The Dance of 17 Lives

It was a long day I had with my friend Kezang whom I was meeting after one whole year. After spending the whole day with her in Thimphu town, she took me to Jigme Dorji Wangchuk Public Library. She previously had a membership there and told me about the availability of lots of books. I was then motivated to have a membership there. The first book I issued for myself was “The Dance of 17 Lives” by Mick Brown. I couldn’t have had a better start than a book on His Holiness Gyalwang Karmapa.

This book was a complete package of what I had been searching and wanting to know about His Holiness. It firstly traced its history dating back to the thirteenth century with the installation of the first Karmapa Duesum Khyenpa. It gave a small account of the origination of the Karmapa Lineage in Tibet. Prince Siddhartha, after attaining enlightenment at Bodhgaya, turned the wheel of dharma three times: Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana. It was the Tantric Buddhist Master Guru Padmasambhava in the eighth century who introduced Buddhism in Tibet with the first monastery established at Samye Ling. Since then a number of Tibetan masters and yogis made their way to the enlightenment and among them were the great Marpa and Milerapa who received the teachings of Mahamudra from the great Indian yogi Naropa who in turn received from Tilopa. Milerapa then transmitted the teachings to Gampopa who then set the transmission to the first Karmapa followed by subsequent reincarnations. The great lineage of Karma Kagyu is known as the golden rosary which is the oldest Buddhist lineage in Tibet.

The 1st Karmapa as depicted in Thangka

The first Karmapa, Duesum Khyenpa was born in 1110 AD in Kham and his birth was prophesized 1600 years earlier by shakyamuni Buddha. He founded the Tshurphu Monastery which became the seat of all subsequent Karmapas. During the time of his death, he entrusted his books, relics and Tshurphu monastery to his most trustworthy disciple along with a letter predicting the circumstances of his rebirth, declaring the coming of Karmapas in the future. And as indicated in the letter, the second Karmapa was found named Karma Pakshi. All of the Karmapas were extraordinary in many ways and made lots of contributions for the spread of Karma Kagyu.

The heartsons (Thuksey) of the Karmapas:

1.       Shamar Rinpoche

2.       Tai Situ Rinpoche

3.       Gyaltshab Rinpoche

4.       Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche

The author then drives the reader’s attention to the 16^th Karmapa Rangjung Rigpe Dorje (1923-1981) who was the spiritual leader of the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism from his enthronement in 1931 until his death. When Chairman Mao’s People Liberation Army of China invaded Tibet and posed  danger to the Tibetan Buddhism, the 14^th Dalai Lama and the 16^th Karmapa along with thousands of Tibetans flee Tibet for exile in India in 1959. The 16^th Karmapa then resided at Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim. Rumtek was a Karma Kagyu monastery founded by the 9^th Karmapa Wangchuk Dorje some 400 years before the arrival of the 16^th Karmapa who took up the permanent residence.

The 16th Karmapa Rangjung Rigpe Dorje

With the death of the 16^th Karmapa in 1981 in Chicago, the four heartsons took up the responsibility of looking after the school until the next Karmapa was found. It was in 1992, when Apo Gaga born to Loga and Dondrub in the year 1985 was recognized and taken to Tshurphu Monastery for the enthronement as the 17^th Karmapa. He was accepted by both the Chinese Government and the Dalai Lama (Tibetan exile government) and was given the name Ogyen Trinley Dorje.

The young 17th Karmapa

Though His Holiness Ogyen Trinley Dorje was supported by the Chinese official, he met with lots of restrictions especially for him to travel to India to meet his heartsons so that he could receive the necessary oral transmission of the age old tradition in the Karmapa lineage. The matter became worse when the heartsons were not allowed to visit Tibet by the Chinese officials. So, the matter settled on planning an escape from Tibet towards the end of 1999, when he was only 14 years old. The escape was a difficult and risky one but the blessings of His Holiness made it much more bearable for the escape party.

Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje

As the escape party reached Dharamsala in 2000 January, Dalai Lama received and gave him the residence at the Gyuto monastery at Dharamsala. Controversies surrounded on many grounds initially when he reached India but the support from His Holiness Dalai Lama and the heartsons, the Indian government gave him his refugee status in 2001. His Holiness the 17^th Karmapa then presided over a number of  the Kagyu Menlom Chenmo and even joined Dalai Lama during the Kalachakra at Bodhgaya.

HH Karmapa with HH Dalai Lama

After reading this incredible story of His Holiness, there is no doubt that me as a Buddhist have been drawn more closer to His Holiness and his teachings. Long Live His Holiness and Karmapa Chenno!!

The Buddha and His Teachings

Here is a short review on the book Old paths white clouds authored by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Nanh.

If ever asked anyone, “How about leading a life like Buddha’s life?” We immediately know that we cannot as we feel that it will be very difficult, in fact near to impossible. But in the actual sense, there is no simple lifestyle than Buddha’s lifestyle.

Buddha was not born as an enlightened one. He was born as a prince who naturally had so many responsibilities and day by day the responsibilities were swelling, sinking him deeper into the worldly human traps of impermanent happiness. But he realized the nature of happiness which was only going to breed sufferings, and renounced all of his royalty life. So Buddha’s life was complicated at first as an heir to the throne but he made it simple and abandoned everything.

 All he had with him was compassion and loving kindness to every living being. He was in search of his answers but he got his answers only when he abandoned his anger, greed, hatred, jealousy, arrogance, doubt and fear. This was his way: he didn’t hate anyone, he loved every one. He didn’t lie, he spoke only the truth. He abandoned his palace and lived in simple huts or under trees. He ate what he got from begging. He just imparted people to be compassionate with their mind in full awareness and concentration.

Buddha and the Sangha

This book has nourished my mind in the direction of mindfulness and awareness about so many things which I have been so much ignorant and taking it for granted. I am not claiming myself to be like Buddha. I just want to do what I can all do to fit into the image of the follower of Buddha.

This book gave me a clear account on the religious sites in present day Bodhgaya especially the Mahabodhi tree along with Mahabodhi temple, Sarnath, Nalanda, Kushinagar and yes the most important one is the Lumbini in Nepal where he was born.  The book even told me about his great ten disciples:

Buddha and his ten great disciples in SriLanka

• 1       Shariputra
• 2      Monggallana
•  3     Maha Kassapa
• 4     Subhuti
• 5     Purna Maitrayani-Putra
• 6     Katyayana
• 7      Anuruddha
• 8     Upali
• 9     Rahula
• 10   Ananda
• 
  

On top of this lots of chapters were talking about the conscious breathing and meditation in order to tame our monkey mind. The four noble truths and the noble eight fold path were also highlighted deeply.  There are lots of other incidents explained in detail that happened in the life of Lord Buddha and I must say that this book is a must-read one for a Buddhist or anyone who is in search of truth and liberation.

PS: Thank you Leki Dorji for sharing this book of yours. I cannot thank you enough!!

The Circle of Karma by Kunzang Choden

I read lots of book reviews on this novel and had already made up my mind to read it one day. I was amazed to see that my roommate had the book with her. I waited for her to complete it but sadly our winter vacation started before she could complete, so I decided to read it when I reach back. Upon reaching back, I was involved into other books and didn’t get time to read this one. And after our losar celebration this year, I grabbed this book but for around a week I was stuck on the first few pages of the novel.

The right time flowed after the celebration of King’s Birthday and I found myself completely soaked into the beautiful story Aum Kunzang had laid in it. Firstly it drew a clear picture of a typical life of a girl in the Bhutanese village in the olden days probably 1940s or 1950s: a life where the physical work was mandatory irrespective of the gender of the individual, a time where the women gave birth to dozens of children but had only few surviving to call them parents.

The next thing I learnt is the struggle woman had been facing since ancient times especially delivering fatherless child and the society reacting like the growling tigers, gossiping and cursing the woman as if she has committed a great sin by loving a coward man. My heart ached when Tsomo, the main character in the story faces the betrayal of her husband with her own sister. It was not enough there as her second husband also leave her for another woman later on. It is a dirty culture most of the men follow to be unhappy with their wives after certain years of marriage. 

We all function through a machine called karma and no one can ever avoid this. Tsomo faces her Karma of abandoning her family and leading a lonely life followed by her pilgrimage to all the important Buddhist sites in India and Nepal. She does face lots of obstacles but solutions were also not hard to find. Her lives in Kalimpong, Dehradun,  Mussorie and Delhi where she meets with so many people from various regions and her beautiful bonding with them was really tempting me to try that though I don’t think I will be able to do it. The most important person she had met was the Tibetan Rinpoche in Dehradun who had a great hand in getting rid of her illness which she carried for years and at the later part, ordained her as a nun for the rest of her life, naming Tsomo as Ani Samphela. How clever was the Karma that though she had been married twice and had been pregnant once, she never had a child gearing her up to be a nun for the rest of her life with the free wings to fly over any religious destination she wished for? Aum Kunzang successfully delivered a strong message at the end of the novel: Do good to be blessed with a good Karma.

While in school, there was a novel:  Dawa, a story of a stray dog in Bhutan by the same author. The novel was part of the Class nine English curriculum containing a fascinating story of a stray dog that was orphaned at the very early days of his delivery whereby he gives himself an identity in their dog community. He wisely names himself as Dawa by looking at the moon on a full moon night. Dawa had the power to understand all the human languages. Later he gets infected with mange during one of his mating seasons but luckily he gets the information about the Gelong Ma Pelmo’s cave at the Thowadrak in Bumthang where she is believed to have cured herself from the contagious leprosy through meditation. Dawa then ventures onto central Bhutan in search of the cave so that he can get rid of his mange. It was a heart-touching story where he finally manage to get rid of the illness. The author made her readers spot lots of human cruelties to stray dogs and highlighted animal innocence simultaneously which is perhaps the ultimate reality.