Kagyu

And that just seems nice.

You know, you're very different from the Kagyu teacher, Ken McLeod.

You have very different approaches, and yet you both have the same struggle, how to render this in English in a way that is meaningful and that sinks in the way it does in Tibetan.

You both understand and know Tibetan well, and you're trying to accomplish the same thing.

Nundro is not something that Marpa had Mila do.

That's Nyingma, or becoming Kargyu.

They were Nyingma, they created Kargyu.

However, once we got to Gampopa, it was a Kargyu line, monastic, many at a time.

And so different methods of working with this were occurring, but I don't think it's Western versus Tibetan.

Much more Nyingma versus Kargyu.

Now, my studies with the Bon, Nundro is encouraged, but not necessarily for everyone.

And not necessarily at all times.

It's another method of coming to perceive your own mind.

It's primarily taught in the Kargyu lineage.

Naropa, Tilopa, Milamarpa.

I have the teachings on it that were given privately by the 16th Dalai Lama.

I have not had at all the Shakya one.

All I've had is Tantra and Shakya.

whereas I have had this in Nyingma, Kargyu, and Bon, and Galupa, via Majumika.

So does this begin as a sort of scholarly thing to tell you what all these words mean?

In this episode, I am once again joined by Samuel Bersholz, a senior teacher in the Nyingma and Kagyu lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, founder of Shambhala Publications and author of Rude Awakenings, An Unconventional Guide to the Buddhist Path.

Sam reflects on the controversial behavior of his guru, Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa, explores the uneasy relationship between enlightenment and morality, and reports Tinlinobur Rinpoche's enthusiasm for cleaning and toilet hygiene.

Sam explains why he believes that the ground of meditation is hopelessness.

But it's this self-referencing.

um an enlightened being ceases to be self-referencing there is no self to reference now does that mean they disappear and no things are just exactly as they are that person is a person or at least we perceive them as such who knows right you know uh But it also says in the scriptures, it takes an enlightened being to see if another being is enlightened.

So like in the case of Milarepa, who's a great Kagyu, I mean, the great Kagyu yogi, You won't hear anyone say that he was an enlightened being, whether they're Geluk, Nyingma, Sakya, you know, whatever, because it all comes out in his songs of realization.

They are genuine, even when translated into bad English.

In Rude Awakenings...

And there's a lot else to say and running funerals for people and stuff like that.

And actually anyone who's listening from the UK, we have our annual death, exploring death and dying day, which is on Halloween this year, very suitably, where we have a whole day of workshops, talks, lectures, art exhibitions at the Buddhist center where I lived in London, Kagyu Samazon.

um, exploring death and dying.

And I'll be giving a talk there too.

So I went to San Francisco to get my, I thought, a master's degree at California Institute of Asian Studies.

And it just happened to be situated in the Dolores Heights area of San Francisco next to Kagyu Drodin Khunchab, which was a Kagyu tradition Tibetan center under Lama Lodro Kala Rinpoche.

the karmapa and i moved in there i lived there i lived there for two years and i got really heavily into the tibetan buddhist teachings uh and went you know did the 111 000 prostrations and you know did that started on the the you know the whole nundro and um but i but eventually And I did.

I did the eight nunyes.

And then the Truku system kind of maybe started from that time onwards.

So the Kagyu started it.

Yes, yes, definitely.

The first Karmapa Truku is the first Truku system in Tibet.

There was a lot of debates and question and answer going on.

But in Chinese, they have some tradition.

Does that have to be agreed within the lineage, like Nyingma or Kagyu or all of

them? In Vinaya, there's no Nyingma in Kagyu.