The Faithful

One of the most humbling experiences of my life occurred today in Thimpu. As I strolled through the DungKor, the prayer wheel house, turning the huge cylinders filled with millions of prayers, I was suddenly surrounded by a throng of elderly Bhutanese faithful. It is traditional for many devoted lay practitioners to spend their later years close to sacred shrines, stupas or temples, turning their hand-held prayer wheels, malas and continually reciting mantra. It is a community of faithful, many of whom are clearly of little material means and in various states of failing health and the decay of aging. Their minds and hearts burn bright with devotion. On seeing me in my Ngakpa garb, they drew forward to ask for blessings of both themselves and their well-worn rosary beads. I was taken aback. These holy robes draw strange stares, derision or confusion in many parts of the world. But here, they mean what they really mean. I wear robes as a practice. They convey tremendous blessings and just carrying them on my body is of immense benefit. They are a reminder, they contain one’s behavior and demeanor and remind one always of the tremendous compassion, purity and integrity of the lineage. Robes are something to live in, and something to live up to. However, I dont wear them all the time. Always at work, while doing healing and doctoring, always at dharma events, and when I am in a place and culture where the sight of them benefits others. If viewing them creates animosity or confusion in others, there is no benefit and no point in displaying them. However, even in Western dharma centers, Ngakpa robes are generally misunderstood, direspected and their meaning lost in the self-absortion of spiritual materialism that pervades the West.

Here, they mean someone devoted to mantric practice, to Mahayana compassion, to Vajrayana transformation. They devoted, simple and straight-forward beings, who approached me with smiles and sacred intention, reminded me of my own practice, of what I could do if my mantric strength ever reached its potential—or even came close. I looked at each of them as they offered their malas, and spoke the mantras appropriate to each: White Tara, Vajrayogini, Amithaba, Chenrezig, Hayagriva. Their inner joy and focus is the precious stuff of dharma, the real practice of Cutting Through self-clinging and devoting one’s being, surrendering one’s egocentricity, to the unborn, unelaborated purity which is our real “identity.”

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