On merit, good fortune and the origins of the Tourné stupa.
Buddhist texts and teachings often speak of merit. Merit is made, often by acts of kindness and generosity.
All spiritual and religious practice have a measure of superstition: people are superstitious. Often we pray through fear – to prevent misfortune and to ensure good luck.
When our life circumstances are difficult, it is natural that we will seek remedies to ease the difficulties.
If we practice martial arts, a new technique can only be verified through contact. If the technique is good, the practitioner adept, he or she will be successful, will overcome an opponent. The consummate taoist martial artist has site ‘other worlds’ and brought back to this world a new technique. Dong Haichuan famously brought back ba gua from another realm through the intercession of taoist monks.
When we build a stupa, we are not practicing martial arts, we are practicing the ultimate art of complete realisation. It is not entering another world, it is seeing the world we are in as an image of another world that we are already in. We enter one without leaving the other. Seeing, entering the world we are in – or awakening. There we meet other beings who have also entered. We encounter terms like ‘gone beyond’ ‘the womb of the buddhas’ and so on. Don Juan used ‘darting past the eye of the eagle’. Gurdjieff used awakening from sleep. Gone beyond in Sanskrit also translates as come back. Come and go. Gone and returned.
Much is spoken of “a beyond”. Conscious dreamers know it. They can enter worlds beyond ordinary perception where there is no limit to what can be encountered or undertaken – as long as the dreamer has enough energy.
Many conscious dreamers face the difficulty of “bridging” their dreams – bringing it into ordinary reality. If the dream is prophetic, if it indicates a place or a task to undertake, the conscious dreamer has to have the skill to bring that into non dreaming, to ordinary reality. Often powerful conscious dreamers are overwhelmed by the message they received. In the past, in Avalon for example according to the legend, the priestesses who were the best dreamers would be accompanied in daily life by supporters who would help the dream come to reality.
Tulshuk Lingpa was a famous ‘crazy’ treasure finder. He received his indications from beyond. His acolytes recognised the difficulties of bringing the beyond into the current. There was one occasion when he had a vision of where a terma [hidden teaching] was to be found – in the walls of a monastery. His acolytes were terrified, it seemed to them Tulshuk Lingpa just wanted to break down the walls. At the axiomatic moment he took a chisel and a hammer to the wall outside, behind the altar, and the the wall was broken, at that moment there was complete precision. According to his acolytes a vortex opened in the wall and Tulshuk Lingpa pulled out a fragment of a terma with which he then sparkled for several days until it was revealed by him.
What was revealed? When was it revealed? In the vision? In the moment the vortex appeared? When the fragment was plucked from the wall? When he was meditating on the fragment? When he wrote it out?
We are working toward awakening. There are magical or unquantifiable aspects yet the need for precision and ordinary clarity remain. In the Taoist tradition, a mystic sitting for decades on the mountain must also be able to return to the world: hence the often quoted term “embrace the tiger, return to mountain”. Dong Haichuan embraced the tiger, got seriously wounded in battle, returned to the mountain and then returned to teach what he had learnt.
In the toltec group tradition, the different individuals that make up the group are selected according to their propensities. This was sometimes referred to in the stories around don Juan as the sorcerer’s party, his or her group.
There is no absolute need for selection of members. It is a luxury we cannot afford! It was specified in don Juan’s tradition as a means of underlining the needs for precision and also because there was sufficient personal power to attract the necessary ingredients. For us, now, when a group assembles as this one has, it does so for diverse reasons. This group’s foundation has been of long duration. Yet we cannot count just on that. Even foundations need to be regularly inspected and maintained.
When the mystic is lost in the bridge between worlds he or she looks towards the ordinary world and looks for guidance there. When we are lost in the ordinary world, we look to the mystics to offer guidance and support.
When we use a model like a stupa, a symbol in itself of this enlightened mind that perceives the multi layered reality, there are many significant stages. Each stage is significant really.
Preparing the group of practice, Before 24: what did that imply? It was for most of us the work with the Clarifying light. And then that developed into the possibility of building a water prayer wheel. We could no longer guarantee the land that was intended for the wheel, so we moved on to the possibility of a stupa.
I cannot follow my internal thread now, all I know is that I was guided not only by what I felt but also and perhaps most importantly by what is practical. Realistic. A notion arose, it persisted, it grows into form.
I first encountered the notion of building a stupa here at Tourné in about 2009. Perhaps before, I don’t know for sure. It is was like this. I was clearing some land where there are old ruins, some of which date back to the 9th century when there was a Catalan forge opposite the main house at Tourné. I came across a pyramid shaped stone. It was an agglomerate – partly one large stone with other stones joined with lime to make the shape. It had signs that it had once been functional for a purpose I could not discern.
I can’t say I had a revelation like the brahmin who invited the buddha to lunch, but the notion ‘I must build a stupa’ did appear immediately in my mind. It is a stone, it communicated a stupa to me. Did I know what a stupa really represented? What it meant? Almost certainly not. I am not sure I had any previous knowledge of a stupa.
That was around the time that Lama Lena began to teach here. Before she came, in San Francisco, I had a short private meeting with Wangdor Rinpoche, her teacher. We could not communicate verbally because we did not have common language.
Yet in that moment we met one to one something was undoubtedly hidden in my mind. I see it now, feel it now. It is no remarkable revelation. My memory is just of Old Wangdor looking at me directly. And a sense of knowing that I do not know what is being communicated but I know something is being communicated. I had experienced that with Khyongla Rinpoche in London in 1984. I had no idea then, I have confected some ideas since. Confected and perfected inverse at least. Sometimes in moving forms, mostly with t smile that reflects the simplest expression of truth.
This is the kind of knowing not knowing that needs to be bridged. Acting as if the knowing is known, knowing there is a not knowing associated with it. And appearing to make it plausible. This is an eccentric expression. Tulshuk Lingpa lived in a society where eccentric behaviour in a mystic was fully accepted. We are not working to eradicate eccentric behaviour, we are working to bring that eccentric energy into workable and precise form.
Look at how the builders of the stupa have worked, all of those present at the meetings here. None of us has any experience of building or designing a stupa yet between us, in collective and clear exchange we have managed to accompany the growth of the stupa. I say accompany its growth because there is a part of the stupa history where stupas are self arising, they appear magically. A part of our stupa story is that it is just magically appearing. We don’t always see that because we need to be focused on the practical reality. It is the practical reality that currently, in this stage of the world cycle, has the most influence.
There is no need to know! All these different rivers flow into the same stream, to the ocean. Our collective consciousnesses working on this pile of stones, these ruins, the ruins of our collective memories and sufferings and challenges past and to come, allowing them to produce harmonious energy, beautiful energy, a reflection inner most desire to be happy, to support the happiness of others even in the knowledge of how difficult that is.
From Wangdor Rinpoche, through Jan Owen and Lama Lena came the relics of Gotama. How much more do we need? Whatever we need, it is necessary to be clearly expressed, calculated, measured.
Let the magic look after itself. We have form in order to attend to form.
