Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [14]
In 1971, there was one Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Kathmandu Valley; now eighty or more dot the countryside. Back then, in Lama Yeshe’s monastery there were two lamas—Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa—and only five students. It was very easy to immerse yourself in Buddhism; it was very easy to be a disciple—to live and work intensively with a lama. We lived as they lived: up at dawn, bed after dusk because there was no electricity. Morning, noon, and night they were absorbed in meditative practices, and we were too. I remember Lama Yeshe’s concern that Lama Zopa was so involved in his meditation practice that he would neglect eating or sleeping.
With all the study, work, and self-discipline, it was still easy to have a good time with these delightful lamas. They were so filled with joy and devotion that it was contagious. Tibetans assume, for example, that everyone is able to sit and meditate without moving for hours, and to have visions of Buddhas and strikingly memorable lucid dreams, so the lamas showed us how, and we were able to do it too. Amazing! Whatever weaknesses may have existed beneath the surface of the feudal Tibetan hierarchy, we were far from having to deal with them during those halcyon days.
We all ate lentil soup ladled out of tin buckets and vegetarian food from leaf plates while we worked at building monasteries and living quarters for the steady stream of new students who were beginning to arrive. All the while, we meditated, we prayed, we chanted, we discussed and debated, and we celebrated Buddhist festivals. Occasionally we went on pilgrimages to sacred sites such as Padma Sambhava’s main meditation cave where rainbows appeared as we approached the site. Lama Yeshe began to teach us the Graduated Path to Enlightenment known in Tibetan as the Lam-rim. These are the step-by-step stages that have been taught time and time again to seekers and are part and parcel of what I teach now.
When I left New York in May of 1971, my original plans were to stay in Asia until August, then return home to participate in the Breadloaf Writer’s Conference in Vermont, and enter graduate school in the fall. I had no idea that Asia was soon to become my permanent residence, but that’s what happened. There in the Indian subcontinent, I felt as though I had stumbled into a gold mine of wisdom and a spiritual sanctuary. I felt increasingly at home in the Himalayas, whatever the physical difficulties. It was a true homecoming. My teachers explained this feeling by talking about past lives and my “Buddhist blood.” Who knows?
With the Tibetan masters, I began to have some personal experience of another, transcendent, reality. The lamas who taught me personified and exemplified a deep wisdom and acceptance that was unlike anything I had ever known in my own cultural upbringing. With teachings and by example, they showed me how to develop spiritually. Where I grew up, the best and the brightest were extremely competitive; they went to med school, law school, Madison Avenue or Wall Street. In the Buddhist Himalayas, the best and the brightest chose monastic life. On these mountaintops, the monasteries were the living centers of energy and erudition. I felt totally safe in that spiritual refuge.
For me the choice was obvious. I put grad school on hold, and Buddhism became my priority. Unfortunately, Indian government regulations didn’t exactly coincide with my intentions. An American couldn’t stay anywhere in India or Nepal indefinitely because of problems with visas and weather, even if economics were not an issue. Therefore, in the winter