A Buddhist icon's wisdom collected by Ellis Widner

BOOK REVIEW A Buddhist icon's wisdom collected
- Ellis Widner
502 words
30 June 2007
The Arkansas Democrat Gazette
19
English
Copyright (c) 2007 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. All rights reserved.

In his Asian Journal, Thomas Merton described Tibetan Buddhist lama Chatral Rinpoche as a "very impressive person ... so obviously a great man." The Catholic monk and writer said he was "profoundly moved" by their November 1968 meeting and discussion on meditation and dzogchen, or direct realization, as well as Buddhist and Christian doctrine.

About his experience with Chatral Rinpoche, the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan lamas, Merton wrote: "... the most significant thing of all [was] the way we were able to communicate with one another and share an essentially spiritual experience of `Buddhism' which is also somehow in harmony with Christianity." Merton died less than a month later in Thailand.

Now 93, Chatral Rinpoche is often described as the greatest living dzogchen master. Much of his life has been spent in retreat; his public teachings are rare. Yet he has gained fame on the strength and integrity of those teachings and the example of his life. It certainly is not a fame gained from writing books because, until now, there never has been one, although he has been mentioned in many and figures prominently in Ian Baker's compelling spiritual travelogue Heart of the World.

Compassionate Action (Snow Lion, $14.95) is the first book that collects a few of Rinpoche's translated teachings and writings. Editor Zach Larson opens the slim volume with a short biography.

Chapters explore aspects of the spiritual life for which Rinpoche (a Tibetan word meaning precious teacher) has become known, including his eloquent and clear teaching on vegetarianism ("Because when you take meat you have to take a being's life. So I gave it up.") and sacred geography - places of enlightenment.

A fascinating segment focuses on Rinpoche's annual trip to Calcutta, India, to buy live fish at the markets, which he releases - some 70 truckloads of them, Larson says - back into the ocean. It is, Larson writes, an expression of Buddhism's bodhisattva vow: that all beings have undergone countless incarnations and, at one point or another, any living creature has been one's mother in a past life.

Larson writes: "Therefore, it is viewed as an obligation to repay the kindness of those who are referred to as `mother sentient beings' ... Rinpoche prays for each fish, that they may one day reach the highest state of perfect enlightenment .... " How does this teacher see himself? "I am just an ordinary sentient being and there is nothing special about me," Rinpoche says. "I just follow the teachings of Lord Buddha. Without any cheating on my part, I stand firmly on the ground in practicing the Dharma and in helping all sentient beings." Compassionate Action includes several pages of photographs and a few prayers written by Rinpoche, including "A Prayer to Avert Nuclear War." Chatral Rinpoche doesn't mince words, but that directness is imbued with the deep compassion and wisdom that inspired Merton nearly 40 years ago.