As you all know, the recent journey to Ladakh has been cut short due to my health. I had to cancel the programs in Nyoma at the very last minute, but my friends and students there were extremely understanding and they kept urging me to rest more and return whenever I am better. Sometimes, when I look at this objectively, none of us can run away from karma. We can do something to reduce the impact, but to completely avoid it is almost impossible. I have told you the story of Buddha some months ago and I am going to tell you the story of one of my favourite heroes, Nagarjuna, known as the founder of Mahayana Buddhism as well as the Middle Path Buddhism.
As I am not so good in history and I am not learned in that sense, I cannot tell you the full details of his life. But the thing I want to tell you here is about his death. His death itself is a great teaching on karma. Of course, all Bodhisattvas have amazing births and deaths and live amazing lives that are fully beneficial to all sentient beings, even though some of them do not show the miracles and even though some of them display activities that are not acceptable by our common perception.
It was said that Nagarjuna attained the energy of eternity and he could not die even if he wanted to. After living for 600 years, he was still not dying. But at the end his head was cut off by a prince using a kusha grass. One may wonder how this could happen and how could a grass cut off a human's head, especially the head of a great Bodhisattva. Well, Nagarjuna said to the prince who was attempting to kill him with a sword and all kinds of weapon and failed, that in one of his previous lives, he (Nagarjuna) had killed an insect by cutting off its head while cutting kusha grass, so the prince could easily cut off his head with a kusha grass, as this was a karmic retribution that he had to face. There was another version saying Nagarjuna in one of his previous lives cut off an insect's head with a kusha grass and the insect had returned in the form of the prince. In either version, this is a teaching of karma. So even Great Bodhisattvas like Nagarjuna and even Buddha himself had to be experiencing the results of karma, what makes us think that we can run away from our own karma?
This time I had a great opportunity to be with Kyabgon Drukpa Yongdzin and I was very happy that he received a very warm and spectacular reception in Ladakh, especially in Hemis. We have to be grateful that his first incarnation sent one of our greatest yogis, Taktsang Repa, to Ladakh so that many beings in Ladakh and surrounding regions benefited. As you all know, his previous life was one of my best friends. I can almost say that he was like my own brother. He was so smart. He had photographic memory and strength of a superman. The Drukpa Yongdzins are known as the direct and genuine reincarnations of Jetsun Milarepa and not only that, they are manifestations of Manjushri. I was always admiring him. While I had to read many times to recall the imprints, he just had to mumble through the texts quickly and he remembered everything. My late Guru Thuksey Rinpoche and Khen Rinpoche (Khenpo Noryang) had to find a very clever way to trap him so that he could surrender his naughty acts such as going out for midnight movies and roaming around in town, so they told him that he had to recite a very thick holy text of a few hundred pages without looking at it, in front of hundreds of monks. They thought this could make him stay in the room and be good. I still remember him coming to my room and asking me to lend him the text, and I was so worried for him, because I knew that if he failed to memorise the text and recite correctly in front of the monks, he would be in very big trouble. But in just a few days, he memorised everything and recited it without any mistake in the hall, and he did not miss out on his usual night outings. I was really a great admirer of him. There was though one thing I did not agree. He was a great lover of killing small insects, he would snap at the poor insects and break them into half. Of course, I should not judge because he was a Great Bodhisattva and perhaps he was showing me a great teaching of karma, because I know for sure that he was an enlightened being. As you all know, he was later killed in a tragic car accident, in which the steering cut him into half and as the accident happened in mid summer, his body rot very quickly and was consumed by many worms. I told his present reincarnation about this and said very clearly that we as spiritual teachers have to live by examples, especially in this degenerate time. Even if we are yogis, our yogi lifestyle is not for misleading others, it's our own practice. It is important that we don't waste our life giving wrong impression of what spirituality is and this is a way to mislead beings.
We have to guard our mind all the time. Our mind is always very naughty. We always want to do naughty things, break the precepts and try to cross all the limits. We worry much later when the signs of retribution are near. What's the point of worrying about the results after you kill someone or after you bring harm to others? In the first place, you should not even have done it! Some of my friends and students would come and apologise whenever something goes wrong or whenever they do something wrong, I always tell them, "Don't apologise, just stop doing and correct your mind and action immediately." What's the point of becoming Mr. Sorry and Miss Sorry, and yet you continue to make the same mistakes and harm others. I don't like this idea of having guilt or shame, it is more important that we all become more alert with the things running around in our mind. If we are able to guard our mind, everything will be okay. The problem is we are always allowing our mind to be lazy and we always give ourselves excuses not to correct our downfalls, saying things like, "I am very busy. I have a lot of things to do." or "Others are doing the same thing, so it's okay for me too." This is nonsense!
To tell you the truth, it is becoming more and more difficult to be genuine and honest. But at least you should be honest to yourself. If we look at the history of 5,000 years, even 10,000 years, we would realise that nothing has changed. Beings who are unfortunately unable to guard their minds are constantly under the influence of their ego and the 5 afflictive emotions. Greed, ignorance, anger, jealousy and pride are always haunting them, so the entire life is wasted. Even if they have met the greatest being, the most enlightened master or the kindest guidance, so long as they cannot reduce the influence of the 5 poisons and they are happily flowing with the 5 poisons thinking that with whatever blessing, nothing will happen to them, they will one day have to pay back big time. Even if Lord Buddha comes and even if Avalokiteshvara comes, nothing can be done. We are the boss of our own destiny. My advice to everyone is that please watch your mind and do not do anything that is harmful to others and yourself. Karma is like a shadow that follows you everywhere.
Photos are already on Facebook that I can see very nicely, thanks to the team of my friends and students who are offering this as a gift to all of us.
Before I went to Ladakh, several Tibetan media interviewed me on different subjects. I took the opportunity to declare that I do not agree with the decision taken at the recent meeting on turn-wise Kagyu leadership among heads of the different lineages. It was very clearly translated into English by Lobsang Thargay, my personal assistant and for those of you who can understand Tibetan, I think they have also provided the original audio interview.
