Oral Transmissions

On Tuesday, October 12^th, Rowan Fairgrove and I attended a “teaching” of the Dali Lama at the San Jose Convention Center in down town San Jose California. Dali Lama means “Ocean of Compassion”. [Tibetan : Mongolian dalai, ocean + Tibetan bla-ma, monk (so called because he is known as the ocean of compassion).

I always enjoy listening to the Dali Lama because you generally come away with the impression that he has been talking directly to you. Unfortunately the venue did not help this transmission of knowledge very much. They asked the interfaith community to be there at 12PM with which Rowan and I faithfully complied (despite spilling tamale sauce all over my white blouse and having to go back to Rowan’s to wash it before hand). It took about 10 minutes to get through security to move to our seats. Hummm, the seats! The seats were small and narrow and it was worse than an economy air ticket on a five hour flight. We sat waiting, for about two hours, then sat another two hours to listen to the oral transmission of the wisdom of the “Eight Verses for Training the Mind.”

He opened by saying that a larger background in training the mind was necessary to arrive at these verses in understanding, but as we did not have the time, it was not necessary today; a pragmatic and delightfully fresh approach to religious training. He spoke to the calming of the mind and the stepping aside from the emotions in order to think clearly. He said that it is in the most emotional of situations that we need the clearest of thinking. We need to analyze and contain those triggers leading to emotion and defuse them before they get out of control. In that way if you cannot avoid conflict at least you will have the clarity of thought to allow you do decide where to throw your punch to do the most good. Got to love it. He spoke as well to the Wisdom of Impermanence and letting go of material things, and of not allowing mundane concerns to color religious practice. He ended by having us all read the verses out loud, turning to the Vietnamese monks on stage and saying, “you can read in Vietnamese wa wa wa wa etc and the rest of us will read in English”. Then he laughed a delightful belly laugh that the monks shared. He ended the teaching with the words “thus ends the oral transmission”.

A financial report in service to transparency followed. The figures I quote here are approximate as I did not write them down. They spent about $350 (something),000.00 on the event and cleared about $85, 000 which was split three ways; one third was to go to the foundation supporting the Dali Lama, one third to the Gyuto Vajrayana Center who produced the event, and one third to various charities. They did announce that the teaching had been taped and would appear on You Tube soon as well.

After having held us hostage and torturing us for four hours we hobbled off to the Interfaith reception moving at the speed of mud through the crowd. Having arrived we were offered a…snack?...of an apple and a muffin. I shamelessly ate the muffin. (Thank the Gods for the tamale sauce lunch that Rowan thought to suggest prior to the event.)

The speakers for the reception included Rev. Dorsey Blake, Acharya Prabodh Chaitanya, Rev. Mathew Fox, Dr. Thupten Jinpa, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Noah Levine, Bishop Koshin Ogui, Rev. Murshida Ana Perez-Christi , Ann Marie Sayers, Samina Sundas, and Prof. Huston Smith. In the interest of already lost brevity I will not cover the speakers’ except to say that they each discussed the Dali Lama’s talk in light of their own work. I did really like a quote Rev. Fox shared which apparently originated from a Scientist friend of his…

”we are the only species on the planet that can choose not to go extinct. Of course we have not yet made that decision”.

Needless to say despite the fact that each speaker had only four minutes and held to that, it went on for far too long and the moment the speakers were finished (now 6:15 PM) about half of the attendees got up and left, leaving much of the program unfinished. Rowan and I stayed at least until folks could make announcements and then beat feet along with the rest of the mob to find a decent restaurant and eat.

One last note: Please pay attention to how you dress at these events. I was shocked to see people showing up to listen to His Holiness dressed in cut offs and tee shirts with thongs on their feet. Let us set an example of how to show respect to our contemporaries and elders in wisdom…oh and it’s probably a good idea to avoid Tamales before one of these events.

In Her service and yours,

R. Watcher, NPIO, National Interfaith Representative