The Little Buddha

Apprentice I have been practicing shi-nè for a year now, and I swear it’s making me crazier rather than saner.

Ngak’chang Rinpoche That is as may be—but alternatively you could simply be discovering what was happening before you were aware that it was happening.  Most people have minds full of meschuggas—but that does not necessarily define them as card-carrying meschugganahs.

Apprentice My mind seems like a tornado.

Ngak’chang Rinpoche That sounds jolly energetic. Welcome to the party. 

Apprentice: Every time I let go of a thought about 76 more of them just pop out of the ground.

Ngak’chang Rinpoche That sounds like Alexander’s Ragtime Band—are you sure they were not trombones?

Apprentice Did you ever see the film Little Buddha?

Ngak’chang Rinpoche Yes—it was a dreadful series of clichés.  I realise it was well intentioned, but  . . .  I really do not believe it was a service to Dharma.

Apprentice I rented it about a month ago. During the scene under the bodhi tree, Keanu Reeves looks up at some point and there is a huge army coming over a hill looking like the Huns about to sack Rome . . .

Ngak’chang Rinpoche Wasn’t it nuns?

Apprentice . . .with all kinds of grisly iron weapons and all screaming at the top of their lungs. I cracked up and almost fell off the couch. That’s my mind! Why the hell am I doing this?

Ngak’chang Rinpoche  Good question.  That is indeed your mind—and maybe that is why the hell you are engaged upon the great experiment.  Turkey-Creek Jack Johnson asked Doc Holiday—at the conclusion of a harrowing gun battle, when Doc is evidently feeling the strain of tuberculosis—“What the hell are you doing this for anyway?”  Doc Holiday responds, “Wyatt Earp is my friend.”  Creek comments, “Hell, I got lots of friends.”  To which Doc Holiday replies, “I don’t.” [In the movie Tombstone, screenplay by Kevin Jarre, 1993.] So what is the moral of this story?  None—but I thought I would tell it anyway.  And maybe that is the moral. Why are we doing this?  Someone could say to me: “Hell, I got lots of better things to do.” And I would reply “I don’t.”   I really have nothing in the world that is better to do than sit by the grave of ‘do’, in order that I can ‘be’—and be undefined.  The space of being lies behind those nuns (and monks) with their grisly iron weapons all screaming at the top of their lungs. They arise out of it and they dissolve back into it.  We have the choice of being the space or being the mayhem, but the choice does not mean we have to resent the mayhem.  I am very happy that you ‘cracked up and almost fell off the couch’ though.  This would be a good time to sit.