Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [19]
At Kalu Rinpoche’s monastery, I met another lama who I always feel is with me. The Sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, who was the head of the large, very meditation-oriented Kagyu School, came to our Sonada Monastery to give teachings and a long series of initiations in the fall of 1973. The Karmapas are the longest continuous tulku line in Tibet, stretching back eight hundred years; the Sixteenth Karmapa, known as a living Buddha, was considered by many to be the greatest lama of his time. He was also one of the first lamas to understand the significance of the Chinese government’s intentions and had traveled from Tibet to establish a monastery in Sikkim well before 1959.
During special ritual ceremonies, the Karmapa often wore a jeweled black crown which the Emperor of China had made for the Fifth Karmapa centuries ago. The Karmapa performs this Black Crown Ceremony in order to activate people’s innate enlightenment potential. It is said that everyone who sees this crown is assured of enlightenment—if not now, later.
In Tibetan Buddhism, there are ceremonies known as initiations or empowerments in which spiritual power is transmitted through the teacher to the student. This is a lineage transmission by which the guru empowers the disciple to practice certain esoteric meditations. Because the Karmapa was extraordinarily spiritually accomplished, amazing things happened when he gave empowerments. In front of him, disciples, myself included, would have experiences including visions, spiritual dreams of the Buddha and deities, heart chakra openings, energy eruptions, and satori (awakening) experiences. Not only was the Karmapa spiritually realized, he was powerful, compassionate, loving, buoyantly joyful, and clairvoyant. He was also a lot of fun.
Amused that I was Jewish and Buddhist, he would tease me by twisting my ear and saying, “Jewish, Jewish … very good!” “Very good” was one of the few English phrases he knew. One day at his monastery, a large group of Westerners were streaming through his room, and he blessed each of them by touching the top of their heads with his hands and saying “Very good!” as they bowed down before him. Khandro-La, the highly accomplished wife of Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, happened to be visiting, and saw through his language skills. “Wow, you spoke to each of them personally in their own language. You are truly omniscient!” she teased the august Master Karmapa, who was generally considered all-knowing.
When I stayed at the Karmapa’s monastery in Sikkim, it seemed that his light was on all night long. His attendants told me that the Karmapa only needed two or three hours of sleep a night because his mind was unclouded by the darkness of ignorance. I would see him walking around the courtyard in informal garb at three or four in the morning with his mala in hand, chanting mantras and beaming. Occasionally I tagged along. He was always very kind to me.
In one of my first meetings with the Karmapa, without thinking about the propriety of the question, I asked him, “What does it mean when people say you are a living Buddha?” His translator became so flustered that he could barely repeat the question. The Karmapa locked his eyes with mine and said, “It means that I have fully realized for myself what you also are.”
The Karmapa was deeply committed to spreading the Dharma in the West. During his final illness, he was in the United States. For part of the time, we cared for him in the monastery we had built for him in Woodstock, New York; he finally died in a hospital near Chicago in 1981. His many Asian disciples in the East wanted him to return home to Sikkim, his main monastery in exile, but he chose to die in America. This was a part of the tremendous transmission and blessings that his school and its teachings have contributed to the growth of the Dharma in the West.