The Purification

Sunday 11:48 a.m.
From the translation of The Life of Milarepa by Lobsang P. Lhalungpa. Marpa has a ritual feast at the ten day of each moon. "The monks became drunk. As for the lama, he drank so much beer, and so much beer was offered to him, that he became completely drunk and fell into a deep sleep."

Being brought up a catholic, one has a certain appreciation of saintliness. Maybe we expect our saints to be nice, or, at least, saintly. Meek and mild, and lily white. Going around praying all the time and being humble. I think with this Tibetan juju, you'd be better thinking of ends and means.

I have difficulty with this lack of apparent saintliness, as I would see it from a Christian perspective. Also, if you are involved in cause and effect, you're probably going to have to take some kind of a spanking for doing bad stuff.

Yesterday me and the auld maw were listening to a talk given by Lama Yeshe in 2004. He mentioned Chogyam Trungpa, who helped set up the Samye Ling originally with Dr Akong, and then went to America. The folk at the Samye are untouched really by scandal. Chogyam Trungpa does not appear to be that kind of a guy. The English nun who spent 12 years in the cave said when she met him early on, she knew he had something, but released he was a bit different when he put his hand up her skirt. She certainly wasn't the first one, or the last one! I think I read he was on eight bottles of wine before the drink and lousy lifestyle knocked him off at the grand old age of forty eight. The boy seems to have been far more of a disgrace than I could possibly manage.

I have more trouble with the story about Kalu Rinpoche and his pal bonking the woman who drove them around Europe. He seemed most saintly...
and in his seventies as well!

The lama said it was hard to tell which cats had it and which cat's hadn't. Chogyam stayed in samadhi for seven days at his death, according to the lama. Wikipedia has him down for five days.

So he didn't go into rigor mortis and his heart stayed warm. That's all you can say really from the physical side. This is a sign of being a master of the juju.

I really have made a lot of progress with the meditations over the last couple of weeks. Great thoughtless voids of bliss! However, over the last week I have also developed another gigantic nicotine addiction and I've been drinking home brewed beer practically every night. Tomorrow is really the start of me going back to work since there will be kids at school. Hmmmm? Win some, lose some!


`