Rinpoche brings enlightenment to campus
For many, life has grown increasingly chaotic: balancing work and family, while having a little personal time, has become all too often difficult and filled with stress.
But how do you alleviate it? Geshe Chongtul Rinpoche, a pre-eminent high Lama of the Tibetan Bön tradition, recently gave three presentations to a jam-packed lecture hall, focusing on healing and compassion for the world, and offering insight into such topics as stress relief, peaceful and healthy energy, meditation, love and life stability.
According to Rinpoche, one way to release stress was to through compassion energy and friendship. "All people need to be friends with each other," he said during an interview. "Once (I) release the (fear) that people may harm me or give me trouble, once that goes away, the stress goes away."
Rinpoche added that the fear is in not knowing each other, in not knowing the group dynamic. He said that even though people appear trusting on the outside, they might fear others on the inside.
During the first presentation, Rinpoche gave an overview of the Tibetan Bön tradition, highlighting his studies to become a geshe, the highest level attainable and comparable to a doctorate.
He also touched on Dzogchen, considered the most definitive path to enlightenment, and its study of focusing the mind.
"If you can train your mind, you can see the source of the (stress)," he said the first evening. "The source comes from not understanding your mind. Once you do, you will have no suffering."
Citing compassion as the ultimate energy of love in the Bön tradition, he added, "We need to extend that kind of love to all sentient beings."
To achieve this kind of compassion, Dzogchen teaches how to train the mind to focus on one point, even if people can't completely erase all the talk in their minds. "When you look into your mind, it looks like a monkey," he added, speaking metaphorically.
Meditation features prominently in the process. Rinpoche practices this ancient ritual for at least one hour each morning as his schedule permits. "(With meditation) you are trying to calm down and once you do this, you have time and space to concern yourself with taking care of others. That is deep meditation."
In trying to dispel the stereotype, Rinpoche said meditation doesn't require sitting in a small room, cross-legged. People should be comfortable, refreshed and not drowsy, he said, and be in fresh air if possible.
Later in the week, Rinpoche came to Associate Professor of Philosophy Vicki Jenkins' Philosophy and Ethics class where the students had raised more than $1,000 for Bon Shen Ling, Rinpoche's charity that helps Tibetan refugees, primarily children, in India, Nepal, Tibet and other Mongolian community to get a good education.
"Children need financial support," he said. "Many are orphans." In addition to schooling, the organization provides health care, dental care and shelter.
The money Jenkins' class raised will sponsor two young women in India. The remaining funds will to a general fund and Menri Monastery, where Rinpoche first began his studies at age seven, and also to a fund for animals.
Sounds like the students have caught on to Rinpoche's lessons quickly.
Top photo credit: Rosa New '13 (Crockett, Calif.)
