 |
|
| "Extraordinary beings with extraordinary qualities of consciousness could transform the future of our planet." |
|
| - Namgyal Rinpoche, 1974 |
|
|
|
|
| The Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche |
|
| 11 Oct 1931 - 22 Oct 2003 |
|
| An article by John Munroe |
|
Canadian-born lama Namgyal Rinpoche, one of the earliest Western teachers to be recognized as an awakened incarnate lama by the great masters of Tibetan Buddhism, taught Dharma to Westerners for nearly four decades.
Born George Dawson in Ontario Canada in 1931 to parents of Irish and Scottish descent, Rinpoche traveled to Europe and India as a young man. He was ordained by Burmese meditation master Sayadaw U Thila Wanta as a novice monk in 1958 at Bodhgaya, and later the same year as a full bhikkhu (Buddhist monk) at the Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon with the ordination name of Ananda Bodhi. After a number of years of practice and study in Asia, he returned to Canada, and a following of students gradually grew up around him in Toronto.
As the teaching in the city progressed, Rinpoche founded the Dharma Centre of Canada on 400 acres of woodlands north of Toronto in 1966. While he often taught his students who practiced there, Rinpoche himself held to the life of a wanderer, traveling and teaching, often conducting courses with a handful of students on cargo ships. "There's nowhere to run when you're on a boat in the middle of the ocean," laughs Achariya Doug Duncan, a student of Namgyal Rinpoche for over twenty-five years and a recognized and respected Dharma teacher in his own right for the past twenty currently teaching in Kyoto. "The teacher-student relationship can often be quite hands-on and direct depending on the needs of the particular student, and sometimes students tend to roll up the mat and make a run for it when things get just a bit too uncomfortable. By traveling with the teacher, students find that they are less likely to retreat into their habitual patterns as an escape from the revolutionary, at times unsettling nature of this direct teaching." They traveled often, to Greece and Italy, to Australia and New Zealand, to Africa and India and South America.
It was on one of these trips that Ananda Bodhi, together with over a hundred of his students, arrived in Rumtek, Sikkim and went to visit His Holiness the Sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, head of the Karma Kargyu order and one of Tibetan Buddhism's most revered teachers. The Karmapa immediately recognized Ananda Bodhi as a fully awakened teacher, named him Karma Tenzin Dorje Namgyal Rinpoche, and presented him with robes and implements of the Namgyal lineage that had been in the Karmapa's keeping.
"The Namgyal incarnation is traditionally associated with bringing the teachings into new territory," Doug Duncan asserts. "That can certainly be said of Namgyal Rinpoche, bringing to the teachings a Western format that cuts through cultural barriers." Before long, Namgyal Rinpoche was recognized by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and by the heads of all the major sects of Tibetan Buddhism. The head of the Nyingma sect declared that Namgyal Rinpoche was a reincarnation of Lama Mipham, a many-talented Tibetan Nyingma lama who died earlier this century.
This encounter with the Tibetan tradition and the subsequent transmissions from the Karmapa that occurred in Sikkim marked a watershed in Ananda Bodhi's teaching. Tibetan practices and initiations became a standard feature of his instruction, and he came to be known as the Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche. Many notable Tibetan teachers came to visit the Dharma Center, including Kalu Rinpoche, His Holiness Sakya Trinzin (head of the Sakya order of Tibetan Buddhism), Ayang Rinpoche, and at Namgyal Rinpoche's invitation, His Holiness the Karmapa himself. The Dharma Center began to take on a distinctly Tibetan Buddhist atmosphere.
As the Tibetan tradition became more popular in the seventies, however, many people became attracted to the exotic nature and colorful pageantry of these teachings. A period came when Namgyal Rinpoche berated his students for being entranced by the form and missing the essence of the teachings. "You people are fooling yourselves," he exclaimed, and for a time he dropped all visible manifestations of the Tibetan tradition from his teaching.
"It's known as using the medicine as poison", according to Doug Duncan. "Awakening isn't about finding a better culture or religion. In fact, it isn't even about meditation. It's about waking up; it's about becoming free from being subject to suffering. It's about learning to look at our experience directly, with honesty and integrity. In the final analysis, it's about freedom, and anything that gets in the way of that goal is counterproductive, however great its potential."
Namgyal Rinpoche responded by developing meditation practices that used traditional Buddhist mindfulness meditations in a Western format, such as the holistic clearing meditation. He began three-year summer school courses at the Dharma Center which included science and mathematics, and placed greater emphasis on the teachings of the Western mystical tradition. "Later," explains Doug Duncan, "having weaned his students of cultural and religious myopia, he returned to further explore and expound on the Tibetan teachings in all their profound beauty."
Right up until his death on October 22, 2003 in Switzerland, Rinpoche continued to travel the globe, offering teachings on the road, as well as at retreat centers in North and Central America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. His teachings around the world have included several trips to Japan in the seventies, eighties and nineties, during which he taught courses in Kyoto and in the sacred home of an ancient Japanese Vajrayana lineage, Mt. Koya. In addition to traditional Theravadin and Vajrayana methods, Rinpoche emphasized exploration of the planet and all its life forms as a path to awakening. Many types of study and exploration, from scuba diving and whale watching to botany and astronomy, were encouraged. "Buddhist psychology states that in every moment of interest, metta or lovingkindness is present, and this is one of the key pre-requisites for transcendence," Namgyal often pointed out. "Following your bliss leads the being on to brighter, more compassionate states of consciousness."
Like his predecessor, Lama Mipham, Namgyal Rinpoche was known as a renaissance man of many interests in addition to being a fully awakened meditation master, and his students have included psychologists, writers, scientists, poets, composers, entrepreneurs and filmmakers. His teaching was non-sectarian, and he taught diverse groups such as Christians and members of the Masonic Order in addition to a wide variety of Buddhist groups. In the final analysis, Namgyal Rinpoche's unique approach to teaching defied rigid categorization or conventional labels.
"Any living teaching is always a cresting wave that includes everything that has come before, but that goes beyond a fixed method or practice," says Doug Duncan, "to make it a living, breathing transmission that is not dependent upon any specific culture or method. In that sense, the teaching cannot be said to be anything in particular. It is nevertheless rooted in age-old understandings, insights and methods.
"The living teaching," he concludes, "remains unnamable."
For almost four decades, through a broad range of continually evolving teachings and methods, Namgyal Rinpoche traveled the planet, helping people to directly experience that unnamable truth for themselves.
Rinpoche passed away peacefully in Switzerland on October 22, 2003.
|
|
|
|
|
|
