Refuge

I didn't think I was going to go, but did. I had known for a while that the Karmapa was going to give a teaching in Tilokpur, a village an hour and a half away from McLeod at a Kagyu nunnery. I wasn't going to go because of the cost. The teaching was a fundraiser for the nunnery and the cost for staying at the nunnery guesthouse was $200-$300 U.S. for all five days.

I called the nunnery a few days before the teaching started to see if there were cheaper options and it turned out that there were in village houses. Those options ended up being all taken by the time I arrived at the teaching and luckily for me Jane was attending the teachings too, so we shared a cab each day.

What a contrast to his public audiences. I found the Karmapa to come off as serious and intense, but underneath he is very soft and charmingly funny. From him I learned the Thirty-Seven Practices of the Bodisattva. I also got to take refuge, which makes me officially Buddhist, took the Bodisattva Vow, AND received the oral transmission for the Ngondro. To receive all of these in one teaching, much less one day is uncommon. The ngondro is the preliminary practice that consists of visual meditation and devotion practices, so once I receive the instruction, I can begin. The Karmapa did not give the instruction for the ngondro, so that I will have to seek out elsewhere.

This teaching turned out to be very auspicious. It set the foundation for me to begin my Buddhist practice and revealed the context for my journey, to plant myself in the dharma.