do it. If you make almost every natural impulse of
humans being sinful, then you're sure to make all human beings feel
sinful. And then they will need to rely on whoever is the
purveyor of that which relieves them of their sins."
"That's pretty heavy if you actually get into a group in which that's occurring."
 "Oh,
yeah. You also get into groups where the function of the
group is the fantasy that we're all very spiritually advanced and
therefore we never apply any discipline to ourselves, so that we never
discover that we're not."
"So you could say that every
spiritual group is actually attuned to a different length of halter," I
suggested. "For instance, I myself try to do only about
twenty minutes of contemplation a day, and that's it. But
you're doing-I don't know what you're doing, but you're doing a lot!"
"A lot," he agreed, and we both laughed.
"My impression is that the
Tantric tradition of Tibetan Buddhism employs a looser halter than the
more widely recognized monastic and celibate Sutric tradition in
Tibetan Buddhism, at least in terms of the outward observances that you
are required to perform. Am I right?"
"This is an issue of great
debate within Tantric Lineages. In terms of the halter, it's
said that Tantric practice has few fewer external
regulations. But it has internal vows that are extremely
difficult to follow. If your rules are don't have sex, don't
touch money, never drink alcohol-those are monastic rules-they're very
easy to follow. There are 237 of these rules for average
male monastic practice, a few more for females. That's a lot
of rules. But they're all very clear-cut. Do
this. Don't do that. It's easy to
tell. Either you're having sex, or you're not having
sex. Either you're drinking alcohol, or not drinking
alcohol. The Tantric view is fundamentally
different. It has to do not with renunciation, but with
transformation. Certain activities, such as sex, are fine as
long as they're done as transformative Tantric practice. But
that's an internal thing. It's very easy to say that one is
having sex as transformative Tantric practice while just indulging in
grasping, clinging desire."
"So it's very difficult to
judge or evaluate any group. To external appearance, a group
may offer a very loose halter, but it may be very different
internally. There may be a lot more going on under the
surface."
"At least for some people."
"Yes. At least for
some people. For instance, a potential discipline might
require the individual to be at all times an example of joy and
happiness to other people. Well, Jesus Christ!"
"Exactly. Jesus Christ!" Lama Traktung joined me in
laughter. "That could be a very big discipline."
"It could be
huge. I can't do that for any extended period of time, much
less on a daily basis."
"Yes, it's very hard to judge others, let alone ourselves."
"You said on Sunday that we
usually give ourselves a short halter in some things and a long halter
in others, that we have this 'soft' limit that we don't cross in
certain areas of our life, and this 'hard' limit that we cross all the
time. Have you ever felt that you are only a mixture of
extremes, that you're being completely lazy in certain areas and
beating yourself up in others?"
"Yes, sure."
"But then when you come down
to it, you're taking a look at one aspect of your life, and you have
the idea that you're being too lazy, but then again, you start turning
it around and it's hard to tell. An analogy is when you
touch a hot stove, for a moment it feels cold. The hot feels
like cold, and cold feels like hot. Does that make any
sense?"
"Oh, yes. It makes
absolute sense. In our particular lineage, we believe that
this is greatly aided by having a teacher, usually by having more than
one teacher. We have a saying in our tradition that says
'You have one lama in your heart, many lamas in the
world.' This means that you have one teacher who you feel
has gone significantly farther than you on the path and has great
clarity, insight, and ability to understand you and your
situation. And then you also learn from many other teachers
within the lineage and within the world, in general."
I asked him if he could elaborate on this.
"When we get into the whole
lama/guru thing, we hit our culture's main confusion with Eastern
religion, in general. Our culture tends to take the guru
thing to every conceivable extreme, also."
"Western culture?"
"Yeah. We have
trouble with relationships. People want to turn gurus into
Elvis cult romantic sentimental fantasy icons. People want
to just rebel against gurus. People want to turn guru into
Pope, for instance-the all-knowing person-which is generally not how
such relationships have ever functioned, at least within Vajrayana
Buddhism. If you don't know whether you're being lazy or
pushing too hard in an area, you might go to your lama."
"Generally," he continued,
"what a good lama does is, he doesn't tell you 'You're being too lazy,'
for instance. If one is experiencing a lack of clarity on a
particular issue, it is not that one needs an external
answer. If you're simply given an external answer, it
becomes a crutch, and it takes away from you the very important process
of learning how to have the clarity for yourself."
"Exactly." I found
myself voicing my strong agreement with him on this point.
"This brings up the whole
issue: Does one need a guru, or doesn't one need a guru? The
only thing that ever happens in public forums now when we talk about
gurus is that people fudge the question, because it's such a loaded
issue. Nobody will speak directly anymore. We're
in such an anti-guru phase of Western vision right now. A
lot of gurus acted in stupid ways in this country, and still
do. There are also a lot of very authentic gurus who have
taught beautifully and have brought about a great deal of realization
in their students."
"But you agree that one does need a guru."
"Well, Vajrayana Buddhist is
based entirely on this. Tantric Buddhism cannot be practiced
except with a guru."
"From what I understand,
without the guru, what the individual cannot do himself is to separate
the cold from the hot."
"Right. And also
only the guru can give the initial transmissions, or
empowerments. Empowerment is like one candle that's lit
being touched to a candle that's unlit. Each of these
empowerments is connected with a Tantric deity. The guru enters into
the realized mindstream of the deity because he has discovered through
practice over time how to do this. He has become the deity,
in this sense, and can transfer the seed of that realization to the
person receiving
empowerment. Without
having received that empowerment, one can practice creative
visualization, but one will not enter into the mindstream of the
particular Tantric deity being practiced."
"So when you say that you are
the incarnation of a Tibetan lama from the last century, are you
talking about reincarnation the way it is commonly understood, or are
you speaking of having inherited a particular state of
consciousness?"
"Someone who is an
incarnation of a great yogi from the past is called a
tülku. The Dalai Lama is the fourteenth tülku of the
previous Dalai lamas. I'm a tülku of Do Khyentsé Yeshé
Dorjé. Tülku means 'form as the state of consciousness of
liberation', so it is a state of consciousness. Someone who
is a tülku ought to be a particular state of
consciousness. What incarnates is the wisdom consciousness
of the lama, from lifetime to lifetime. The lama that I'm
the incarnation of died in 1860. There are two other
incarnations of that lama currently alive today, as
well. That lama's realization was so great that his
mindstream now abides in the Sambogha Khaya, the pure visionary realm
of awareness, and from that he can emanate as many incarnations as he
wants. So the realization of Do Khyentsé Yeshé Dorjé is
incarnated, in theory, as me."
"So can you take that state of consciousness a step farther?"
"There is a state of
Buddhahood which one cannot go beyond, which is total and complete, and
which there is no state beyond. That state of Buddhahood
cannot be added to. So if the person you were a tülku of had
that state of realization, then there would be nothing more to add to
it. The question is whether the person would live up to what
their last incarnation already had. Do Khyentsé Yeshé Dorjé
was considered a completely enlightened Buddha. The question
is, will I be. By being an incarnation, it gives me a
certain state of consciousness, and supposedly a vastly extra nudge
along the way of realizing complete Buddhahood.
"So it's an opportunity."
"Whether I will manifest the full realization of my previous
incarnation or not depends on my work and my training. But
it means that a certain level of consciousness will be there by nature
of birth, already. Whether all that is even true or not," he
concluded sardonically, "that's a different matter." |
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Date Submitted:
7/17/01 |
Copyright Information:
Copyright © The Spiritual Traveler, 2001 |
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