January 30, 2006
Happy Losar!
Tonight I’m going to Nalanda West to celebrate Losar. I’ve been studying Tibetan Buddhism there since last summer and it’s been a thoroughly delightful experience. After many years of circling the dharma I feel like I have found a way to enter in.
The challenge has always been, and will probably always be, to allow myself to enter into community. Lots of fears and neuroses about that.
But there are (at least) two very positive circumstances that are helping me a lot: one is the mini-sangha of my fellow classmates in the series I’m taking. There are five or six of us that have been there since the beginning, and the depth of the group’s inquiry and committment, and the level of the conversation, has been truly wonderful and memorable. Another immensely helpful quality has been the sangha members who have led the classes–there have been probably six or eight people who have come in at various times. We could not ask for a more mature, wise, and dedicated group of people to learn from.
Behind all this is the wisdom of the community’s teacher, the Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. Although he isn’t involved in the class (I really have only met him in passing once, a long time ago), his presence is clearly felt in the course materials and in the demeanor and energy of his students who teach us in their turn.
So all in all, a very special circumstance. One that makes it possible for me to screw up my courage and go to this big event tonight (potluck, gifts for the lama, the whole nine yards) with at least the minimal amount of neurotic apprehension.
Happy Losar!