Das - The Snow Lions Turquoise Mane

THE FOURTEENTH DALAI LAMA

Spiritual teachers have universally used stories to illustrate their teachings, and the lamas of Tibet are no exception. Tibetans have tremendous respect for all things religious, especially the literary tradition and those who embody it. We set great store by the written word, particularly the scriptures translated from Indian sources, as well as those later composed by Tibetan masters themselves in the Land of Snow.

However, Tibetans sense of respect has a healthy balance to it. Colored by a direct earthy humor, it does not often sink into mere sanctimoniousness. Figures like the saintly poet Milarepa, the Kadampa Gesh Ben, and more recently the great Dzogchen master Patrul Rinpoche, are much loved for the stories of their antics. Yet because these people were incomparable spiritual practitioners, these accounts invariably provide a vivid example for others to follow.

Many such stories have never been written down, being simply passed on from teacher to disciple down the years in a living oral tradition. Surya Das has gathered a selection he has heard from lamas he has met and has retold them here in English. I am grateful to him for recording this delightful aspect of our tradition and trust that readers will enjoy them as much as generations of Tibetans have done.

The Dalai Lama
June 2, 1992

The south of France seems an unlikely setting for the transmission of the ancient wisdom of Tibet. But it is there, in the region of the Dordogne not far from the prehistoric caves that hold humanitys earliest known art, that masters of Tibetan Buddhism have built a forest hermitage where students from all over the world gather for traditional meditation retreats that last three years, three months, and three days.

And it is there that Surya Das, a wandering Jew from New York by way of Tibet, Nepal, and India, has found himself dedicating long years of his life to learning the spiritual practices of Tibet. At this writing, Surya was in the middle of his third three-year retreat.

As is true of so many good things, Surya Dass role as the recorder of these Tibetan tales came about unintentionally. In the fifth year of two back-to-back three-year retreats, one of Suryas teachers, Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche, asked him to write down stories about the early upholders of their lineage of teachings. The teacher wanted these tales of enlightenment collected and rendered in English so that they might be presented and inspire students in the West. Many of these stories have ended up in this collection.

As Surya recorded the tales, he realized that for over twenty years he had heard many, many stories but that only a few still remained clearly in mind. So he started to collect Tibetan teaching tales, the oral stories that Tibetan masters have always told as part of their bountiful transmission of wisdom and compassion. Many of the tales in this collection, as part of this centuries-old oral tradition, have never been written down before.

The tales captured here for us are glimpses of a living spiritual flame that is passed on from teacher to student in the tantric tradition. In this tradition, it is important that the student hear the tantras directly from the master in order for the living essence of the teaching, the Ihung, to be genuinely transmitted. This oral transmission forms a chain that leads back through the centuries.

While reading these tales is not the same as hearing them told aloud, we can still receive from them a deep richness. Even on paper, the point of a tale is still the point; moreover, it is taught that simply to contact them sows the seeds of liberation.

They come to us at a particularly ripe time in our own cultural evolution. As the very earth and skies reel from the effect of a shallow, materialistic ethic that venerates the short term and unleashes technology without regard for consequence, more and more people in the West are searching for a larger perspective, a timeless wisdom. This perspective is to be found here in abundance.