Ringu Tulku to lead Pilgrimage in Sri Lanka in January

If you have been keeping an eye on the Bodhicharya International mainpage, you may be thinking of joining Rinpoche while he  leads a pilgrimage on Sri Lanka in the new year. Please note that the dates have been  changed.  It will now run from 15th - 21st Jan 2015.  Please click here for details. 

Remembering Lama Tsering Paljor

Sad news came today of the death of Lama Tsering Paljor yesterday in Tibet. Lama La was resident monk at the Bodhicharya Meditation Centre in Sikkim, and any who spent time there with him discovered a very special person, an absolute joy and inspiration to be around.
He constructed the fire house on the roof for smoke offerings, and every morning at dawn he'd light the brush and incense, and recite mantras and protector prayers to greet the day. We hardly noticed that he spoke no English and his method of getting to know us came via a really well worn photograph album with photos of himself taken through his lifetime, in Tibet, and during 7 years on retreat in Pharping, Nepal; as a chödpa, long hair,  damaru and kangling in hand.
Somehow, without a translator, he told us the story of his pilgrimage of prostrations from his home town to Lhasa, 1000 miles, it took one year, accompanied by his mother who carried provisions for them both on a donkey.  He laughed as he described the snow seeping underneath his coat collar, the resulting hole in his forehead, the broken hands and knees.  He was twenty years old at the time.
He arrived at BMC while we were in retreat in 2012, having been travelling away in Nepal, he was thin, and a little preoccupied. Never the less his reassuring quiet presence was comforting, and we always knew if he was in because he always sang, with a beautiful voice. He accompanied us on a trip up to Rumtek, and managed to persuade the guards to allow us into 16th Karmapa's rooms; he came with us to receive blessings from Dodrupchen Rinpoche, at an ungodly hour of the morning, insisting that we endlessly circumambulate the prayer wheels with him as we waited to go inside. As we took tea in the tea house together afterwards he was pensive, little did we know that he was, that morning, on the way to hospital and the first investigations into the cause of a difficulty with swallowing food.
Whenever Rinpoche came to teach, Lama La made his tea: we had no idea why Rinpoche refused what came out of the tea flasks we offered, until one day after he'd left, Lama Paljor invited us to his upstairs kitchen and made us the best chai we had ever tasted. He brought out his damaru and kanglings, taught us how to use them: the sounds of the kanglings ripping across the valley at 3 in the afternoon, as Hilary said, a chöd tea party.
A few months later  he was in hospital in Delhi,  Rinpoche had to translate for the doctors,  and as the full extent of his illness was revealed, he was able to relate that Lama La took the news as if going on a picnic. Almost eighteen months have past, and with the help of many dedicated friends who'd been touched by knowing him, Lama La was able to receive proper medical treatment, and return to his family and his homeland, to die.
Lama Tsering Paljor it was such a great honour to have known you, as we will again, for sure.

Requests for sponsored prayers for Lama La have been made to His Holiness Karmapa at Gyuto Monastery, to Tai Situ Pa Rinpoche at Palpung Sherab Ling Monastery, to Sangye Nyenpa, to Khenpo Namdrol Rinpoche at the retreat centre in Pharping, Nepal, to Mindroling Monastery, and at the Karma Kagyu College in Dehradun. His family are sponsoring prayers in Tibet.
Thanks to Ani Karma Wangmo, Erika Van Greunen, Margaret Rinchardson for the updates on sponsored prayers.
If you'd like to add a personal note or tribute, please go to the article on Bodhicharya International Website where you can also leave a message under 'comments'.

Annie Dibble,
Dublin.
This article first published on the Bodhicharya Ireland Blog on October 16th 2014

Rinpoche in Argentina - Webcasts of Teachings

Rinpoche is currently on tour in South America, giving talks in Brazil and Argentina. The talks will be webcast live and for Spanish speakers, the talks are being translated by Ani Damcho and webcast to various destinations across the Spanish speaking world. For more information please see Bodhicharya International and  facebook pages. 

Starting this week : 3 meditation evenings with Donal Creedon

Meditation master, Donal Creedon will teach three Tuesday evenings of  instruction and practice at Dublin Kagyu Samye Dzong beginning this Tuesday 2nd September, 7.30 - 9pm. He will give time for questions and discussion.   Donal has lived 12 years in western enclosed retreat and spent 2 years as a fellow of the Krishnamurti Institute in Varanasi India. Since then he has been invited  to facilitate their retreats using dialogue and inquiry each winter in India, bringing his extensive knowledge of Vajrayana Buddhist practice as well as a broad understanding of the basics of meditation.
We are privileged to have him resident in Ireland for the summer months to be able to avail of his knowledge  combined with a clear understanding of western mind.  Donal continues to be invited to lead long and short term retreats world wide.
Suitable both for beginners and long term meditators.

Also, this weekend 6th September, Drupon Rinpoche,  dynamic retreat master at Venerable Thrangu Rinpoche's retreat centre in Nepal will be teaching at KSD beginning 2pm on Saturday afternoon and running through till Sunday. Khenpo Lhabu teaches in Tibetan and Kunga, his attendant monk from Samye Ling will translate, it promises to be a very good weekend. All details of both events can be found on KSD website.

http://donalcreedon.org/

Bodhicharya Retreat with Donal Creedon at An Tobar, Co. Meath, 2nd - 9th August

 There were sixteen of us on what has become the annual week’s retreat at An Tobar, home to the Spiritan community in the lush green Meath countryside. Led by Dónal Creedon, it was again an opportunity to recharge the spiritual batteries and focus undistractedly on the working of our minds. Dónal’s method is both extremely simple and inevitably difficult to put into practice: we were invited, whether in the improvised shrine room where we had our meditation sessions, or informally in ‘post-meditation’, simply to be present, to be conscious of the workings of our minds, whether resting or in action, whether emotionally charged and full of runaway thoughts, or resting, in order to examine the ‘View’, ‘the way things really are’.  ‘Right View’ is of crucial importance, as Dónal emphasised in his introduction to the retreat, as it informs and underlies everything we do. Some Views lead to liberation from dukha, from the cycle of birth and death, others don’t. Time and again Dónal brought us back to the simple contemplation, without bitterness or desire to change things, of the way things are, of what is, in the present moment. Faithful to the Mahamudra/Dzogchen tradition, everything can be seen as meditation. The pain or distress that I’m experiencing is the meditation, and we should abandon all notions of ‘the way things ought to be’.

It is difficult to give a true account of a retreat such as this on the level of concepts, since we were all the time striving to go beyond concept and the vehicle of concept, language itself, or rather, to understand their insubstantiality. How is it possible, with language, to go beyond language? ‘Knowing’ takes on a completely different aspect when viewed in this way, paradoxically becoming ‘unknowing’.

There are techniques, in the Mahamudra in particular, which allow the meditator little by little to perceive the nature of mind, the ‘wisdom mind’ that is empty but cognisant.  Our physical being has a role to play here: The Mahamudra teaches that the body is to be stable like a mountain, the breath free like the wind, and the mind free like space; focusing on the breath, the instructions tell us to ‘rest naturally’ with the breath, not seeking anything, and with no expectation of a result. When thoughts or emotions arise, we simply stay with them, without judgement or preference, without contrivance or fabricating. And we ask ourselves ‘What does it mean to say the mind is resting? What happens when the mind is resting?’ This lucid awareness preludes any grasping at the contents of the mind, or aversion towards what we experience, and allows us to gain confidence in the wisdom mind possessed by all beings.

This flowering of meditation, in the deep sense of the term, is very much more than a technique, however. By opening ourselves to the vastness of what is, we can glimpse the mystery of being itself, as something sacred.

Every aspect of the retreat led to this same point: the silence that was observed from rising until lunch-time; the steady rhythm of the meditation sessions as they succeeded one another, either on the cushion or in walking meditation beside the lake or through the magnificent woods with their abundance of mature trees and wildlife; the conviviality of mealtimes when Colette, our admirable cook, tempted our palates with an endless variety of dishes; the supportive presence of the other retreatants on a common quest... The late afternoon session was given over to ‘Dialogue’, in which we examined a question (during these days, turning around the experience of ‘fear’), the dialogue arising out of the silence and building on it, again not looking for solutions or a conclusion, but emphasising the quality of listening. And as dusk fell, we did Chenrezig practice on some evenings, in a pared-down form that Dónal has made his own, dedicating it to specific people whom we knew to be in particularly acute suffering. On other evenings we did ‘metta’ practice, instituted by the Buddha himself to undermine fear by cultivating the wish that all beings – including oneself – be happy and free from fear. So there was no question of our practice becoming introverted and self-serving. The View has to be vast, taking in all suffering beings, or it is not the View.

An exceptional week, during which we had the privilege of benefitting from Dónal’s lifetime experience of retreat, his rigour and his compassion. Profound thanks to you, Dónal, and thanks too to all who made the experience possible.

Pat Little

17 August 2014

Behind the camera : Paul O'Connor
Magician in the kitchen : Colette Mullanney

Pat has also written a very good review of the annual Bodhicharya Summercamp held in July 2014 at Casa da Torre, Nr. Braga, Portugal for Many Roads,  the Bodhicharya International e-magazine .

Meditation events

This week sees the start of a one week Bodhicharya retreat with Donal Creedon at An Tobar, near Navan.   Following last year's success in the Bodhicharya Retreat Centre in Sikkim, a group of sixteen people will come together again with Donal  for the week from Saturday 2nd - Saturday 9th August with regular periods of silent sitting, debate and reflection.  With Rinpoche's blessing we hope this will become an annual Bodhicharya event.

This weekend also, there will be a meditation flashmob event with Plum Village Monastics, in the centre of Merrion Square Park, Sunday 3rd August at 3 pm (rain or shine).  It is organised by the 'Wake Up' mindfulness group, all are welcome. 

SUMMERCAMP 2014 WITH RINGU TULKU RINPOCHE

Start: 14/07/2014 at 18:00 

End: 20/07/2014 at 14:00

Location: Casa da Torre – Centro de Retiros | Soutelo – Vila Verde – Braga | PORTUGAL 

Rinpoche will continue his teaching on «Mahamudra: The Moonlight – Quintessence of Mind and Meditation» started last year, composed by Dakpo Tashi Namgyal (1512-1587), a brilliant scholar and accomplished meditator of the Kagyu tradition.

THE MAIN VENUE: ROOMS WITH SHOWER AND TOILETS | 

SHEETS AND TOWELS PROVIDED | WIRELESS ACCESS.

440 € per person – single room with private toilets and showers
390 € per person – double room (twin beds) with private toilets and showers

The summercamp registration website page is now closed but if you are still thinking of coming along, please send an email to book a place.

As usual we will be celebrating Rinpoche's birthday during the week, so if you aren't able to attend, you can join him in spirit and send him a postcard with a birthday message to Ringu Tulku Rinpoche c/o Tsering Paldron,  Casa da Torre, 4730-570 Soutelo, Vila Verde,  Portugal.