THE SNOW LION NEWSLETTER

A Letter to the Late Bokar Rinpoche
by Ngawang Zangpo

Dear Bokar Rinpoché,

When great masters like you pass beyond this realm of misery, it signals the time for us, your disciples, to remember your kindness and give thanks. In France, plaques on church walls thank saints for blessings received; in my native Québec, the same notices appear in newspapers. I gather that French saints frequent churches, whereas those in Québec read the daily news. Although I plan to thank you at your home monastery in Mirik, India, I wonder whether you might, like Québecois saints, read newspapers in your pure land. If so, you probably choose this one from Snow Lion Publications, a business born and sustained with the high ideals you would recognize as kindred to your own.

Rinpoché: thanks for blessings received! Thanks endlessly, and unconditionally.

You served Buddhism and us, your woeful followers, to the end, even using your change from one body to the next to shake us from complacent slumber, reminding fools such as I of the impermanence of all things. I really, truly wished, prayed, and expected that you would live longer. So did people who saw you that morning of August 17 before your first and last heart attack. You spent the next days in your final meditation session, your body dead but not vacant as you settled in clear light, centerless and boundless recognition of radiant awareness. That was a gift. It helped soothe the incredible shock of your sudden departure to picture you in your beloved small room again, in front of that immense Tara statue, your companion.

How many happy hours I spent there, collecting your answers to hundreds of questions I brought each year, questions concerning the texts you had me translate. Your schedule was always overloaded, but you would find both time and energy to continue our work. I was only one of many translators you guided with such meticulous care: your devoted servant-disciples Ngödrup-la, Lama Tcheuky Sengé from France, and Lama Tsering Lhamo from Canada were even more present at your feet. How did you find time for us all? How did you make it seem so effortless? How did you find so much good humor and deep wisdom at every meeting, day in, day out?

And you nurtured so many others besides us translators! Young Kalu Rinpoché was first among them. After his father's death, you adopted him and supervised every aspect of his education, even checking his progress on a daily basis. You were his foremost disciple in his last life, the perfect vessel that we all wished to be, but weren't. You were now his perfect teacher. The last time you gave us the Shangpa Kagyu empowerments and transmissions in October 2001, he insisted that he attend. You allowed him, an eleven-year-old, to sit beside you as you bestowed the heart-blood of the lineage you received from him years before, when he was old and you were young.

For years since you founded your monastery in Mirik, you served all the young monks given to your care. Your reputation as a teacher and meditation master made your monastery a dreamed-of destination for parents concerned that their boys make good use of their human rebirth. Yet for many years, you refused most requests for admission: you cared about quality, not quantity. Like Buddha Shakyamuni before you, you attended to every detail of your monks' lives-their training, education, and well-being.

You were also the master of multiple three-year retreat centers. Both Kalu Rinpoché and Karmapa had you lead their respective three-year retreats for many years. Even now, you have a retreat center at your own monastery, with a second soon to be completed. You also directed Jamgon Kongtrul's retreat center. For every person who has completed a three-year retreat under your direct guidance, your name is as good as gold. Countless Tibetan and Western meditators streamed to your side in India, and you gave them the best advice available under this blue sky. As your translator, I witnessed how you whole-heartedly encouraged qualified men and women graduates from Western three-year retreats to serve Buddhist groups as full-fledged spiritual guides. You looked at individuals' qualities, not their gender or racial background. You led through your perfect example, and you shared your wealth.

You also guided thousands of disciples worldwide thanks to your yearly seminary on meditation. Persons from Europe, North and South America, and south-east Asia gathered at your feet each year to drink your instructions, and they followed your detailed course that guided them in meditation on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis until the following year's gathering. How skillful! How vital! How fortunate those persons were, to learn from the Kagyu school's senior meditation master.

But you could not please everyone: some felt unhappy that you decided to not travel. I translated for you when you accompanied Kalu Rinpoché throughout south-east Asia and Japan, but travel didn't interest you. You yearned for a deeper connection with those who came to you for guidance. Thus, you were unknown to many, and this remained true long after Kalu Rinpoché introduced you to his disciples with these words (in France, August 30, 1987):

It's likely that you don't know exactly who Bokar Rinpoché is.

 

In western Tibet there was a monastery known as Bokar Monastery, where once lived a very great lama, Karma Shérab Özer. Bokar Rinpoché is that lama's reincarnation. When tragedy erupted in Tibet, he went into exile in India, where he met me in Darjeeling. Since then he has always stayed close to me.

 

In the beginning under my guidance, he completed impeccably the four preliminary practices. His knowledge of the Teachings was excellent.

 

Later, we were able to establish a retreat center in Sonada; Bokar Rinpoché participated in the first three-year, three-month retreat, dedicated to the Shangpa lineage practices. Since I had transmitted every necessary empowerment and instruction, at the end of the retreat I had him become Sonada Monastery's retreat master. He later accomplished the third retreat at Sonada, dedicated to the Karma Kagyu lineage, during which he practiced Naropa's Six Doctrines.

 

When a retreat center was founded at Rumtek, seat of His Holiness Karmapa, that lama as well conferred upon him the responsibility of retreat master.

 

Bokar Rinpoché is an extraordinary lama, perfectly accomplished both in the realm of scholarship and in the realm of meditation.

 

Naropa gave a prophecy to his disciple Marpa that, in his lineage, each disciple would surpass the master who preceded him. Thus, Milarepa, Marpa's direct disciple, surpassed his teacher. Likewise, Bokar Rinpoché will succeed me and be greater than I.

I know you would not agree that you would surpass him: in October, 2001, during a meeting with around fifty western graduates of three-year retreats, you wept as you told us how overwhelmed you felt in having become heir to his lineage and his example. But now, if I had to guess what Kalu Rinpoché foresaw, I'd say that your impact on your disciples has created a mature community permeated with purity of purpose and united in genuine harmony beyond what Kalu Rinpoché managed. You were Gampopa to Kalu Rinpoché's Milarepa-he a wild tantric yogi, drawn to difficult and challenging situations; you, master of the depths of the nature of mind, gave meaning to the words the first Karmapa spoke on meeting Gampopa:

In the Highest Pure Land's palace of the basic space of phenomena,
You embody the essence of past, present, and future buddhas.
Root spiritual master, you directly reveal my mind
To be the body of ultimate enlightenment; at your feet I bow.

Now you've left us, seemingly far too soon: you were sixty-five as the Tibetans measure age. As we calculate years, you didn't reach your sixty-fourth birthday. Your sudden departure has been devastating. One of your devoted disciples, the seventeenth Karmapa Orgyen Trinlé Dorjé, writes at the end of his prayer for your swift rebirth that he finds it difficult to utter your name. The loss we all feel is unfathomable. Yet you've left a rare and precious gift behind: a worldwide community united not only in grief but in the shared vivid memory of your impeccable example. Gentle and wise spiritual master of inconceivable kindness, for those fortunate enough to have seen you for what you are-a concealed Buddha hidden in plain sight-you did a world of good. Thank you, and more please: come back soon!

Ngawang Zangpo