Re: Former teacher at Boulder's Shambhala accused of sexuall
Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2019 1:35 am
Part 2 of 2
First Question: 00:35:44
Thank you so much. Acharya very touching. Talk. My question is about, uh, I think when you were talking about the qualities that transcend culture, I think the last one you might’ve mentioned was lineage. I’m wondering if you could expand on that and talk about more why lineage transcends culture.
Judith S-B: 00:36:11
In my understanding of Buddha Dharma as a non theistic religion, the transmission of the teacher is essential and Buddhism is just a bunch of books if we do not rely on the living transmission from generation to generation from the teacher. So that transmission moment is not about the personality of the teacher but about the teachings and about the teachers’ commitment to pass these teachings on. And what I see in the Sakyong is his incredible dedication to passing on the teachings of his father from the terma lineage and to making sure that these teachings are practiced and realized. So that that transcends, it’s tricky about what form it may take, but that transcends culture when it comes to Buddhism. Buddhism is not going to become the kind of tradition or religion where there are no teachers and there’s no lineage. You don’t have any Buddhadharma without lineage. Does that answer your question? Very much so, thank you.
Second Question: 00:37:41
Thank you Judith. I’ll try and articulate my question? Um, it’s difficult because the quote you just read from, Thrangu Rinpoche, gets to the core puzzle I’ve been experiencing ever since the news first came out, um, which is Thrangu Rinpoche said as long as you rely on the purity of the Dharma as transmitted by the teacher, and that’s it. And that makes sense to me. And so personally I’m, having been around for awhile. I, I do have a great deal of confidence in the purity of the diamond itself and that is completely unshaken, at the same time when such relative conduct, such human conduct, um, occurs that, that has been said about what happened in the Sakyong, and various women and so forth. Um, it undermines that sense of trust in the purity of what has been transmitted on a more relative level. And so
Judith S-B: 00:38:55
I don’t, I can’t draw a line between those things
Second Question: 00:38:55
I can’t either.
Judith S-B: 00:39:01
This is why there are ups and downs for me, of trying to identify what’s reliable and what’s not is it feels to me the main thing I’m working with. And um, so, um, I can’t really answer your question. I’m just saying that this particular teaching has been helpful for me to begin to really contemplate. This brings up the questioning doubt for like going more deeply. So as I’m doing my practices and reading the texts of the sock young at all of that, I have this question. Okay. What’s culturally, it’s very specific. That might be provisional and what might be ultimate about this, what might be the literal words, what might be the meaning? So I’m giving you the categories. How we apply the categories is really, that’s for me the path and all of this.
Second Question: 00:40:01
Thank you. I wasn’t looking for fit definitive answer from you particularly. It was more like I just wanted to articulate the puzzle I’m working with. I’m sure people can identify with and you know, I, I think as a community it’s a very useful and interesting contemplation and for one is going in this community for over 40 years, you know, it’s really good. I feel it’s very healthy that I’m thrown back on myself yet again to think about what are we doing, what is pure here, what is bullshit, you know…
Judith S-B: 00:40:42
What’s bull shit in me? What’s bullshit? And you know, I came a week ago from the Garchen, which was a two week retreat with a 240 people from all over the world who are going through their own version of this journey. And what was remarkable to me about the Garchen was the incredible. It was rough, especially the first four days. Very rough. But the depth of practice, the quality of authenticity, the genuineness of people with each other, the honest, the no-bullshit quality. And the incredible kindness was incredibly moving to me. And um, I feel like this is what we mean by path, you know, um, that when we get too solid and come to, to sort of quick a position about things, our practice dies on the vine right there. So I think there’s this quality of nakedness is what we’ve learned about practice and individually I think we’re going through that. And I think as a community as well, so there are signs of incredible health along with the incredible heartbreak and wondering what is going to happen.
Third Question: 00:42:47
I’m in [inaudible] for the Level Two this weekend, so considering doubt and doubtlessless is very apt. Perfect timing and in preparing for that. I was reading Sacred World by Jeremy and Karen Hayward and just reminded about the importance of space in my mind and practice and that there’s no difference between the space out here in the space in here and um, and that’s what I have been missing when I get on Facebook. That’s what I am missing. And in other conversations where there’s that desire to come to a conclusion and solidify things. Um, so I was just very refreshed and I’m appreciative of coming across a reminder of that teaching. Um, and I think somehow related, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to make the link, but when you were talking about prajna I think one of the things that’s been tricky and painful for me or I’ve been struggling with is that when individuals who are encountering a feeling of “This doesn’t feel good the way I’m being treated in any situation doesn’t feel good” and they go and they talk to other people, especially senior teachers or leaders about that. And that person’s prajna is actually there. They’re encouraged in some way just I think perhaps out of our own ignorance to sidestep there their own prajna, to not see clearly what’s going on. And I guess it, it sounds like when people talk about being silenced in terms of talking about their experiences that feels like, and I don’t mean dramatizing our experiences too much or you know, making accusations and allegations in terms of talking about our experience. But someone just saying, “I’m really confused about what happened here. And then they’re somehow their prajna isn’t recognized. You kind of get what I’m like, their ability to see that there’s something wrong here was not acknowledged. And, and, and I, I think that a lot of what people have been upset about is that, that seems to have been a systemic in our culture.
Judith S-B: 00:45:16
I think that for whatever reason, we became some kind of monoculture of a particular party line at times about things maybe because we individually we’re afraid of our own doubt. I don’t know. I do feel that what’s going on is our community’s Karma that we need to work with and that we’re part of a larger society where it’s the larger society’s Karma as well and it needs to be worked with and hopefully we can can do this. it’s work that really needs to happen and as heartbroken as I am, I don’t regret that the conversations and the whole situation has opened up. I do feel that as a Dharma practitioner, there’s a tremendous truth of impermanence and, um, the impermanence of our Shambhala systems may be very good news.
Fourth Question: 00:46:55
So if we’re looking at our karma and the lineage, how do we open up a space to practice understanding, the lineage, the behaviors of the Regent, behaviors of the Trungpa Rinpoche, and the context of the Sakyong. How do we make space for all of that if we’re really looking at this and trying to heal and trying to move forward. We have a history of practices and behaviors that for some reason I’ve just been sort of, it’s there but it’s not there. So how do we open up space for that?
Judith S-B: 00:47:28
That’s what this is. I think this series of “Conversations that Matter” have been opening up a lot of this and we were on a journey that’s going to take a while to unpack this, to try to understand it, to identify what all this is about and it’s, it’s challenging for us individually as challenging for us as a community. But we’re at the very beginning of this process. This journey that we’re on is less than six weeks old. And of course there were the, there were things coming out before, but this whole kind of a meltdown that we’re experiencing as a community is still in its early days and the wonderful thing is rather than turning us against each other, we are talking. And it’s hard to know it’s too soon in the process to know where these conversations will go and there are very deep feelings about it all, pro and con and all of that. So I hope that we can keep the openness of the space to hold diverse points of view while we go through this. Because there is a fundamental health in all of this, if we can really hold together in the journey and really listen to each other and not come to premature conclusions about it all. I appreciate your raising the question.
Kathleen Moore: 00:47:28
My question pertains not the Sakyong situation but to the community and so I’m not sure if my timing is right in terms of how you’re wanting the questions to go. And so I just wanted to check in with you.
Judith S-B: 00:49:59
I hadn’t seen any more hands. Were there anymore questions or comments about what I specifically said? There’s one in the front row. Could we take this question and then we’ll come back to you?
Kathleen Moore: 00:50:10
That’s why I’m asking.
Judith S-B: 00:50:12
Okay. Thank you very much for checking in.
Sixth Question: 00:50:24
Thank you so much for your teachings. I have a question about Four Reliances. I have a question about The Four Alliances. It seems like one of the reasons that we have these teachings is because it’s so easy to get stuck on the first one and I’m thinking about the fourth one in particular and I’m wondering if you could speak more. I think conceptuality can be so tricky and so sneaky and nefarious and easy to mistake for experience and so I’m wondering if you could speak more to like how we can identify operating from a place of our nondual wisdom experience instead of conceptuality.
Judith S-B: 00:51:13
Well, and as we know Buddhist tradition particularly in Tibet is just full of beautiful concepts and concepts are, are useful and they have their place, but there’s no substitute for practice. And one of the beauties about the Garchen that we were just at a number of us together, for two weeks is we were practicing all day and it allowed the space to connect with each other across tremendously different points of view. There were some people there who were just furious and there are other people there who just, “Everything is fine” and you know, all the different, everything in between. So as we started there were the contrasting points of view and rubbing up against each other and it was painful. And then the more we settled, and I think the beauty of right now is that our own confusion and pain might actually drive us more deeply into practice. Then there were people who reported before they came to the Garchen they hadn’t been able to practice. And the level of pain that goes up when you can’t practice, won’t practice, you know, whatever. And then the concepts. So the only thing going on causes such extreme levels of pain. So I think whatever pain we feel in the groundlessness is nothing like, at least in my experience, the pain of concepts, whatever extremes they may be. So if we’re feeling a lot of pain. I think it’s a good incentive to practice more. Incredibly helpful.
Seventh Question: 00:53:30
Thank you so much, Judith. It’s good to see everybody again and I’m sad I missed the Garchen. I’ve been feeling um, the gathering of a, of that group of practitioners and I’m sending my heart from a distance. Thanks for being there because, uh, I’m um, what I wanted to comment on is about trust and doubt and that how different my personal relationship is to trust an doubt versus my cultural or social relationship and a lot of this, just because I feel safe and sound in my culture and in my practice doesn’t mean that I know that to be true for the people I care about near me. And, and I don’t know that, that we’ve gotten there yet. We don’t know, but the forms might look like to allow for that level of safety and I just wanted to acknowledge that you know, that we don’t know. We don’t know what’s going to change and uh, and what that’s gonna look like and in the meantime we can’t guarantee everyone’s experience. It’s actually going to take literal trial and error and speaking to each other. And I mean, I think that’s next. This has been such a powerful practice of hearing each other and showing up together. I guess I just wanted to name that there are people who, who don’t feel safe showing up yet until our forms are tried again. So it just came up to me around trust. My trust in the teachings is different than marketing my community as a safe and trusted place. It’s not true yet.
Judith S-B: 00:55:05
Absolutely. Part of the Shambala teachings talk about the epidemic of social mistrust in our society and the larger society is full of that kind of social mistrust and the feeling of basic badness that is so prevalent. And I think one of the things that’s so painful for many of us is we have really taken refuge in Shambhala in the midst of a really messed up world that we’re in politically in our country and in the world. And so it hits us really hard to have this happening in Shambhala. So the level of how social mistrust shows up here at the Garchen, And we, um, we had four different assemblies and I was lead in one of the assemblies and we lead Acharyas really aware that a lot of the protocols have assigned seating and hierarchy, just simply have no place. So we dispensed with as much as we possibly could while keeping the form of the Garchens. And um, we’re going to be experimenting a lot in our centers with how do we feel about each other, what kind of forms feel appropriate for us now? And how do we, how do we include everybody rather than a few people who are very vocal. And then there are a lot of people who have very strong feelings who don’t feel they can say much. And how do we take the time to really listen and feel our way forward about how we’re going to be as a community together. So, um, yeah, I think I appreciate your naming that because that is very much going on right now.
Seventh Question: 00:56:56
Thank you. I just saved the only way I can not take sides is just to name that I’m still falling.
Judith S-B: 00:57:02
You know, and yeah, I think I take a side and then I’m slipping to the other side and I’m, you know, I’m a Libra. What can I say?
Eighth Question: 00:57:45
I’m not a teacher. What I’ve learned, I’ve learned from all of you talking with you. And I feel like I’ve learned a few things, but I don’t know how to express it, but I know a lot of us get married and uh, we have sex with our wives and our wives seem to enjoy it very much and we get all excited and our ego starts going up. And so then we, uh, we go up here to Shambhala up in the mountains and there are all these young girls up there that are taking courses and at the end of this program we have a big dance and this dance occurs. And these girls were asking me would I dance with them? I’m already chosen. No. Oh, I thought, Whoa, what the hell? And so I danced with several other girls, same damn thing. And then when I went back to my room with, there were several guys, there are, one of them says, well, I’ve got to go because I’ve got a date. And what were they doing? Well there were enjoying sex. And the thing is the girls there were taught to well, you enjoy it, let them know you enjoy it. And so their ego goes up and up and pretty soon they think that any woman is going to be a and they have an enjoyable experience with them and they don’t always have an enjoyable experience. And so they think, Oh Gee or what’s wrong with me now? And the problem is their ego keeps going up and the ego is something we want to suppress.
Judith S-B: 01:00:06
If we can find it.
Eighth Question: 01:00:09
If we can find it, yes. But the problem is in the world is it every man thinks women should enjoy my having sex with them and we see it every day and women are beginning to complain about it, and they have every right to complain and we need to know that the stupid word we have for orgasm, yes, orgasm, it shouldn’t be something different. But the problem is that we can express what orgasm is for is for procreation. It took me a long time. It took me 72 years to figure that out. And I learned a from all of you. But you don’t seem to understand that you don’t have to have… There’s only one time you need to have an orgasm, that’s when you want to have a child, and it should be the woman’s choice. Not the man’s choice. And all the time. That’s all. Boy, we had sex before marriage or. Oh, you’re already pregnant. It’s a sad world where we don’t let women choose when they want to have sex.
Judith S-B: 01:02:00
Thank you so much. Hello. Lovely to see you.
Kathleen Moore: 01:02:06
I trusted what you were going to say today in some way, which is why I’m here because I have an essential trust from when our kids had play dates together and we would have conversations. This is more of a contemporary expression of something in the community that’s affecting me and so it’s very uncomfortable because I really don’t want this. Even though it’s my personal experience, I’m really not speaking it because it’s about me or because I need something. If one can hold some sort of an anthropological view while holding a personal view. So this is about Bill. I know it was just really hard to come in here and see his picture, although I knew it would be here and, and so I wanted to say first something that he said two community meetings ago because it’s relevant and what I need to say, which is
Judith S-B: 01:03:35
Does everyone know that she’s speaking of Bill Scheffel? Not everybody would know that. Who recently passed and his photograph is up here.
Kathleen Moore: 01:03:51
“I’m in a world of pain. When Trungpa Rinpoche died, there were many forces at work. Now there’s a phenomena of you’re either in or out. We are no longer a society. We’ve become a church. Society has division, diversity and dissonance. The rank-ism creates distance and has broken me.”
So I’m an outsider. I used to belong to this community and I left this community because I felt, um, that just wasn’t a good fit. I mean, it was just theologically different from what I wanted and that, that’s just fine. Um, but I also felt traumatized emotionally in this community. And when I met Bill, we entered into that difference of my lineage and his lineage and um, and it was challenging not so much between him and me, but his community and me and um, I felt often rejected sometimes people would actually literally turned their back on me if I was doing, well, whatever, I don’t want to get into, too much story. But um, and it put Bill into a tremendous place of tension. And since he died, his friends who are mostly senior students of Trungpa Rinpoche, almost all of them teachers, are saying things like, I killed him, that I’m responsible for his death. No one will say this to me. I hear it from others who’ve heard it and believe those people. But what I’m experiencing is incredible amounts of silence. Like when I email people and they don’t email me back or I call people like Chuck Lief and he doesn’t call me back when I’m trying to understand why I was ignored by him and treated the way I was at the Sukhavati. I don’t even know if it was personal or if it was just the field. And I just kinda want to clarify it. Now, I’m not saying I’m right. I’m just saying this is my experience, although I have been hearing things and, and that predates his death in some way. So my question is: I’m an outsider and if you want to talk about honour and kindness for each other and also with someone, who’s somewhat of an outsider. I mean I’m here because I feel still connected to this community and I feel great love for many people in this community and for the Dharma. So I feel like I have a personal responsibility as a defender of the Dharma in some way to talk about the negativity and so, Judith, and I just want something from you about some kind of way forward about how to work with difference and how. I mean how I’m perfectly happy to have conversation. I have great conversations with people in many traditions. One of my best friends is a Christian monk for chrissake, so. And we’ve had lots of conversations so I just don’t know if you have any comment about this or, or how to put it in some kind of relationship on how to manifest teachings that you’re talking about.
Judith S-B: 01:08:52
There’s a lot in what you’ve said and I was at the Garchen at the time of Bill Scheffel’s Sukhavati so I was not here that evening. He was a very precious human being and I know that many people were here to honor his life at that time. It sounds like this may be a more personal conversation between you and me and I would be delighted to talk with you one on one about that.
Fifth Question: 01:08:52
[inaudible, Moore refers to a phone message left for Judith]
Judith S-B: 01:09:31
Oh, I have not been into my Naropa office. Okay, good. Um, I will listen for your message on my answering machine when I’m next in the office, but uh, I would be delighted to talk with you one on one because it sounds like there’s a lot of pieces of that in terms of inside and outside. One of the challenges of our community is people feeling inside, outside, you know, in out kind of thing. And it’s been a theme for a lot of us. I’ve had in my many years in this community. I’ve had my times of feeling out in my times of feeling in and it’s really an issue for us to create a more open environment without such a tight sense of in and out and this is part of our ongoing conversation of what we need to work with and how do people define in and out if it’s closeness to the teacher. There are a lot of issues around that. If it’s, you know, how do we define being in a community? Um, we’ve struggled with that conversation for a long, long time.
So at this point what I’d like to do is open it up so I’m not giving answers, but that people have a chance to share as we have in our previous conversations. I don’t want to be the reference point of somebody giving answers since we now have reached the point where we have discussed the talk that I gave, but if there are other things that people would like to say at this point, I would like to open it up to that kind of conversation.
Ninth Question: 01:11:03
Yes. Hi everyone. In May of 2001. I graduated from Graduate School, um, and became a psychotherapist a professionally and, uh, four months later, 9/11 happened. And, um, his client after client came into my office. Um, I was struck by my, um, well as a psychotherapist, you have your own feelings happening and have to contain those in some way to allow for your client to have their feelings. And this amazing, um, situation happens in the relationship. So what struck me the most during that time is that each client that came in had their own experience and reactions to this national tragedy. And a lot of it depended on where they grew up, um, what experiences they had had with, um, trauma, um, a lot of their own, um, their emotional reactions were varied from a terror to fear to confusion to a grief, despair. Um, and um, the biggest piece that I took away from that was that, um, we had to grieve together. And what I realized is that people that were from New York City had a way of really coming together in that community to grieve in a really, really deep way. Especially if they were in New York at the time and people that didn’t have as much of a connection or couldn’t talk about it were trying to grieve silently, uh, and, and in isolation. And so the biggest piece that I’m realizing is that however anyone feels about the situation, that underneath that there’s loss, there’s, there’s just loss. I’m not sure how we all can come together no matter how we’re thinking and feeling or how angry we are, how sad we are. How do we come to that place together. The other thing that I’ve learned over my tenure as a psychotherapist is that when a crisis happens in anybody’s life, it’s a wake up call, wake up to what sometimes a lot of times I don’t know when someone comes in and something devastating, devastating has happened in their lives. Um, but I do know that it’s time to wake up and to do something different. And, um, I feel that the situation that is on us right now holds that same dynamic.
Judith S-B: 01:11:03
Thank you. We have just a few more minutes and then we’ll adjourn to a more social setting. But I’m delighted.
Tenth Question: 01:15:31
Thank you, Judith. I’m something I’m, I’m hearing a lot about your hearing in this conversation is a lot around feeling a included versus excluded about, um, uh, as _____ talked about people’s prajna. I’m being honored versus ignored. Um, and I’m thinking about this, um, this idea of parallel process, which is a concept I learned awhile ago that what happens in a and all hierarchical situation, say in an elementary school principal interacts with the teacher is going to show up with how the teacher interacts with the children and also the other way around how the children interact with each other is going to affect how the teachers interact in the faculty lounge. Um, and I’ve, I’ve seen that personally. We have, um, it seems like some very centrally important teaching seemingly to me in Shambhala around natural hierarchy and, um, and around Court principle, the Mandala principle. And it seems like we’re, this, we’re, this seems like I’m a bit of a crisis point that has to do with our understanding this, that people who are in a, uh, a lower area of the hierarchy maybe don’t trust themselves to speak up to the hierarchy or if they do those in a, in a higher place, don’t trust. Um, and so it seems like we have a dysfunction there. And, and as I read the Sunshine Report that, that seemed to very prominent in there that people maybe saw things but didn’t say anything. Um, but if, if they were in a different situation, they may have said something if there wasn’t that hierarchy. Um, I know myself, I, I feel like I’m, I’m in situations where I sometimes feel like I’m on the inside and people value my insight very much. And then other times I’m on the outside and sort of the ding dong. And maybe that’s maybe both are true, but there is, it seems like we need to explore further — is natural hierarchy is core principle. Is that a core aspect of Shambhala? Whereas that, uh, the, the other one that you had spoken about the relative or not a core aspect. And if it is a core aspect, we seem to have dysfunction around it so that the people aren’t feeling excluded and pushed away. Um, so many people I know feel on the outside, I’ve seen the Sakyong look like he feels like he’s on the outside. He seems like one of the loneliest people in Shambhala as far as I can tell.
Judith S-B: 01:15:31
Especially now.
Tenth Question: 01:19:14
Especially now, you know, and um, how, how can we, and maybe maybe this court principle, you know, I’ve been invited to serve on the court but the court seems very far away. Very hot, intense place. Seems too hot for me. Especially now. Um, yeah, how can we look at these different things? So thank you.
Judith S-B: 01:19:43
This is all part of our conversation.
Eleventh Question: 01:20:00
Hello. Thank you Judith. I want to say that when I first got the email saying that you were going to talk about the Four Reliances, I said brilliant, absolutely perfect. And, uh, I, I believe that for me personally, and maybe for how I imagined for a lot of others, that this is exactly what we’re dealing with, the topic of the Four Reliances and the other things that you’ve mentioned, what I wanted to say, and I said this on Project Sunshine, it did not get a big response. But, um, we need to move forward and, uh, two ideas that I’ve had, one is a truth and reconciliation project and I’m speaking as one that’s been on the outside for like almost 50 years. And, and, uh, you know, uh, uh, I don’t know why there has to be an outside and inside, but, but there’s definitely a culture that needs to go and I think the hierarchy thing needs to go and the monarchy thing needs to go. But I think a truth and reconciliation reconciliation project, which is absolutely uncompromising and I don’t know exactly how is implemented in that way, but that’s absolutely needs to happen. And the other thing that I wanted to suggest is that we have been talking about covering up the pictures and uh, I haven’t heard anybody talk about putting up the pictures. We have a 2,500 year old lineage and it’s been removed. It’s gone. I would say maybe before we take down or cover up anything but those back up and then see how we feel and maybe the Vajradhara, there might be a place for him too Okay. Thank you.
Judith S-B: 01:20:00
Thank you.
Twelfth Question: 01:22:25
Yes. Bring Back Vajrdhara.
Judith S-B: 01:22:41
So these are the last two and then we’ll close. Thank you. Lovely to see you
Thirteenth Question: 01:22:51
What you said was about doubt was really, really a relevant to me, not only in this situation, in the last long retreat I did. That was the main obstacle for me and it clarified to an extent what that was about. So I thank you just on a personal level and I feel really, really sad about Bill. It’s when I first found out it was like a, like an eclipse, an eclipse, and were there last week seems to be brightened up a bit. And that if anyone feels it’s their fault, I would urge you to please realize it’s not anyone’s fault in my opinion. And the other thing is, I remember Chogyam Trungpa talking about sangha and how we all have to be together, but each one of us has to remain in their own integrity, otherwise he said it’s like a, where does that game where you have to — dominoes and if you lose your integrity the sangha hasn’t lost its integrity. Then you know, one person loses their integrity and then pretty soon everyone else has fallen over. So just just seeing where you were talking about doubt and practice in the quality of finding what they call in Sanskrit “sthita” our stability inside seems to be really, really important. And that’s just my thoughts. Okay.
Fourteenth Question: 01:25:40
Judith, with your permission. I, and it’s not something I usually do at all. So, um, but it, it came to me today and it’s six lines. It’s a song and it, [inaudible] very good friends with taught at years and he describes his, said this song is the national anthem of Tibet. And I’m sure you know when I, I’m going to sing it, I’m not a great singer, so please accept my humble offering. But um, if I may, please. Yes, of course. Bodhisattva three times / Guru Rinpoche Maha sukha / Embodiment of all siddhis / Drudal Drakpo who clears all obstacles / grant your blessing, this I supplicate / Pacify outer, inner, and secret obstacles / Please our spontaneous wishes attain.
Judith S-B: 01:28:15
Thank you all for coming. It’s. This is a beautiful way to end our gathering. Thank you so much, ______, until we dedicate the merit together:
Assembly: 01:28:29
By this merit may all attain omniscience. May it defeat the enemy, wrongdoing, from the stormy waves of birth, old age sickness and death. From the ocean of Samsara may I free all beings by the confidence of the Golden Sun of the Great East. May the Lotus Garden of the Rigden’s wisdom bloom. Made the dark ignorance of sentient beings be dispelled. May all beings enjoy profound, brilliant glory.
First Question: 00:35:44
Thank you so much. Acharya very touching. Talk. My question is about, uh, I think when you were talking about the qualities that transcend culture, I think the last one you might’ve mentioned was lineage. I’m wondering if you could expand on that and talk about more why lineage transcends culture.
Judith S-B: 00:36:11
In my understanding of Buddha Dharma as a non theistic religion, the transmission of the teacher is essential and Buddhism is just a bunch of books if we do not rely on the living transmission from generation to generation from the teacher. So that transmission moment is not about the personality of the teacher but about the teachings and about the teachers’ commitment to pass these teachings on. And what I see in the Sakyong is his incredible dedication to passing on the teachings of his father from the terma lineage and to making sure that these teachings are practiced and realized. So that that transcends, it’s tricky about what form it may take, but that transcends culture when it comes to Buddhism. Buddhism is not going to become the kind of tradition or religion where there are no teachers and there’s no lineage. You don’t have any Buddhadharma without lineage. Does that answer your question? Very much so, thank you.
Second Question: 00:37:41
Thank you Judith. I’ll try and articulate my question? Um, it’s difficult because the quote you just read from, Thrangu Rinpoche, gets to the core puzzle I’ve been experiencing ever since the news first came out, um, which is Thrangu Rinpoche said as long as you rely on the purity of the Dharma as transmitted by the teacher, and that’s it. And that makes sense to me. And so personally I’m, having been around for awhile. I, I do have a great deal of confidence in the purity of the diamond itself and that is completely unshaken, at the same time when such relative conduct, such human conduct, um, occurs that, that has been said about what happened in the Sakyong, and various women and so forth. Um, it undermines that sense of trust in the purity of what has been transmitted on a more relative level. And so
Judith S-B: 00:38:55
I don’t, I can’t draw a line between those things
Second Question: 00:38:55
I can’t either.
Judith S-B: 00:39:01
This is why there are ups and downs for me, of trying to identify what’s reliable and what’s not is it feels to me the main thing I’m working with. And um, so, um, I can’t really answer your question. I’m just saying that this particular teaching has been helpful for me to begin to really contemplate. This brings up the questioning doubt for like going more deeply. So as I’m doing my practices and reading the texts of the sock young at all of that, I have this question. Okay. What’s culturally, it’s very specific. That might be provisional and what might be ultimate about this, what might be the literal words, what might be the meaning? So I’m giving you the categories. How we apply the categories is really, that’s for me the path and all of this.
Second Question: 00:40:01
Thank you. I wasn’t looking for fit definitive answer from you particularly. It was more like I just wanted to articulate the puzzle I’m working with. I’m sure people can identify with and you know, I, I think as a community it’s a very useful and interesting contemplation and for one is going in this community for over 40 years, you know, it’s really good. I feel it’s very healthy that I’m thrown back on myself yet again to think about what are we doing, what is pure here, what is bullshit, you know…
Judith S-B: 00:40:42
What’s bull shit in me? What’s bullshit? And you know, I came a week ago from the Garchen, which was a two week retreat with a 240 people from all over the world who are going through their own version of this journey. And what was remarkable to me about the Garchen was the incredible. It was rough, especially the first four days. Very rough. But the depth of practice, the quality of authenticity, the genuineness of people with each other, the honest, the no-bullshit quality. And the incredible kindness was incredibly moving to me. And um, I feel like this is what we mean by path, you know, um, that when we get too solid and come to, to sort of quick a position about things, our practice dies on the vine right there. So I think there’s this quality of nakedness is what we’ve learned about practice and individually I think we’re going through that. And I think as a community as well, so there are signs of incredible health along with the incredible heartbreak and wondering what is going to happen.
Third Question: 00:42:47
I’m in [inaudible] for the Level Two this weekend, so considering doubt and doubtlessless is very apt. Perfect timing and in preparing for that. I was reading Sacred World by Jeremy and Karen Hayward and just reminded about the importance of space in my mind and practice and that there’s no difference between the space out here in the space in here and um, and that’s what I have been missing when I get on Facebook. That’s what I am missing. And in other conversations where there’s that desire to come to a conclusion and solidify things. Um, so I was just very refreshed and I’m appreciative of coming across a reminder of that teaching. Um, and I think somehow related, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to make the link, but when you were talking about prajna I think one of the things that’s been tricky and painful for me or I’ve been struggling with is that when individuals who are encountering a feeling of “This doesn’t feel good the way I’m being treated in any situation doesn’t feel good” and they go and they talk to other people, especially senior teachers or leaders about that. And that person’s prajna is actually there. They’re encouraged in some way just I think perhaps out of our own ignorance to sidestep there their own prajna, to not see clearly what’s going on. And I guess it, it sounds like when people talk about being silenced in terms of talking about their experiences that feels like, and I don’t mean dramatizing our experiences too much or you know, making accusations and allegations in terms of talking about our experience. But someone just saying, “I’m really confused about what happened here. And then they’re somehow their prajna isn’t recognized. You kind of get what I’m like, their ability to see that there’s something wrong here was not acknowledged. And, and, and I, I think that a lot of what people have been upset about is that, that seems to have been a systemic in our culture.
Judith S-B: 00:45:16
I think that for whatever reason, we became some kind of monoculture of a particular party line at times about things maybe because we individually we’re afraid of our own doubt. I don’t know. I do feel that what’s going on is our community’s Karma that we need to work with and that we’re part of a larger society where it’s the larger society’s Karma as well and it needs to be worked with and hopefully we can can do this. it’s work that really needs to happen and as heartbroken as I am, I don’t regret that the conversations and the whole situation has opened up. I do feel that as a Dharma practitioner, there’s a tremendous truth of impermanence and, um, the impermanence of our Shambhala systems may be very good news.
Fourth Question: 00:46:55
So if we’re looking at our karma and the lineage, how do we open up a space to practice understanding, the lineage, the behaviors of the Regent, behaviors of the Trungpa Rinpoche, and the context of the Sakyong. How do we make space for all of that if we’re really looking at this and trying to heal and trying to move forward. We have a history of practices and behaviors that for some reason I’ve just been sort of, it’s there but it’s not there. So how do we open up space for that?
Judith S-B: 00:47:28
That’s what this is. I think this series of “Conversations that Matter” have been opening up a lot of this and we were on a journey that’s going to take a while to unpack this, to try to understand it, to identify what all this is about and it’s, it’s challenging for us individually as challenging for us as a community. But we’re at the very beginning of this process. This journey that we’re on is less than six weeks old. And of course there were the, there were things coming out before, but this whole kind of a meltdown that we’re experiencing as a community is still in its early days and the wonderful thing is rather than turning us against each other, we are talking. And it’s hard to know it’s too soon in the process to know where these conversations will go and there are very deep feelings about it all, pro and con and all of that. So I hope that we can keep the openness of the space to hold diverse points of view while we go through this. Because there is a fundamental health in all of this, if we can really hold together in the journey and really listen to each other and not come to premature conclusions about it all. I appreciate your raising the question.
Kathleen Moore: 00:47:28
My question pertains not the Sakyong situation but to the community and so I’m not sure if my timing is right in terms of how you’re wanting the questions to go. And so I just wanted to check in with you.
Judith S-B: 00:49:59
I hadn’t seen any more hands. Were there anymore questions or comments about what I specifically said? There’s one in the front row. Could we take this question and then we’ll come back to you?
Kathleen Moore: 00:50:10
That’s why I’m asking.
Judith S-B: 00:50:12
Okay. Thank you very much for checking in.
Sixth Question: 00:50:24
Thank you so much for your teachings. I have a question about Four Reliances. I have a question about The Four Alliances. It seems like one of the reasons that we have these teachings is because it’s so easy to get stuck on the first one and I’m thinking about the fourth one in particular and I’m wondering if you could speak more. I think conceptuality can be so tricky and so sneaky and nefarious and easy to mistake for experience and so I’m wondering if you could speak more to like how we can identify operating from a place of our nondual wisdom experience instead of conceptuality.
Judith S-B: 00:51:13
Well, and as we know Buddhist tradition particularly in Tibet is just full of beautiful concepts and concepts are, are useful and they have their place, but there’s no substitute for practice. And one of the beauties about the Garchen that we were just at a number of us together, for two weeks is we were practicing all day and it allowed the space to connect with each other across tremendously different points of view. There were some people there who were just furious and there are other people there who just, “Everything is fine” and you know, all the different, everything in between. So as we started there were the contrasting points of view and rubbing up against each other and it was painful. And then the more we settled, and I think the beauty of right now is that our own confusion and pain might actually drive us more deeply into practice. Then there were people who reported before they came to the Garchen they hadn’t been able to practice. And the level of pain that goes up when you can’t practice, won’t practice, you know, whatever. And then the concepts. So the only thing going on causes such extreme levels of pain. So I think whatever pain we feel in the groundlessness is nothing like, at least in my experience, the pain of concepts, whatever extremes they may be. So if we’re feeling a lot of pain. I think it’s a good incentive to practice more. Incredibly helpful.
Seventh Question: 00:53:30
Thank you so much, Judith. It’s good to see everybody again and I’m sad I missed the Garchen. I’ve been feeling um, the gathering of a, of that group of practitioners and I’m sending my heart from a distance. Thanks for being there because, uh, I’m um, what I wanted to comment on is about trust and doubt and that how different my personal relationship is to trust an doubt versus my cultural or social relationship and a lot of this, just because I feel safe and sound in my culture and in my practice doesn’t mean that I know that to be true for the people I care about near me. And, and I don’t know that, that we’ve gotten there yet. We don’t know, but the forms might look like to allow for that level of safety and I just wanted to acknowledge that you know, that we don’t know. We don’t know what’s going to change and uh, and what that’s gonna look like and in the meantime we can’t guarantee everyone’s experience. It’s actually going to take literal trial and error and speaking to each other. And I mean, I think that’s next. This has been such a powerful practice of hearing each other and showing up together. I guess I just wanted to name that there are people who, who don’t feel safe showing up yet until our forms are tried again. So it just came up to me around trust. My trust in the teachings is different than marketing my community as a safe and trusted place. It’s not true yet.
Judith S-B: 00:55:05
Absolutely. Part of the Shambala teachings talk about the epidemic of social mistrust in our society and the larger society is full of that kind of social mistrust and the feeling of basic badness that is so prevalent. And I think one of the things that’s so painful for many of us is we have really taken refuge in Shambhala in the midst of a really messed up world that we’re in politically in our country and in the world. And so it hits us really hard to have this happening in Shambhala. So the level of how social mistrust shows up here at the Garchen, And we, um, we had four different assemblies and I was lead in one of the assemblies and we lead Acharyas really aware that a lot of the protocols have assigned seating and hierarchy, just simply have no place. So we dispensed with as much as we possibly could while keeping the form of the Garchens. And um, we’re going to be experimenting a lot in our centers with how do we feel about each other, what kind of forms feel appropriate for us now? And how do we, how do we include everybody rather than a few people who are very vocal. And then there are a lot of people who have very strong feelings who don’t feel they can say much. And how do we take the time to really listen and feel our way forward about how we’re going to be as a community together. So, um, yeah, I think I appreciate your naming that because that is very much going on right now.
Seventh Question: 00:56:56
Thank you. I just saved the only way I can not take sides is just to name that I’m still falling.
Judith S-B: 00:57:02
You know, and yeah, I think I take a side and then I’m slipping to the other side and I’m, you know, I’m a Libra. What can I say?
Eighth Question: 00:57:45
I’m not a teacher. What I’ve learned, I’ve learned from all of you talking with you. And I feel like I’ve learned a few things, but I don’t know how to express it, but I know a lot of us get married and uh, we have sex with our wives and our wives seem to enjoy it very much and we get all excited and our ego starts going up. And so then we, uh, we go up here to Shambhala up in the mountains and there are all these young girls up there that are taking courses and at the end of this program we have a big dance and this dance occurs. And these girls were asking me would I dance with them? I’m already chosen. No. Oh, I thought, Whoa, what the hell? And so I danced with several other girls, same damn thing. And then when I went back to my room with, there were several guys, there are, one of them says, well, I’ve got to go because I’ve got a date. And what were they doing? Well there were enjoying sex. And the thing is the girls there were taught to well, you enjoy it, let them know you enjoy it. And so their ego goes up and up and pretty soon they think that any woman is going to be a and they have an enjoyable experience with them and they don’t always have an enjoyable experience. And so they think, Oh Gee or what’s wrong with me now? And the problem is their ego keeps going up and the ego is something we want to suppress.
Judith S-B: 01:00:06
If we can find it.
Eighth Question: 01:00:09
If we can find it, yes. But the problem is in the world is it every man thinks women should enjoy my having sex with them and we see it every day and women are beginning to complain about it, and they have every right to complain and we need to know that the stupid word we have for orgasm, yes, orgasm, it shouldn’t be something different. But the problem is that we can express what orgasm is for is for procreation. It took me a long time. It took me 72 years to figure that out. And I learned a from all of you. But you don’t seem to understand that you don’t have to have… There’s only one time you need to have an orgasm, that’s when you want to have a child, and it should be the woman’s choice. Not the man’s choice. And all the time. That’s all. Boy, we had sex before marriage or. Oh, you’re already pregnant. It’s a sad world where we don’t let women choose when they want to have sex.
Judith S-B: 01:02:00
Thank you so much. Hello. Lovely to see you.
Kathleen Moore: 01:02:06
I trusted what you were going to say today in some way, which is why I’m here because I have an essential trust from when our kids had play dates together and we would have conversations. This is more of a contemporary expression of something in the community that’s affecting me and so it’s very uncomfortable because I really don’t want this. Even though it’s my personal experience, I’m really not speaking it because it’s about me or because I need something. If one can hold some sort of an anthropological view while holding a personal view. So this is about Bill. I know it was just really hard to come in here and see his picture, although I knew it would be here and, and so I wanted to say first something that he said two community meetings ago because it’s relevant and what I need to say, which is
Judith S-B: 01:03:35
Does everyone know that she’s speaking of Bill Scheffel? Not everybody would know that. Who recently passed and his photograph is up here.
Kathleen Moore: 01:03:51
“I’m in a world of pain. When Trungpa Rinpoche died, there were many forces at work. Now there’s a phenomena of you’re either in or out. We are no longer a society. We’ve become a church. Society has division, diversity and dissonance. The rank-ism creates distance and has broken me.”
So I’m an outsider. I used to belong to this community and I left this community because I felt, um, that just wasn’t a good fit. I mean, it was just theologically different from what I wanted and that, that’s just fine. Um, but I also felt traumatized emotionally in this community. And when I met Bill, we entered into that difference of my lineage and his lineage and um, and it was challenging not so much between him and me, but his community and me and um, I felt often rejected sometimes people would actually literally turned their back on me if I was doing, well, whatever, I don’t want to get into, too much story. But um, and it put Bill into a tremendous place of tension. And since he died, his friends who are mostly senior students of Trungpa Rinpoche, almost all of them teachers, are saying things like, I killed him, that I’m responsible for his death. No one will say this to me. I hear it from others who’ve heard it and believe those people. But what I’m experiencing is incredible amounts of silence. Like when I email people and they don’t email me back or I call people like Chuck Lief and he doesn’t call me back when I’m trying to understand why I was ignored by him and treated the way I was at the Sukhavati. I don’t even know if it was personal or if it was just the field. And I just kinda want to clarify it. Now, I’m not saying I’m right. I’m just saying this is my experience, although I have been hearing things and, and that predates his death in some way. So my question is: I’m an outsider and if you want to talk about honour and kindness for each other and also with someone, who’s somewhat of an outsider. I mean I’m here because I feel still connected to this community and I feel great love for many people in this community and for the Dharma. So I feel like I have a personal responsibility as a defender of the Dharma in some way to talk about the negativity and so, Judith, and I just want something from you about some kind of way forward about how to work with difference and how. I mean how I’m perfectly happy to have conversation. I have great conversations with people in many traditions. One of my best friends is a Christian monk for chrissake, so. And we’ve had lots of conversations so I just don’t know if you have any comment about this or, or how to put it in some kind of relationship on how to manifest teachings that you’re talking about.
Judith S-B: 01:08:52
There’s a lot in what you’ve said and I was at the Garchen at the time of Bill Scheffel’s Sukhavati so I was not here that evening. He was a very precious human being and I know that many people were here to honor his life at that time. It sounds like this may be a more personal conversation between you and me and I would be delighted to talk with you one on one about that.
Fifth Question: 01:08:52
[inaudible, Moore refers to a phone message left for Judith]
Judith S-B: 01:09:31
Oh, I have not been into my Naropa office. Okay, good. Um, I will listen for your message on my answering machine when I’m next in the office, but uh, I would be delighted to talk with you one on one because it sounds like there’s a lot of pieces of that in terms of inside and outside. One of the challenges of our community is people feeling inside, outside, you know, in out kind of thing. And it’s been a theme for a lot of us. I’ve had in my many years in this community. I’ve had my times of feeling out in my times of feeling in and it’s really an issue for us to create a more open environment without such a tight sense of in and out and this is part of our ongoing conversation of what we need to work with and how do people define in and out if it’s closeness to the teacher. There are a lot of issues around that. If it’s, you know, how do we define being in a community? Um, we’ve struggled with that conversation for a long, long time.
So at this point what I’d like to do is open it up so I’m not giving answers, but that people have a chance to share as we have in our previous conversations. I don’t want to be the reference point of somebody giving answers since we now have reached the point where we have discussed the talk that I gave, but if there are other things that people would like to say at this point, I would like to open it up to that kind of conversation.
Ninth Question: 01:11:03
Yes. Hi everyone. In May of 2001. I graduated from Graduate School, um, and became a psychotherapist a professionally and, uh, four months later, 9/11 happened. And, um, his client after client came into my office. Um, I was struck by my, um, well as a psychotherapist, you have your own feelings happening and have to contain those in some way to allow for your client to have their feelings. And this amazing, um, situation happens in the relationship. So what struck me the most during that time is that each client that came in had their own experience and reactions to this national tragedy. And a lot of it depended on where they grew up, um, what experiences they had had with, um, trauma, um, a lot of their own, um, their emotional reactions were varied from a terror to fear to confusion to a grief, despair. Um, and um, the biggest piece that I took away from that was that, um, we had to grieve together. And what I realized is that people that were from New York City had a way of really coming together in that community to grieve in a really, really deep way. Especially if they were in New York at the time and people that didn’t have as much of a connection or couldn’t talk about it were trying to grieve silently, uh, and, and in isolation. And so the biggest piece that I’m realizing is that however anyone feels about the situation, that underneath that there’s loss, there’s, there’s just loss. I’m not sure how we all can come together no matter how we’re thinking and feeling or how angry we are, how sad we are. How do we come to that place together. The other thing that I’ve learned over my tenure as a psychotherapist is that when a crisis happens in anybody’s life, it’s a wake up call, wake up to what sometimes a lot of times I don’t know when someone comes in and something devastating, devastating has happened in their lives. Um, but I do know that it’s time to wake up and to do something different. And, um, I feel that the situation that is on us right now holds that same dynamic.
Judith S-B: 01:11:03
Thank you. We have just a few more minutes and then we’ll adjourn to a more social setting. But I’m delighted.
Tenth Question: 01:15:31
Thank you, Judith. I’m something I’m, I’m hearing a lot about your hearing in this conversation is a lot around feeling a included versus excluded about, um, uh, as _____ talked about people’s prajna. I’m being honored versus ignored. Um, and I’m thinking about this, um, this idea of parallel process, which is a concept I learned awhile ago that what happens in a and all hierarchical situation, say in an elementary school principal interacts with the teacher is going to show up with how the teacher interacts with the children and also the other way around how the children interact with each other is going to affect how the teachers interact in the faculty lounge. Um, and I’ve, I’ve seen that personally. We have, um, it seems like some very centrally important teaching seemingly to me in Shambhala around natural hierarchy and, um, and around Court principle, the Mandala principle. And it seems like we’re, this, we’re, this seems like I’m a bit of a crisis point that has to do with our understanding this, that people who are in a, uh, a lower area of the hierarchy maybe don’t trust themselves to speak up to the hierarchy or if they do those in a, in a higher place, don’t trust. Um, and so it seems like we have a dysfunction there. And, and as I read the Sunshine Report that, that seemed to very prominent in there that people maybe saw things but didn’t say anything. Um, but if, if they were in a different situation, they may have said something if there wasn’t that hierarchy. Um, I know myself, I, I feel like I’m, I’m in situations where I sometimes feel like I’m on the inside and people value my insight very much. And then other times I’m on the outside and sort of the ding dong. And maybe that’s maybe both are true, but there is, it seems like we need to explore further — is natural hierarchy is core principle. Is that a core aspect of Shambhala? Whereas that, uh, the, the other one that you had spoken about the relative or not a core aspect. And if it is a core aspect, we seem to have dysfunction around it so that the people aren’t feeling excluded and pushed away. Um, so many people I know feel on the outside, I’ve seen the Sakyong look like he feels like he’s on the outside. He seems like one of the loneliest people in Shambhala as far as I can tell.
Judith S-B: 01:15:31
Especially now.
Tenth Question: 01:19:14
Especially now, you know, and um, how, how can we, and maybe maybe this court principle, you know, I’ve been invited to serve on the court but the court seems very far away. Very hot, intense place. Seems too hot for me. Especially now. Um, yeah, how can we look at these different things? So thank you.
Judith S-B: 01:19:43
This is all part of our conversation.
Eleventh Question: 01:20:00
Hello. Thank you Judith. I want to say that when I first got the email saying that you were going to talk about the Four Reliances, I said brilliant, absolutely perfect. And, uh, I, I believe that for me personally, and maybe for how I imagined for a lot of others, that this is exactly what we’re dealing with, the topic of the Four Reliances and the other things that you’ve mentioned, what I wanted to say, and I said this on Project Sunshine, it did not get a big response. But, um, we need to move forward and, uh, two ideas that I’ve had, one is a truth and reconciliation project and I’m speaking as one that’s been on the outside for like almost 50 years. And, and, uh, you know, uh, uh, I don’t know why there has to be an outside and inside, but, but there’s definitely a culture that needs to go and I think the hierarchy thing needs to go and the monarchy thing needs to go. But I think a truth and reconciliation reconciliation project, which is absolutely uncompromising and I don’t know exactly how is implemented in that way, but that’s absolutely needs to happen. And the other thing that I wanted to suggest is that we have been talking about covering up the pictures and uh, I haven’t heard anybody talk about putting up the pictures. We have a 2,500 year old lineage and it’s been removed. It’s gone. I would say maybe before we take down or cover up anything but those back up and then see how we feel and maybe the Vajradhara, there might be a place for him too Okay. Thank you.
Judith S-B: 01:20:00
Thank you.
Twelfth Question: 01:22:25
Yes. Bring Back Vajrdhara.
Judith S-B: 01:22:41
So these are the last two and then we’ll close. Thank you. Lovely to see you
Thirteenth Question: 01:22:51
What you said was about doubt was really, really a relevant to me, not only in this situation, in the last long retreat I did. That was the main obstacle for me and it clarified to an extent what that was about. So I thank you just on a personal level and I feel really, really sad about Bill. It’s when I first found out it was like a, like an eclipse, an eclipse, and were there last week seems to be brightened up a bit. And that if anyone feels it’s their fault, I would urge you to please realize it’s not anyone’s fault in my opinion. And the other thing is, I remember Chogyam Trungpa talking about sangha and how we all have to be together, but each one of us has to remain in their own integrity, otherwise he said it’s like a, where does that game where you have to — dominoes and if you lose your integrity the sangha hasn’t lost its integrity. Then you know, one person loses their integrity and then pretty soon everyone else has fallen over. So just just seeing where you were talking about doubt and practice in the quality of finding what they call in Sanskrit “sthita” our stability inside seems to be really, really important. And that’s just my thoughts. Okay.
Fourteenth Question: 01:25:40
Judith, with your permission. I, and it’s not something I usually do at all. So, um, but it, it came to me today and it’s six lines. It’s a song and it, [inaudible] very good friends with taught at years and he describes his, said this song is the national anthem of Tibet. And I’m sure you know when I, I’m going to sing it, I’m not a great singer, so please accept my humble offering. But um, if I may, please. Yes, of course. Bodhisattva three times / Guru Rinpoche Maha sukha / Embodiment of all siddhis / Drudal Drakpo who clears all obstacles / grant your blessing, this I supplicate / Pacify outer, inner, and secret obstacles / Please our spontaneous wishes attain.
Judith S-B: 01:28:15
Thank you all for coming. It’s. This is a beautiful way to end our gathering. Thank you so much, ______, until we dedicate the merit together:
Assembly: 01:28:29
By this merit may all attain omniscience. May it defeat the enemy, wrongdoing, from the stormy waves of birth, old age sickness and death. From the ocean of Samsara may I free all beings by the confidence of the Golden Sun of the Great East. May the Lotus Garden of the Rigden’s wisdom bloom. Made the dark ignorance of sentient beings be dispelled. May all beings enjoy profound, brilliant glory.