It is with regret that I hear of the brutal murder of the Akong Rinpoche ( Notes: -Akong = his main name. Rinpoche = a title in Tibetan meaning precious one) and two of his companions in Chengdu province in China. Like most Tibetans he was a man of peace. He was also a man of great accomplishments. Our paths almost crossed when I visited his Samye Ling monastery in Eskdalemuir in Scotland in the early 1980’s. Unfortunately he was away at that time. The community in Samye Ling all regarded him with great reverence. Had the Akong been present at that time I would have requested a meeting with him. These days I seem to be the Devil’s advocate for taking the opposite point of view with religious people and separately with atheist scientists. With religious people I like to point out that science truths are on a stronger foundation that religious textual truths. No one can know the truth. In a hundred years from now scientific truths will be different. However, at least we have invented a process that should take us nearer to the truth. With atheist scientists I point out that that there must still be a deep seated need to believe that there is something higher in control and something beyond our very short lives. To my knowledge there never has been an atheist country or even an atheist tribe. Communist atheism was only a small veneer above religious countries. It is also wrong to be disrespectful of religious beliefs. For even if the beliefs are wrong, good can still flow out of them. You would have to ignore scientific results to say that there is no merit in meditation and hathna Yoga for instance. I have strange memories of Samye Ling. It is the first Tibetan monastery in Scotland that was named after the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet. I remember purchasing a book written by the other co-founder of Samye Ling, Chogyam Trungpa and reading it in a very short time. I remember the wooden stove in the middle of a musky reading room. The room was covered wall to wall with religious books. I was rather ignorant of Buddhism and Tibetan Lamaism so my dumb questions didn’t make me a big hit with the community there. About two thirds of the community were committed Buddhists the rest were kind of hippies who liked to live in a peaceful culturally rich environment. At the time most of the community lived in or near a manor house and a magnificent temple was being built by the side. All kinds of Tibetan and Chinese arts were being practised on the grounds. This included such things as Tai Chi and the wonderful Tibetan iconography. I stayed in a room which was rather Spartan except for idol of the six armed green goddess Tara. It looked like a gigantic spider when I turned the lights off. One of my not so dumb questions was of Tara. Surely Buddhism doesn’t recognise any gods and goddesses? An Englishman, who befriended me and who had been there for sometime before me, recalled asking the same question of a Buddhist monk. He was told that, ‘the green goddess Tara was just a figment of his imagination’. I said, ’I see like a helper along the way ( to enlightenment)’. He agreed. It was middle to late November and snow was already on the ground. Another strong recollection is of watching an old Buddhist monk in pinkish and totally Tibetan gown coming in at night and shaking the snow off his shoes. He noticed me watching him intently and he just smiled. The next day I was determined to find out more about the place by making the six in the morning prayers. I was expecting a fair proportion of the community to be there and would just follow their example. Instead of which I found myself to be in about as alien environment as I had ever been to that point in my life. There was group of about five monks playing instruments I had never seen before and they were chanting in Tibetan of course. There was just one single woman lying prostrate in front of them. This made me wonder if I was supposed to do the same. Then I thought, ‘don’t be so silly’, and I settled down in my as near as I could make it lotus meditation position about two thirds to the back of the hall. To my right but further in to the hall was a kind of alter with a large picture of the leader of that Kagyu sect (Karmapa) and either side of that was two large swastika flags. I was aware that the swastika didn’t mean the same thing to people in India and Tibet but it still made me feel uncomfortable. The barren nature of the hall and my over proportioned presence in it also made me feel uncomfortable. Anyhow, I survived that and I achieved what I set out to achieve. It was like visiting a foreign country on the cheap. This is thanks to the Akong Rinpoche and amazing people he collected around him.
Posted on: Thu, 17 Oct 2013 13:29:52 +0000
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