The Lamas visit
The Lamas visit was everything I hoped it would have been and more. I feel delighted with the way everything turned out and the impression we made of our community. Our buildings were surrounded with flowers, the chalk mandalas were perfect and our sand mandala was more than I could have imaged. I can’t believe the many gifts the Lama left and the manner in which we blessed our community. I feel that much more enlightened from his words and the experience of his presence. He has altered my perspective and the way I see the world through his explanations — bringing me to further realizations about the state of reality. I also can’t help but get excited about the building of a medicine factory in the village. I hope we will be able to utilize the herbs in our surrounding green lands into more effective modes of medicine and healing. I also hope this will increase our ability to cure those in need of healing. It is nice that he did this in support of our mission to cure the neighbouring village of the naga illness. I feel like all of my efforts are slowly being rewarded.
The Lama left me with so many thoughts surrounding his eloquently spoken words. He said so much in a manner to ‘destroy the illusion’ it is impossible to leave unchanged. He said so many powerful words that has stuck with me that I hope to emulate in my personal art. He said “change your self to change the world”. I think this is so true as we are nothing outside our perspective. With our thoughts we make the world. With our thoughts we make our world — as it is experienced. Our experience is truly dependent upon a certain state of mind. This got me thinking back to my previous experience studying the Mahayana tradition and their theories surrounding the non-duality of Samsara and Nirvana. Samsara and Nirvana do not exist outside of one another in two separate realms but are determined by your state of mind. How your mind perceives the world determines how the world will be experienced. This also brings to mind Buddhist teachings surrounding the tathagatagarbha. The tathagatagarbha explains that there is a Buddha-nature within us all that has been polluted by ones succumbing to the experience of this world and its illusion. All beings by nature have a dimension of the mind not fully realized — discrimination of dual and illusively independent entities has brought us to develop many illusory ideas about the reality we are experiencing.
This is the achievement of Buddhism — reaching a state of mind free of thought. Enlightenment is when one ceases to discriminate reality through subject/object orientation but experiences reality as it is — free of any preconceived notion of affect. This is also in tune with what the Lama was discussing surrounding the Tibetan belief in illusion binding us to Samsara — the continuation of life and death in the endless cycle of rebirth. In the words of our perfect Lama, “The highest heaven is right here on earth if only we had the wisdom to recognize it”.
Something else said by the Lama that has stuck with me is; “If we see the world as perfect, there is nothing to desire. If we see everyone as divine, there is no one to hate. This dream of life as we make is what we make it. Heaven and hell are states of mind”. This goes hand in hand with my teaching within the Mahayana tradition so I resonated a lot with what the Lama had to say.
“The nature of the mind is like a diamond. Its luster may darken but its purity can not be destroyed — only revealed.” — visiting Lama
