Receiving, Protecting and Expanding the Gifts of the Tradition and the Lineage

An Excerpt from Teachings Given by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, Summer 2023

I'd like to bring to your attention here the value of the lineage. His Holiness, the 34th Menri Trizin, is on retreat with us, along with all of the visiting lamas. And we are in the presence of this beautiful shrine, with the entirety of canonical texts of the Kangyur and the Tengyur now up in the Garuda House. Add to that all of the transmissions of an unbroken lineage.

It is something that's very, very precious; something that maybe not everybody will understand, or be able to relate to, but we all definitely have this wonderful access to it. And for sure, we are not trying to convince everyone of all that is being taught but rather, it is more important that you know what it is that you are all connected to, and that you appreciate that, right?

So, personally I feel that it's all very precious, even though at times there are things such as some of the practices or teachings that with my ordinary mind it's sometimes hard to make complete sense of. I'm sure there are times when you may feel like that, too. And it doesn't all have to make complete sense. The thing is, though, not to get frustrated when it doesn't make complete sense to you. In those cases, just take a more humble approach to it and simply say, I don't get it, and it's okay. I don't have to get it - there's much out there that I don't get. But I'm so blessed to have exposure to this knowledge. That's especially true given the times we are living in.

I feel particularly like that when seeing so much confusion all around the world, and seeing all of the negative effects that come from it. However, you do have a choice of focusing either on the negative side of things or on the positive side. Because, in this time that we are living in, I also feel that there are so many gifts in our lives to be grateful for. For instance, we have exposure to all of this science - this amazing science - which every year is discovering so many new things. And with all of the new things they are finding, they are actually fueling a lot of new social changes in a very good way with what they have found. However, some of these discoveries may be difficult for us to process, and we may feel threatened by them. For instance the advances in artificial intelligence, and so on.

But at the same time, we can see that this is also reality. It is the dynamic manifestation of infinite possibility, the dynamic manifestation of the nature of mind.

Right now you might say, I'm afraid of artificial intelligence, I'm afraid of this, afraid of that. However, you see too that right now you have no idea what you will be afraid of in fifty years time. So don't be afraid of anything. Rather, simply make the best use of what is available at present, such as technology and science and the ability to bring these kinds of knowledge together. America is one of the countries where people have this kind of self-exploring attitude. People are meditating in classrooms in the universities, for instance, or are exploring novel things like that. There's really a sense of openness, and that was one of the things that really impressed me when I came to America for the first time. I was impressed with their ideas around not always objectively analyzing things from the object side, but rather shifting one's focus and asking questions about the subject. I felt clearly from the start that they were very open to subject analysis.

For instance, let's say that there is a situation in my life which makes me feel a little bit vulnerable, and which feels a little bit threatening. Rather than try to come up with every reasoning that I possibly could to support the idea that the problem lies solely out there, the most important reasoning one can engage in would be to focus on who is it that is feeling the threat. That question is a much better question. You will find a much more enlightening answer with that inquiry than you will by only focusing outside oneself.

We are here in this time and space right now, and we are emersed in this ancient knowledge. However, there is also a lot of danger, a real danger of losing this knowledge. When presented with anything that we don't understand, then there's a tendency in us to ignore it right away, and say, I don't get it! Just like that, rather than respecting it and preserving it. As I have said before, we here at Ligmincha struggle with that sense. You cannot expand without protecting, as well. You can both protect and expand. And that needs to be balanced more. In the same way that method and wisdom should be balanced, as His Holiness was saying earlier.

In order to protect these things, people must be open enough to learn them; open enough to be interested in what may at first seem complicated or foreign. If the number of those interested declines, then that would make it harder to protect these things. At Menri Monastery there have always been five or six hundred monks in residence at any one time, for thousands of years. So at Menri there is no difficulty in protecting those things. First of all, the monks don't have so many competing interests the way westerners do. Rather, that is their sole interest. It's a very simple life.

When people ask me these days what my son Senghe is interested in at college, I really don't know, because he's told me different things. However, if you were to ask me when I was his age and living at the monastery, what I was interested in, I did not know either. I was very interested in just whatever I was doing at the time. But not because it would be a means for my getting something else. No, for half of my life back then, I did everything very diligently, with a lot of effort, but not because I was trying to get somewhere else. Today though, that way of life and that way of applying oneself doesn't work. These days, if you were to ask a person who is going off to college, what are you going to learn, what are you interested in focusing on there? Really, what you're asking is, what are you going to learn that will end up making enough money for you? What subject are you interested in enough to earn a degree?

In today's world, it often comes down to that sort of very mundane thing. That's very different than when I was growing up in the monastery where first off, you are simply put there. I suddenly find myself there, and I find in front of me these books, and I find my teacher there in front of me, too. And then I just embraced every moment and every thing in a full way - very, very engaged.

And I put in a lot of effort too, you know? Memorizing fifty pages of text from the top line down to the bottom of the last page. And we were only allowed three mistakes. After the third mistake, you must get help. And how did we do all of that without an electric light in our darkened room? By using an incense stick (TWR holds an imaginary incense stick up close to the text in front of him, and blows on it). You are sitting in a dark room memorizing lines and blowing on an incense stick. Next line... next line... next line... then back up to the beginning. And I would continue to do that until I arrived at a half of a page. And then I would start on the next half page and continue line by line, reading it again and again stopping only when I could recite from memory starting at the beginning of the first page all the way to the end of the last page. And then at that point, I could go to sleep!

That is just what you do in the monastery. Whether it's one page a day, or two pages a day, or whatever you have promised to do. Then the next morning, the very first thing you do when you get up is to recite it one time again completely all the way through. If you can do that, then you're okay.

I did not know why I was doing any of this. Maybe I know a little bit better now what I was doing. Of course, though, sometimes you don't have to know why you are doing something, if you trust life. Simply be fully present there, and then life will show you; life will guide you.

So, as we are building trust in this rich tradition and this unbroken lineage, and feeling grateful toward it all, we do not have to understand everything that we are doing. Because, think about this - there is so much vastness here to be understood. Therefore, whatever you've come to understand in this particular time and in this moment, and in this life, it is for you. It is your gift. Make the best use of it. Don't always be asking for more, trying to get more. Instead, simply use fully that which you have. That's clear, right?

Okay. Let's do the dedication.