A Statement by Tulku Sherdor, Executive Director "In early 1998, about a year after I became his translator, His Holiness Orgyen Kusum Lingpa visited for the first time..." Click here to read the full article NEW! Support the continuing work of BWI with a recurring donation To make a recurring donation using your Paypal, click on the […]
A New Year’s Greeting from Tulku Sherdor and BWI Tulku Sherdor, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, and Rinchen Esther at Unity in Diversity Symposium, Sivananda Ashram, Bahamas, December 2011 From Portugal with Love: Life Ransom Ceremony, Estoril, December 201 Wishing all of our extended family, friends, sangha and community the best of health and best in all […]
To make the right choices about where (and in whom) to place our faith and confidence, we must first figure out the reasons why we should cultivate (and not just show) respect for others.
The usual reasons don't apply. We can put aside slavish displays of respect before alpha males, beauty queens or celebrities, and cease presuming that wealth, power or intelligence alone warrant respect. Those conventional forms of "respect" have no value for our spiritual development. In fact, we should adopt, as our starting point, the view that respect that is expected, or demanded, is of no interest or significance at all. I have worked, at times, with people who demanded respect on a daily basis, because they feared (correctly) that they had not truly earned it. I am similarly wary of those with high titles who grow indignant when offered an insufficient show of respect (not because they want to teach others the value of respect, but because their feelings are insulted).
"If there were something we could do to show our gratitude for the great service offered to us, from time immemorial to the present, by horses, cattle and sheep, whose brute labor we have used and whom we have butchered; to cause tranquility and happiness to prevail in our land and region, and the people in it to enjoy harmonious relations; and, above all, to bring about the restoration and further development of peaceful relations among the various monasteries, dharma traditions and religious systems, wouldn't that also help to increase affection and friendship among people? And wouldn't finding a way to create and extend cordial relations among people, from our perspective as Buddhists, propel us further along the path taught by our most compassionate Teacher? If we could take such ideas and actions as a starting point, and embellish them with the superior viewpoint (boddhicitta), living life gently and consciously, wouldn't the world itself, quite naturally, be improved thereby? "
As the colophon to the beautiful aspiration prayer for Lama Sang’s rebirth composed by Hung Kar Dorje Rinpoche states, and as I witnessed, Lama Sang entered his final meditation of this lifetime at 9:00 a.m. on the second day of the Tibetan New Year, in February 2009.
Accordingly, Rinpoche and the other Tulkus, Khenpos and Lamas of our Lung Ngon Monastery have decided that the commemorative service marking the one year anniversary of this sacred display will begin precisely on the second day of Lo Sar this year, which is February 15, 2010. The service will continue for three to five days. The principal sadhana to be practiced in assembly in the Samye Temple is Minling Dorsem, the same practice we did last year during the ‘dung chod,’ leading up to the cremation and revelation of relics.
“Any fool can sail a silent sea.” So said one of my first meditation instructors, Christopher Titmuss, as we learned to sit with and through mental and physicial discomfort in the Burmese Vihar, Bodh Gaya, circa Christmas 1982. And so I write to you in the midst of a seasonal blizzard in the western Catskill mountains of upstate New York.
This storm is but a coda to three months of furious flurries and foul weather. I am referring, of course, to the dismal economy, whose wailings have followed me to China and back, across the country, and to Nepal and back this fall. And now, I fear, the winter of our discontent commences tomorrow, December 21.
How is your path across these perilous seas, through the towering waves, and into the void faring right now? Are you blistered and cold from gripping the cords on your sails tightly, bracing against the indifferent gales?
If you or I die first,
let willows still blow silver by the stream,
let frogs hop on the driveway after rain;
let poppies and lathyrus brightly flower,
and pale sweet lilies by the workroom door;
let hawks rise, apples fall,
and jostaberries still be sour;
let coltsfoot come in the chilly spring.
Let all we saw together still persist,
and let whichever of us sees it know
our seeing's still a sharing,
and all goings are the the turnings
of what never was
except our loving made it so.
---Richard Marshall
Joyous Giving, Fearless DeathWhat would you do if you were told by your doctor "to get your affairs in order, you have only 2 months to live."?
That was what Sandra's doctor told her, when she was admitted to the ER last December. And true to the doctor's words, Sandra passed away in February this year. After her funeral, the family put together a memorial website for Sandra. That was when I received a phone call from Muriel, Sandra's mom, and learned about her death.
Sandra Emerling came to help us with our tax-exempt application in 2004 through Pro Bono Partnership in White Plains, NY. She worked in GE Corporate Tax Dept in Connecticut and had volunteered extensively with Pro Bono Partnership and various other organizations. When putting together her memorial website, everyone was amazed to learn of all these countless charities that she had volunteered with.
