I can call it my luck or I can call it my karma that I had the blissful opportunity to assist His Eminence(H.E.) Rinpochey for two days in one of the Indian cities. It’s not that He needed any assistance, so I should rather say: I just got lucky to be assisted by Him. To my surprise, I have been contemplating on causality for almost a fortnight and I was utterly confused with the way causality, law of karma and freewill works. Had it not been for my research work, I would have concluded in the most simple terms that law of karma is a purely existing phenomena and that causality is not nothing, after being with His Eminence. So what if Arya Nagarjuna is asserting that cause, causal field and effect are existentially and notionally dependent on each other, we are nonetheless always subjected to these laws and we can not completely deny them, therefore, the apparent fruits of happiness or suffering of any sort that we reap are also subsumed under these laws. A 12+ year old boy otherwise, Rinpochey surprised me with His charismatic vibe. I used to be under His blessings since his previous incarnation: My name was assigned by His Eminence’s previous incarnation, H.E. always used to extend advices: I do not remember the advices except one thing that always strikes my emotional-brain when I think about his previous incarnation was when he performed a mask dance (of course without any mask-literally and figuratively) to entertain me as a kid while he was stepping down from the stairs of the loo and of course I starkly remember the last blessing of His Eminence’s previous incarnation where I and my friend was shaken with his radiance that we had to go to a meadow nearby to dissolve the blessings, and this in no way is an exaggeration. I regret losing the srunga(a protective thread- but this one was special with printed mantras) that Rinpoche gave me citing that it was the last of the sort but to my dismay, only later did I realise that he was planning to leave this Bardo and move on to the next, people usually call it Parinirvana but I am little sceptical to use it for a Bodhisattva for they will be around us forever until time exists, if the concept of time is understood the way we generally understand: as an arrow of time. The point I am here to make is simply to record my understanding of these miracles. During our casual conversation in the evening in the hotel, he brought up the unfortunate incident that Ladakh went through in 2010 (5th August, 2010) when it was devastated by vicious cloudbursts and flash-floods, taking lives of hundreds of people and destroying everything on its way, telling the people of Ladakh about impermanence, though a wrathful but still a strong message, alas! people have already forgotten everything. I am but a believer in collective karma, that Ladakh as a whole society trivialised the importance of the environment and became more and more greedy. I was surprised to hear Rinpochey talk about his previous life (I can’t say jokingly or not) and expressed that the devastating flash-flood occurred right in between the time when Rinpochey entered the afterlife bardo and His next rebirth. He said that the deities, gods and demigods became furious with His so called death and then their wrath manifested in the form of cloudbursts and flash-foods in Ladakh, which of course doesn’t make sense logically, so I am assuming that He was simply making a funny comment. To this, I responded, under the guise of my limited brain, that dying is a part of being alive but now as I am contemplating, I realise how limited my vision is that I responded to a Rinpochey about such an obvious thing and may be-may be He was talking under the impressions of visions and karmic imprints of his previous birth but still it doesn’t make sense, so it was of-course a joke as He started laughing after His comment. If I overthink this, I would conclude that may be He was upset(which he undoubtedly was) for He couldn’t stop the calamity. I think this is again illogical as it defies the law of Karma: How can Rinpochey wash away the fruits of unwholesome deeds of the victims? So, logic says He might simply be sad to learn about the sufferings of the victims and the butterfly effect it created in the lives of many. I do not understand these things(karma, causality etc.) especially when I try to think logically because I am realising that logic, language or symbols are mere illusory staircase(s) to be abandoned later. The truth or the reality is beyond logic, words and common sense. Long story short, H.E. was not happy about the cloudbursts and flash-floods.
My notes might sound like Rinpochey is not a kid at all. It is not like the childishness within Rinpochey does not manifest, it does at times, when he plays with us like a kid, which is nothing surprising but the fact that steals away my heart is his maturity, talks and actions which are way beyond his age. True that Rinpochey has grown amongst the grown-ups, disciplined by elders and taught hardcore Buddhist texts, yet there is something that can’t be explained or it might merely be my prejudiced perspective. I personally feel that Rinpchey(s) should be strictly disciplined and taught the best to keep the sacred institution intact.
Rinpoche was jokingly asking me to get married or else I would end up being alone and I replied jokingly, that when the world is anyway coming to an end what is the point in getting married if it was not meant to help a sentient being of a certain lower-realm to get a precious human life. I just made up the latter half of my reply and did not speak it in real. Rinpochey commented that after 40 years of age I won’t find a match. Rinpoche again jokingly asked me to buy(when in the mall) a wallet for the girl, to which I replied for my future wife? He said yes hopefully for someone in future, and I responded “okay I will buy one as per Rinpoche’s suggestions and keep it safe until I meet her”. A decade old boy talking maturely about the unwritten rules of society, let’s just call it coincidence because I don’t want to mystify His Eminence, because at the conventional level, I guess even Arya Nagarjuna endorses the way the world works just the way we think it does and within the domain of dependent-origination.
[These stories, I believe will make sense at one point of time in my life, so I am just rejoicing and recording it up for my future reference.]
The merits, thus and if, accumulated shall be supplemented in eliminating the hardships and impediments encountered in establishing Him as the true definition of a Rinpochey!
