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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
Ram Chatlani
