Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [18]
For me Darjeeling was a magical place, a Buddha Field where the greatest exemplars of Buddha’s teachings—the living lamas, authentic spiritual masters—were in monasteries lined up in the mountains along the ridge road that snaked through the lush tea estates. Since those golden years of the early seventies, I’ve been back many times. I was fortunate to be able to be at the Sonada Monastery during Kalu Rinpoche’s last days when he died in 1989, and also four years later when his reincarnated tulku was enthroned. Several of my dear old teachers and Dharma sisters and brothers still live in those blessed, decrepit, but spiritually thriving monasteries today.
Kalu Rinpoche was one of my root gurus, and his monastery was my primary home for five years in the early and mid-1970s. I once asked another dear teacher in Darjeeling, Tulku Pema, how one decided which lama was your root guru or primary teacher—especially if, like me and many of my friends, you had studied and practiced under the guidance of many. He told me that one’s root guru is the one to whom you are the most grateful. Kalu Rinpoche taught me so much at an early age and I owe him the deepest debt of gratitude for his wisdom, his patience, and his love. I feel as though he is always with me, and I often see him in dreams.
A month after we first met, Kalu Rinpoche asked me what kind of meditation I was doing. I told him that I was following my breath, concentrating on breathing. “What,” he asked, “are you going to concentrate on when you stop breathing?” That woke me to the level of master I was talking to. Kalu Rinpoche was a truly transcendent man who lived, breathed, and exuded Dharma. That is the meaning of “lama.” Literally in Tibetan it means heavy or weighty: A lama is a teacher who embodies the weighty Dharma. Kalu Rinpoche was a true spiritual heavyweight.
Following Tibetan tradition, most of Kalu Rinpoche’s teachings were orally transmitted, along with esoteric initiations, spontaneous songs of enlightenment, and delightful teaching tales. Monks and lamas typically committed vast quantities of scripture and prayers to memory and passed them on that way, often embedded in stories and parables. In order to receive full transmission of the Buddhist tradition, Tibetan lamas are still required to receive oral transmission of Buddhist scriptures and teachings from a qualified lama in the oral lineage; this is called lhung, or oral authorization. As astonishing as it may seem, I was told that there have been several lamas with such miraculous powers of memory that they have been able to repeat by rote the entire Buddhist canon, over one hundred volumes of scriptures.
Much of the most profound guidance and instruction in Tibet have been done orally, intimately passed from master to disciple, on a one-to-one basis. These teachings were privately held, going from generation to generation, creating a lineage of “ear whispered” sacred instructions. This is often called the secret teachings of Tibet, known as the pith instructions, the boiled down distilled essence of all the teachings—centuries of wisdom. What this means is that there is an unbroken chain of teaching, a living flame of truth and realization handed down personally from the Buddha until today.
In Tibet it is said that your spiritual teacher is more important to you than the Buddha. This is because although you can’t easily meet the Buddha, you meet him in your guru who is supposed to be the living personification of enlightenment. They say your guru is even more important than your parents because while your parents raise you in one lifetime, your guru takes you through all