AN INCARNATE
ABBOT EXPLAINS

Asked about reincarnation, Sri Bhagavan remarked,
"See how a tree grows again when its branches are cut off. So
long as the life source is not destroyed it will grow. Similarly,
latent potentialities withdraw into the heart at death but do
not perish. That is how beings are reborn."

Here is an instance taken from a speech by Trungpa
Trulku Rinpoche given at Roselaleham.

AFTER THE DEATH of the previous Abbot of Surmang,
my monastery, the monks sent a deputation to His
Holiness Gyalwa Karmapa, the head of our particular school of
Tibetan Buddhism. They asked him whether he could tell them
where their Abbot had taken birth again, so that they could
bring him back among them. Gyalwa Karmapa spent several
days in meditation, and finally gave them the answer that their
Abbot was born as a young child living in the village of Geje, in
a house facing south and that the family had two children and a
brown dog. After some difficulty the monks found the house
and the young child, who was myself.

I am told that as the monks came in and presented me
with the traditional white scarf, I behaved in exactly the right
manner, although I had never been taught how. Also that I
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recognised various objects that had been the possessions of my
predecessor, shown to me among others of the same kind.

Eventually they were convinced that I was the eleventh Abbot
Trungpa and they brought me back to Surmang.

Shortly after that I was formally enthroned as Abbot,
although of course, all my duties were performed by an elder
monk acting as regent. I was put into the charge of a tutor, and
continued to see my parents from time to time. I began learning
about religion from my tutor, who told me about the life of
Gautama the Buddha and about his teachings. At the age of
eight I began my first simple meditation.

From then on I learned more and more about the various
meditations of our school. I received instruction from two of
the great Gurus or Teachers of Eastern Tibet. One of them,
Chentse Rinpoche, is now in India and is still my Guru.

Sometimes I lived in the monastery and sometimes away from
it, in retreat. Every monk of our school spends several years in
solitary meditation during that time, living, sleeping and eating
in one small room. Meditation is really the heart of a monk's
life, for in it he discovers and experiences the actual truth of the
teachings he has before known only intellectually. I do not want
to speak about the particular techniques of meditation. There
are many and they are adapted to suit the needs of all kinds of
individuals. I want rather to speak about the reasons for
meditation and its essence, for meditation is not necessarily a
matter of sitting cross-legged and motionless for long periods
of time, it is something that may be practised, consciously or
unconsciously by anyone at any time.

You will be able to draw parallels to what I shall say both
from the beliefs and practices of other religions and from your
own experiences. We are all human beings and our existence
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presents similar problems and similar possibilities. As Milarepa,
the great sage and poet of Tibet, sang from the top of mountains,
`I am the goal of every great meditator, I am the meeting place
of the faithful, I am the coil of birth, death and decay.'

To start at the beginning - each one of us may be struck at
one time or another by the inadequacy of our way of experiencing
the world. We feel that something is missing, that our attempts to
explain and to organise our lives and to provide ourselves with
an emotional security are doomed to failure and are indeed in
themselves contradictory to the nature of things. Also that in our
simply fulfilling our own desires we are cheating the Universe.

Meditation is the attempt to remove those aspects of our
natures in which our awareness of life is limited and confined,
and experience a new depth. Upon what does our everyday
picture of the world depend? It depends not upon things
themselves but on our reactions to them. We project outwards
on things our own hopes and prejudices, and order our separate
world accordingly. Meditation is a gradual loss of these private
worlds, and realisation that our true natures lie hidden in the
heart of the Universe.

It is one of the fundamental teachings of Buddhism that
things in themselves are without substance. They are all, like
flowers, springing up suddenly out of nothingness and again
withering. The world of things, or the appearance of things, is a
kind of puppet show, a masquerade. In itself it possesses a kind
of demonic energy, but it can give no lasting satisfaction to the
heart. In meditation we begin to cross the threshold between
appearance and reality.

Many of us will have thought like this, but will also have
experienced how difficult this threshold is to cross. All
unconsciously, the world of appearances exercises a certain
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fascination. Everything in its appearances releases a small charge
of energy, and our ignorant minds, feeling dissatisfaction with
their existing states, leap to swallow this charge. Thereafter, the
imprint of the object remains fixed in the memory. If the
experience is in some way pleasurable, the mind desires a
repetition of it. If it is unpleasant, the mind will reject any
repetition of it, and a negative force is set up.

Meditation consists of seeing the world for precisely what it is.

This can be done only when one remains quite unaffected by hatred
or desire. One observes dispassionately one's reactions to things, and
gradually the passions of greed and hatred are driven out of one's
system. Instead of reaching out for one thing after another, one
becomes calmer and more self-possessed. One uses the strength thus
released to gradually eliminate distracted and discursive thoughts as
they arise, and brings oneself into a state of clear, one-pointed
awareness. One begins to experience greater freedom and room to
move about. One no longer heeds one's hopes and fears, and lets go
the burden of them. Becoming nothing, one becomes everything
and suddenly it may happen that one is left for a moment still. There
is before one, through one and around one infinite space - the reality
flowing unobstructed. As Milarepa says:

`As happy as the current of a great river,
So is the sage who enjoys the stream of thought.'

This is possible for everyone, but clearly it requires certain
qualities in us, and it requires time to come to fruition.

We need first of all to have clearly in our minds what we
are trying to do. Our basic assumptions influence us far more
than we realise and we must become thoroughly steeped in the
ideas and the attitudes of the spiritual life before we can begin. I
had to memorise a large portion of our scriptures and repeat
them by heart to my tutor.

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As well as study, we need determination and integrity. Each
one stands before the threshold of eternity, alone with himself.

He cannot rely on any created thing. Each one of us can forge
a true vessel only out of himself; others may help us but in the
end it is we alone who are responsible. Gradually we have to
realise the agony of our mistakes, our failure to understand and
we have to have the courage to come out of prison.

Beyond this solitude, one thing else is needed. Just as
everything in the world of appearance releases a charge of energy,
so also does everything in eternity. That energy, indeed, is far
stronger because it has been purified of the stain of greed, hatred
and material illusion. The thought is not a thought of anything,
it is a thought which in itself is pure energy, passing into and
through everything unobstructed. So when we purify our minds,
a force is built up from which each one of us can draw and in
the light of which, each one can examine himself. In the
monasteries and hermitages of Tibet I could feel this strength
in operation. It was something of which we were all part. If I
may be allowed to say so, I feel this atmosphere lacking in the
cities and even in many churches of this country. I hope very
much that during our time here together, we may join in making
a spirit that one may call new and some may call old but which
in itself abides forever.

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