The Gift of Giving

So now I'm at my last teaching before leaving Kathmandu. From the Karmapa I received the oral transmission for the ngondro, the preliminary practice, but not the instructions for actually doing it. It just so happened that I lucked out again because a monastery is offering a teaching on ngondro instruction.

I am at Jamgon Kongtrul Lobrang, a beautiful Kagyu monastery perched on a hill. On the drive up, the monastery's prayer hall would stand out boldly and then disappear as the cab followed the curves and bends of the windy road up the hill.

The most striking structure is the prayer hall that is painted in hues of purple and red. The wall that surrounds the huge entrance doors is covered with paintings of various deities. Pujas start early in the morning and monks are blowing horns that accompany the pujas into the night, even after the pujas have ended.

In front of the prayer hall is a stone tiled square, but in the shape of a circle. From it are stairs and walkways that lead to other buildings like the monks' dormitories (they call them hostels), the office and a smaller prayer hall with a stupa inside. The grounds are beautifully landscaped with flower gardens that surround the prayer hall buildings.

Last night was my first evening at the monastery and after finishing dinner, I enjoyed a moment alone at the edge of the square under an almost full moon. The days are getting hotter and hotter and being outside after it gets dark is much more comfortable.

Yesterday's teaching was on the practice of the mandala offering. One of the elements of this practice is either giving actual physical objects and/or visualizing giving objects. In this practice one is to generate a sincere feeling of offering abundance, the most precious of objects free of any attachment.

Attending all these teachings and learning about all these rituals, there's a lot to do in Tibetan Buddhism. It's not solely meditating. In that way it's a lot like being Catholic - and I thought I was getting away from being Catholic by converting.

During the lama's teaching about giving and generosity, I thought of my mother. She was a wonderful example of giving. One year I bought her a Thai orchid bouquet for mother's day - and it wasn't cheap. I asked her shortly after mother's day if she liked the bouquet and she said she gave it as an offering to the altar at church. She was always giving away her best as offerings. Her best roses out of her garden were always given as church offerings.

Her generosity went beyond church offerings too. She freely gave away things - clothes, financial help - without any attachment. In my mother's generosity there was also unbending devotion and faith - also points emphasized in the Buddhist teachings I've attended. Maybe it's all a conspiracy to make me Catholic again.

For much of my life I've focused on how I didn't want to be like my mother. There were a lot of painful issues that were unfortunately never acknowledged or healed. As a result I could only see through unresolved anger and couldn't see how in many ways my mother was a shining example, whether Catholic or Buddhist.

I have known that the painful side of my relationship with my mother is my teacher, but haven't had the capacity to accept it. The teaching on generosity opened the door for me to accept that, then and now, good and bad, my mother is my teacher and to learn from it.

The flip side to my mother's devotion is that she forced Catholicism onto me that had the affect of turning me away from it. My mother may not have made me a good Catholic, but she's making me a good Buddhist. And in the end, I think she's proud.