Last weekend Mingyur Rinpoche came to Montreal. I followed him around like a groupie. First for a six hour day of introductory lectures and guided meditation (I sat with my mother in the second row.) Then a talk at the brain imaging centre at the Montreal neuro (where my mother had recently had a brain shunt put in), and finally for a two hour White Tara empowerment ceremony.This ceremony was very different from the low floor secularism that Mingyur Rinpoche has become famous for. It was closer to the mass I have known all my life as a Catholic. There was chanting. There was a high and elaborate ceremonial hat. There were white diaphanous scarves that were placed around our necks. There were offerings and communion food. But there was a lightness that made it substantially different.
"I wish you all had this hat," he joked in the middle of the ritual, in which we all imagined the "White Tara" the embodiment of the female buddha nature sitting above our head, and imagined feeling what she felt, and knowing what she knew. The communion was a procession of nuts, fruits, and finally cheezies. Yes, that's right, instead of the tasteless wafer I have known, so carefully designed to leave the mouth drier and hungrier after its dissolution, this white Tara ceremony ended with a puff of artificial cheese flavour, designed in its way to bring you to a bliss point that will also leave you wanting more.
But without the lovingly cultivated bliss of a strong and stable practice, whatever "more" we achieve it achingly transient.
We are enlightened, but not allowed to tell anyone, jokes my Rinpoche. It is believed in Tibetan Buddhism that everyone is fundamentally good and perfect. That we don't recognize our own enlightenment. Through practice, we recognize it from time to time, and through extended, disciplined and authentically loving practice, we can make this recognition intuitive, which is the best definition of enlightenment I can offer right now.
Through this ceremony, I have taken the boddhisatva vow. I will practice every day, and work to increase my hours of practice in the hope that I can make this knowledge intuitive for all.
