The Lama of Appearances - Mahamudra Experiences

8/8/2019 The Lama of Appearances - Mahamudra Experiences

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The Dharma in Nature


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The Lama of Appearances

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Experiences with Mahamudra


photos and text

byMichael Erlewine


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Heart Center Publications315 Marion Avenue

Big Rapids, Michigan [email protected]

First Published 2009

Michael Erlewine 2009

ISBN 9781450526258All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, withoutthe prior writte permsission of the publisher.

All photos taken by Michael Erlewine, 2007-2009 Michael Erlewine

Cover, format, and graphic design by Michael Erlewine


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Tis book is respectfully dedicatedto

Venerable Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche,Who introduced me to the nature of the mind,

And to my good friend,Lama Karma Drodul,

Who pointed out to me the Lama of Appearances


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Acknowledgements

First I want to thank my wife Margaret for joining me on many of my trips

out into the world of nature and for helping me to carry equipment!

And thanks to my father Ralph Erlewine for starting me out on photographyback in 1954 with the loan of his Kodak Retina 2a camera.

Tanks to my photography mentors Stanley Livingston, John Shaw, Tom

Hogan, and om Erlewine.

And nally, thanks to my four kids and friends for enjoying the photos andencouraging me to take more of them.


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Experiences with Mahamudra

The Seven Points of Mind Training

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Te Lama of Appearances

Tis book might have been called

something like Zen and the Art ofNature Photography, but I donthappen to be a Zen practitioner.However, after many years of working

with a brilliant ibetan Buddhistteacher and Rinpoche, I did manage(with the aid of photography andnature) to get a glimpse of recognition

(not realization, mind you) as tothe true nature of the mind, and itwas nothing like I had led myself toexpect all those years. Tat is why I am

writing this.

Tere may be some of you, like me,whose expectations and imaginationsare more of an obstacle to spiritual

realization than a help. In fact, ourexpectations can make it almostimpossible to have any realization. Wethink we know what we are supposedto be nding when it comes to spiritualexperience and (by denition) that isexactly what we dont know, and aretrying to nd out. For those folks,

hearing my story might be useful.

Before I relate that story, it is importantto say at least something about howappearances themselves, in particularnatural phenomena or Nature, canassist us in our own realization.

Te word dharma is slowly working

its way into the English language, but


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The Dharma in Natureat this point most people would havea tough time dening it. Originallydharma referred to the teachings

left by the historical Buddha (andsubsequent teachers), teachings meantto point out the method or path forus to achieve realization. Tat is thepoint of all the Buddhist teachings.Terefore the word dharma generallyrefers to the path or means through

which we can discover the true nature

of the mind - enlightenment.

Our personal dharma is the specicway or method that will work for usto gain realization, the particular signsin the world around us that we canpick up on and through which (byfollowing this path) we can eventually

reach realization. It has been said thatthere are 84,000 dharmas or pathwaysto enlightenment, and it is up toeach of us to discover our personal

way to realization, our particulardharma path. We have no choice.

We cant reach realization except bysome particular path, and no one can

do it for us. eachers dont somehowenlighten us. We enlighten ourselvesand the guide or teacher is there topoint out just how this can be done.

And our particular dharma, the meansthrough which we can nd realization,is everywhere around us and always hasbeen right here before our eyes. Our

personal dharma path is present in the


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busiest city as it is in the most remotemountain cave, but due to our variousobscurations we are not yet able to

pick up on it. According to Buddhists,each of us has been wandering forinnumerable lifetimes trying to ndthe path or dharma that will work forus, the particular method that willlead to full realization. Yet up to thispoint we have somehow managed notto see it. We have been distracted in all

the other things we are doing instead.

Tere are thousands of books and textsavailable in which the basic nature ofthe dharma path has been carefullylaid out for us to understand and yet,even if we have read them, we stillhave not gotten it. And that is whygreat dharma teachers are so precious.Tey are able to point out to us thetrue nature of the mind. In fact, inibetan Buddhism the name given tothe very highest lamas is Rinpoche,

which literally means: Precious One.

Of course today there are many whoprofess to teach the dharma. Some

teachers know what they are talkingabout and some are only foolingthemselves and others. And even if

we nd a good lama, the particulardharma or path that they teach maynot be the right one for us. It maynot work for us. It is written that theroot lama for each of us (called sawi

Lama in ibetan) is that lama or guide


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The Dharma in Naturethat is able to nally stop our endless

wandering by pointing out to us thetrue nature of the mind.

Tis, then, is the precious lama weeach are looking for. Yet the personalroot lama we need may not be easyto nd or may not be available in theparticular part of the world we happento live in. And teachers that cannotactually guide us only waste our timeand further distract us from ndinga workable path, which brings me tomy main point, that of the Lama of

Appearances.

Te word lama has many meanings,but here I am using it to refer to thosedharma practitioners with enoughrealization and experience to serve as

guides for the rest of us. In the KarmaKagyu lineage of ibetan Buddhism,someone is called a lama if theyhave completed the traditional 3-yearclosed retreat, which is a very rigorouspractice.

It came as somewhat of a surprisefor me to nd out that there areother kinds of lamas aside from theparticular root lama or personal guide,our main lineage lama. In fact, itis written and taught that there areactually four kinds of lamas or guidesto realization:

(1) Te Lama of Lineage

Te Lama of the our Lineage, the


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particular school or approach toBuddhism to which we naturallybelong, including our root lama.

oday in ibetan Buddhism, there arefour popular lineages, the Gelugpa, theNyingma, the Sakya, and the Kagyu.

Although all four lineages share muchin common, each of the four lineageshas its particular approach or path.For example, I nd that I naturally ammost in tune with the Karma Kagyu

lineage.(2) Te Lama of the Scriptures ofthe Sugatas

Te extant teachings and textsthemselves are considered a lama. TisLama of the Scriptures refers to thedharma teachings themselves as guides,

the actual texts and instructions leftby the Buddha and his enlightenedfollowers.

(3) Te Lama of Dharmadhatu

Tis refers to the nal goal or state ofrealization, where the teacher or guideis the Dharmadhatu and true nature of

the mind itself. I dont know anythingabout this form of lama or guide.

(4) Te Lama of Appearances

And there is also what is called TeLama of Appearances, the lama ofthe natural world surrounding us. Inother words, the world of appearances

we nd ourselves embedded in is also


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The Dharma in Naturea perfect reection of the dharma andcan serve as a lama and guide to usin pointing out the dharma path, if

we will just take notice and observecarefully. Although all appearancesreect the reality of the dharma, I ammainly talking here about the worldof nature that is as close as the nearestparks, elds, woods, and streams.

Nature is also a perfect reection ofthe mind itself. All the truth as taughtby the living lama or written downin the ancient dharma texts is alsoperfectly readable in nature herself.It is all the same text with the samemessage, and pointing to the identicalpath or dharma. In other words, thereare dierent lamas or guides, but onlyone teaching that they all point out ortoward.

In fact, while we are searching fora living lama that works for us, the

world of nature is always presentand is as clear and uninching as anyteacher could be. Te message of thenatural world and the message of the

root lama are in truth the same. Letme give one example:

In all the lineages of ibetanBuddhism, there exist what are calledthe Common Preliminaries orFour Toughts that urn the Mindtoward Dharma. Tese four thoughtshave real power, for only they can

turn our minds away from the endless


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distractions of everyday life andtoward real dharma practice.

Tat is why these four preliminariesare the entrance gate or startingpoint to the dharma for many formsof Buddhist practice. And althoughthey are called preliminaries, theyare hardly only that, for awareness ofthese four thoughts are also consideredessential for the most advanced formsof meditation, such as Mahamudrapractice.

Te Common Preliminaries are alsocalled the Four Toughts Tat urnthe Mind to the Dharma, Te FourToughts Tat urn the Mind, orsimply the Four Toughts. And theyare not some abstract philosophical

conundrums, but are the very essenceof practicality and common sense.

Te Four Toughts

(1) Tis human life we have is precious.

(2) Life is Impermanent and fragile.

(3) We are subject to Karma. Every

action or cause has an eect.(4) Undependable. Our daily worldof business-as-usual is inherentlyunstable and cant be gamed.

When I rst encountered the FourToughts I was amazed at how realand practical they are, just what I had

always been thinking about anyway.


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The Dharma in NatureFor example, the rst thought aboutthe preciousness of having a life: Ialways felt that my life was precious

and I sure did not want to waste it. Iwant to be put to good use and for itto have a purpose.

And impermanence, a thought thathas always been in the back of mymind whenever I can stand to thinkabout it. Everything that is born willalso die, and that includes me! Howcould I avoid coming to terms withthat thought, at least once in a while?

And, although perhaps less obviousthan the rst two thoughts for me

was the third thought relating tokarma. Now here is something I amstill learning about, that every action

I take will have a corresponding eectdepending on my intention and eort.I tend to be a slow learner, and it takesme a long time to examine the badresult again and again, before I nallyam willing to stop doing the actionthat caused it, especially when itcomes to bad eating or pleasure habits

- whatever.Te last of the four thoughts is that this

world around us (the Buddhist call itSamsara) is (by denition) inherentlyundependable. In other words, nomatter how hard I try, I will never getall my ducks in a row, so to speak. Ikeep thinking that I am clever enough

to somehow game the system and have


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only the upside and keep what I dontlike at arms length, but life proves me

wrong consistently.

After having been raised Catholic, withCatholic school, Sunday school, andall of that (rules, warnings, threats, andadmonitions), something as practicaland natural as the Four Toughtsmade perfect sense to me, a breathof fresh air. I was already well on theroad to understanding these conceptson my own. So my introduction to thedharma was a welcome relief to thefear and trembling that my upbringinghad instilled in me concerning mattersof faith and certainty this life and

what comes after life.

Since the four thoughts seemed

more or less obvious and natural tome, I set about learning more aboutthe dharma and its path. And mybeginning meditation attempts led tomore advanced practices and so on it

went. wenty or thirty years of practicewent by and I gradually moved alongto more and more advanced practices.

But it was not until I was introduced toMahamudra meditation (said by manyto be the most advanced and sublimeform of meditation as practiced in theKarma Kagyu Lineage) that I reallyencountered the Four Toughts again,and head on at that.

Of course, I never forgot about the

Four Toughts, anymore than I could


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The Dharma in Natureforget about my eventual death or my

wish to have my life used for a goodpurpose. Yet they were mostly on the

back burner, so to speak, while I wasconcerned with these more advanced(or so I thought) practices. Whenteachings on Mahamudra meditationeventually came my way, the FourToughts were clearly presented not

just as preliminaries, but as essentialto keep constantly in mind when

approaching Mahamudra meditation.In other words, the Four Toughts

were not something to simply touchupon and then move beyond. Te textsclearly point out that it is essential tokeep these thoughts fully in mind(constantly) when undertaking topractice Mahamudra meditationbecause they keep things real and helpto prevent our being distracted byeverything going on around us in life.

So I discovered that in advancedmeditation (like in beginningmeditation), it is important to beaware that life is precious (and so

very impermanent), that our every actwill have results in proportion to ourintent, and that try as we may (likethe fable of the princess and the pea),

we will never quite get comfortablein life, no matter how we feather ournest. Not only are the four thoughtsimportant, but without them there

is no advanced meditation possible.


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But how to keep these four thoughtsalways in mind? Tat is the question.

Of course, nding a qualied dharmateacher is key, and I have the goodfortune to have found a most qualiedlama to work with. But I am not alonein that. Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche,the lama I have worked with for thelast 27 years, has many, many studentsaside from me, and that involvessharing his time, and no one of ushas as much face-to-face time withRinpoche as we might like.

I am not complaining, only explaining. And the point of this whole story isthat there is another very qualiedlama available to us all of the time, onethat is expert at helping us to recognize

the Four Toughts and keep themever in mind, and that is the Lama ofAppearances, particularly apparent inthe world of nature. And nature is asnear as your own backyard where youlive; and the elds, streams, meadows,and woods nearby.

And she is a fully qualied and most-

enlightened teacher!

Nowhere are the Four Toughts moreobviously and consistently pointedout than in Mother Nature. As thephotos in this book hopefully pointout, nature is beautiful. And thatbeauty is real beyond our imagination.

But the reality of impermanence, the


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The Dharma in Natureresults of cause and eect, and thepreciousness of all life are equally realin nature. Nature plays no favorites

and she never blinks. All you have todo is observe. It is all carefully laid out,

written in reality, and as clear as anydharma text. Tere is no confusionabout the laws of nature. We dontbreak them; they break us. Nature is aharsh mistress indeed.

Even a casual acquaintance withthe natural world takes one beyondsentimentality and into how thingsactually are, the reality. If you areemotional about all of this, thenobserving nature is an instant andprolonged heartbreak - all of time. Justlook around you!

Te rst sentence from almost everyBuddhist teacher I have met is thisone:

All beings want to be happy and nobeing wants to suer.

How simple and true! Every sentientbeing is struggling to be happy or at

least content, just as we are, and nobeing enjoys suering. Tat is how itis for all sentient beings. Most animalsspend their entire lives looking overtheir shoulder, terried of being eaten,

while at the same time trying to ndenough food to eat, often anotherbeing. And yet Nature is so peaceful

and beautiful in appearance. Please


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connect the dots for me between thesetwo concepts. How can something sosublime and beautiful be so terrifying?

When we observe nature, we areobserving the Four Toughts clearlyspelled out for us in stark black and

white. Nature shows no mercy, and thelaw of cause and eect is inexorablyexact down to the last detail when itcomes to questions of life and death.Life is so precious for many beingsthat it is hardly there for them but foran instant. In nature, impermanenceis a stark fact, not an abstract concept.

For me (and many people), it takessomething like a death in the family orthe death of a loved one to remind meof impermanence. When something

tragic happens in my life, I come out ofmy forgetfulness of how impermanentlife is, and even then usually only fora short time. I tend to wake up whensomething terric or striking happensto me. Otherwise, I kind of agree toforget about impermanence, which Ind just too painful to remember all

the time. Well, Nature is the cure for that,if we will but observe. Everywherein nature, the four thoughts areclearly demonstrated for all to see;impermanence, the preciousness oflife, action and result, and no realresolution or permanent solution to


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The Dharma in Naturelife. We just have to spend the timeand look around.

And Nature is a brilliant teacher. alkabout equanimity! Nature is alwaysthe same, always on the job, and shenever pulls her punches. Nature tellsit like it is, 24x7. But we do haveto actually take a look and not turnaway or inch at the hard spots. Forexample:

It is painful for me to walk on thetarmac of a road after a rain and ndit covered with earthworms and slugstrying to get from one side to theother just as the Sun comes up. TeSun will fry most of them to a crispbefore they ever reach the other side,and I cant physically pick all of them

up and move them to the other sideof the road and safety. And some areeven crawling in the direction the roadtravels! Here are these sentient beingsstruggling to live like we all do, wipedout by a decision they made to crossthat road at sunup.

Or the broken blue Robins egg on the

sidewalk, with the tiny bird almostready to hatch or still alive, and thecat or Crow raiding the bird nests andeating the hatchlings while the parentsscream and can do nothing to preventit. Tere are countless examples of theday-to-day tragedies that are playedout all around us in the natural world.

Te same rules apply to the human


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world, but we wont go there just now.

I am not going to drag out all of thepossible sentimental thoughts we

could share about how cruel natureis. Nature is a harsh mistress, to besure, but she is simply a reection of areality that, while beautiful indeed, isequally harsh, however much we maylike to dress it up and perfume it. Tatis not my point here.

Tis writing is not about gettingsentimental. It is about takingadvantage of these natural facts to help

wake us up to the reality so clearlyspelled out in nature. Te book ofNature is a tough-love read, for sure,but it is a real teacher available to eachof us all the time. Impermanence is

the smelling salts of the dharma, andwe all could stand a whi of it nowand again. A careful observation ofnature can provide that.

Where and How

I dont have to describe to you wherenature is or how to go about nding

it. Tere are thousands of books andDVDs on nature, everything fromeld guides on down to pictorial coeetable books. I will say somethingabout how I approach nature, whichmay be helpful.

Obviously, rst we have to go out innature. We dont get the full picture by

looking from a mountain top or even


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The Dharma in Natureby standing up. For best results, I haveto get right down in the middle of it,like: sit down. Find a sunny eld or

meadow or a shady brook or woods.When I rst sit down, it usually takessome time before I pick up on whatis going on, and this from both sides.On my side, I need to quiet down and

just rest my mind enough to beginto see what is going on around me.From natures side, my appearance

probably stopped everything but theboldest critters from moving around,and it may take a while for everyoneto resume their activities, but they do.

A good magnifying glass can be a help,as much to further slow you down asto enlarge things. You will soon nd

that there are a wide variety of insects,spiders, amphibians, and sentient lifeall around you, not to mention owersand plants. And they all are eating andbeing eaten, being born and dying,fearlessly attacking other creatures,and at the same time struggling toescape being eaten themselves. It is all

right there, and it is sobering. Tere isnothing like a whi of impermanenceto wake me up to the benets of thedharma practice.

It is so easy to get distracted in the day-to-day hustle and bustle of modernlife. I am swept away daily in a seaof distractions and it can be dicult

to remember to remind myself of the

h f


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Four Toughts, much less manage tokeep them in mind.

However, an hour spent alone in

nature can not only be refreshing initself but, more important, it canbring home to me clearly how thingsreally are. Tere is nothing quite likeseeing a beautiful buttery suddenlycaught and eaten by a praying mantisor other predator right before my eyes.It is all right there, the surprise, the

struggle, the dying the whole thing.And the analogies to my own life doesnot escape me.

What happens on the small scale, inthese mini worlds, also happens inour own world, and a quick trip tonature can help to remind us of how

the world actually works and puncturesome of our imaginary balloons wehave oated. I dont know who it

was who said that most of us walkaround as if we were immortal, withno thought to impermanence, but itis so true. Many of us have our livesset up so as to carefully avoid being

reminded of our own mortality.It can be hard to nd a perfect teacherto work with, and yet that is what weeach have to nd to practice VajrayanaBuddhism. Finding a teacher thatdoes not t you just wont work out.However, Nature is always a perfectteacher and a good substitute until

the human version comes along. You

Th Dh i N t


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The Dharma in Naturecant get it all from books and youneed the interaction that comes witha living teacher, and Nature is that.

You can interact with Nature, and sheis unerring in her lessons, and morethan good enough until the real thingcomes along. With that said, here ismy story.

My Experience withMahamudra

Tis is the story of how I managedto get a glimpse of the recognition ofthe true nature of the mind. I write itnot to boast or show o, but becausehaving had this initial recognition, Iimmediately see how simple it is andhow all those years I had managed tolook every which way but loose in trying

to see it. My wish is that somethingthat I write here may make it easier forothers to have this recognition. And,any teeny-tiny part of what I writehere that is useful, I dedicate to all theBuddhas and Bodhisattvas, that theymay further assist all sentient beings tobecome enlightened sooner than later.

Buddhism as a PhilosophyGrowing up in Ann Arbor, home tothe University of Michigan meantthat I was exposed to a cosmopolitanatmosphere from an early age. Asearly as the late 1950s I had read asmattering of Buddhist literature,although my take on the dharma was

Th L f A


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that it was intellectual, somethingthat, like Existentialism, we wouldstay up late at night talking about

while drinking coee and smokingcigarettes. In the 1960s I toyed with some more advanced dharmaconcepts and certainly played at bitat meditation, but it was not untilthe 1970s that I actually did any realpractice, February of 1974 to be exact.

Tis was the date that Chogyam

rungpa Rinpoche came to Ann Arborto speak. I had read some of his books

with great interest and was eager tosee him in person. As it turned out,since few people knew of him backthen, I ended up as his chaueur forthe weekend and the designer of theposter for his public talk.

After meeting rungpa at the airport,one of the rst things that rungpadid after getting into Ann Arbor wasto beckon me into a small oce roomand spend an hour or so personallyteaching me to meditate, although henever mentioned the word and I had

no idea what he was showing me. Iwas very glad just to be with him.

It was rungpa who rst pointedout to me (and to everyone I knew)that the Buddha always intendedthe dharma as a method or life path,and not as something just to thinkabout. In 1974, that was real news to

me. From that year onward I tried to

Th Dh i N t


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The Dharma in Natureintensify my study of the dharma andlearn to practice it. I was not all thatsuccessful at practice, but I continued

to be attracted to the great tradition ofibetan Buddhism.

But it was not until 1983 that Ifound my personal or root teacher,the year that I met the Ven. KhenpoKarthar Rinpoche of Karma riyanaDharmachakra Monastery (KD)near Woodstock, New York. Tats

when I really became serious aboutdharma practice. Khenpo Rinpoche

was the teacher I had always dreamedabout meeting and I have been

working with him ever since.

And of all the Buddhist teachings Ihave attended over the years since

then, the yearly ten-day summerMahamudra intensive with KhenpoKarthar Rinpoche at KD has beenthe most striking and inuential. Terst ten-day Mahamudra teaching

was in 1989 and this yearly event (Ihave not missed a one) is now goinginto its 22nd year in 2010. In addition,

sandwiched somewhere during thattime were two years of intensiveMahamudra teachings and practice

with His Eminence ai Situ Rinpoche,one of the regents of the Karma Kagyulineage.

Tis article is not an introductionto Mahamudra meditation, which I

am not qualied to oer, but simply



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a recounting of my encounter withthis profound technique and itseects on me personally. Mahamudra

meditation is considered the mainform of meditation and practiceamong the Karma Kagyu lineage ofibetan Buddhism.

As mentioned, I am not qualied toteach or even introduce readers tothe more advanced techniques ofMahamudra meditation. Here it will

have to be enough to simply say thatto learn Mahamudra meditation, onehas to rst study it academically andthen work with a qualied teacher

who can actually point out to you(help you recognize) the true nature ofthe mind, after which (if you grasp thepointing out instructions), you must

diligently practice the Mahamudratechniques. Tis much information isreadily available all over the Internet.For myself, I have had a great deal ofteachings on Mahamudra and havebeen well exposed to it academically,

which simply means I understandconceptually the basic concepts.

Academic or conceptualunderstanding of Mahamudra byitself can never qualify as recognition,much less realization, which bydenition is beyond the reasoningmind. In a similar vein, the manyexperiences that I have had that might

be related to Mahamudra, bits of



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The Dharma in Natureillumination for a day or part of a day,also are not what Mahamudra is abouteither. While many or most ibetan

Buddhist practices are designed forgradual progress toward illumination(a smooth incline), Mahamudrapractice has at least one very clearspeed bump right at the beginning,and that is: recognizing the true natureof the mind. You either have or youhave not had that recognition; there is

no Well, maybe I have and maybe Ihavent. If you have it, you know it.

Recognition

Because it IS a threshold event,recognizing the nature of the mind hasbecome a huge topic of speculationamong those who read about and

are learning to practice Mahamudra,replete with wild expectationsand preconceptions based on theimaginations of those who have neverhad the experience. Recognition ofthe mind is one of those experiences,as they say, that if you have any doubt

whatsoever about your recognition,

then you have not had it. Tis is areal arrogance stopper for most ofus. If we are being honest, we know

we have not had that experience, nomatter how much we wish we had. Inthe Zen tradition, this recognition iscalled Kensho, and they make justas much fuss about it as the ibetans.

And most important, our expectations



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and hopes about what that experienceis like are perhaps the greatest barrierto having the experience itself.

You cant recognize the true nature ofthe mind many times, but only once.If you have to do it repeatedly, thenyou are just having experiences ofthe mind, but have not yet recognizedanything. Tis is because Recognitionis not some kind of temporaryexperience, spiritual high, or lofty

state of mind, like many imagine.Recognition is not enlightenment!

Instead, it is simply nally recognizingor seeing how the mind actually worksfor the rst time, just as we mightrecognize an old friend in a crowd orit is like one of those gure-ground

paintings where suddenly you see theembedded image. It is recognition,not a transport to some blissful stateof enlightenment.

Enlightenment and the path towardit is what we begin to work toward

AFER recognition of the mindstrue nature. Of course, there is no way

for me to communicate this properly with words. However, I wish I hadunderstood this distinction early on.It would have been a huge help.

As mentioned, recognition islike gazing at those gure-groundpaintings; you cant fake it. You cangive up looking, but either you see



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The Dharma in Naturethe embedded image or you do not.

You can memorize what you are toldyou should see, but nally you either

recognize the minds true nature oryou do not. And recognition is justthe beginning of real practice, not theend or any kind of nal result or stage.Tis is key. Recognition is your antein, only the doorway to Mahamudrapractice. You literally cannot doMahamudra practice without that

initial recognition, so it is like the ring-pass-not or guardian on the thresholdthat the western occultists often writeabout.

Practitioners like me can study andundertake most dharma practices and

work up a pretty good semblance ofa successful practice. We can certainly

talk ourselves into believing we aregoing somewhere and perhaps othersare impressed too. But this is why theycall it practice and term the practices

we do Preliminaries, because they are just that: prelims, qualifying exams,and a getting ready for the actual work

which has yet to begin.

Te en-Day MahamudraIntensives

My teacher Khenpo Karthar Rinpochehad given what are called the pointingout instructions once before at theyearly ten-day Mahamudra teachings,but try as I might, I had failed to grasp

what it was that actually was being



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pointed out, and so my experienceremained largely conceptual. I was notable to actually practice Mahamudra

because I had not yet had a glimpseof the true nature of my own mind,which, as mentioned, is a prerequisite(by denition) for Mahamudrapractice.

Ten at the ten-day Mahamudrateachings at KD monastery in2005, while studying a text by Karma

Chagme Rinpoche called Te Unionof Mahamudra and Dzogchen,Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche again gavethe pith instructions, what are calledthe pointing-out instructions, theinstructions by and through whicha receptive student may be able torecognize the true nature of the

mind. Tese instructions were partof the actual text by Karma ChagmeRinpoche, which my teacher waspresenting and commenting on.

Analytical Meditation

Of course, I had heard all the wordsbefore. I had been repeatedly exposed

to what is called the Analyticalradition, the Middle Way school,

which is often introduced by askingthe student to actually look at hisor her own mind and answer simplequestions like Is the mind the colorred? or Is the mind the color blue?Tis kind of talk had always been a

super yawn for me, for it was obvious



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The Dharma in Natureto me that the mind was not red orblue. What was this all I about? I couldnever understand why something as

profound as Buddhism could resort tosuch simple questions.

So I had heard this kind of presentationfor years and in many formats, andI always told myself privately thatthis particular kind of teaching wasprobably not for me. Either I didntget it at all or it was too easy. I couldnt

tell, but I knew the mind was not thecolor blue. Perhaps some academicpundit delighted in answering suchquestions, but it was the best I coulddo to politely ignore the temptation tobe condescending of this approach. Isthe mind red? Of course it is not red.Te mind is not red! I not-so-patiently

waited until this section was over and we could hopefully get to some ofthe good stu, something that wouldactually grab me.

But in Rinpoches presentation I WASintrigued to learn that in ibet, whenthis approach was presented, monks

would be given a question such as Isthe mind red? and then asked to goo and think about it for three entiredays and nights, then come back andgive their answers, after which they

would be given a similar question, butperhaps with the color green, and this

would go on for something like threemonths. Hmmm.



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Hearing this troubled me, for monks(not to mention rinpoches) are notfoolish people. What on earth was

this all about I wondered, this asking: what color is the mind? And this isno secret teaching; this same Middle

Way approach has been taught allover India for centuries. Anyway, Istopped trying to wait this sectionout, and began to pay more attentionto what Rinpoche was presenting. It

took a while, but my take-away fromall of this questioning stu was thatrinpoche was asking us to actually stopthinking academically about this andsimply go and look at our mind andsee for ourselves if it was red or greenor whatever the question was. Andthat very slowly began to sink in.

Look At the MindI meant no disrespect, but I had neverbefore followed Rinpoches request tolook at the mind to see if it was red orblue because I felt the question madeno sense to me. Yet I was also starting topick up on the fact that Rinpoche wasasking us to get o our mental dusand actually make an eort to lookat our own mind, right there on thespot. I had of course always assumedI already knew my own mind. Afterall, I was a dharma practitioner and it

was my mind, but now I was hearingsomething just a little dierent.Perhaps my habitual familiarity with



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my mind had not included actuallylooking at the mind itself, although Iautomatically assumed I had already

done that long ago, back when Ilearned to meditate.

And so, very slowly at rst (and not without some struggle), I actuallybegan to make eorts to stop lookingoutward at what was going on aroundme, and turned and tried to lookinward at the mind itself. Tis was not

easy.Of course I was already familiar withthe little chatter-box inside my head,

whoever it is that plans out my dayfor me, saying things to me like, It isalmost time for lunch or You have adentist appointment tomorrow, andso on. Whoever that inner person is,it is not really me, and I didnt likehim or it very much. It is annoyingand way too much of a nag. And ityammers on ceaselessly. So I began toat least dierentiate myself from thatuptight narrator in my head. Tattalking voice was no friend of mine,

just not my kind of people.

And Rinpoche was asking that welook at whoever it is inside of us thatis looking at all the stu happeningoutside in the world. I guess that

would be me. Now, this was a wholelot more dicult than just puttingsome distance between me and my

internal narrator. When I tried to



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look at who in there was doing thelooking at the outside, it or I just

would not hold still. It was like those

magnets that repel one another. Everytime I would try to look at the looker,the whole thing would ip around. It

was very tiring to even try. You can tryit now for yourselves: just look at whois reading this page. ry and nd thewho.

What was happening through all

of this was that I was very graduallybeginning to exercise mind musclesthat (to my knowledge) had neverbeen exercised before in my life. Andthey were soon the equivalent of verysore or very sti muscles - hard tomove around. I had never done thiskind of thing before and it amounted

to giving myself a mental CharlieHorse. It cramped up my mind, and

was very awkward, but it was a newexperience.

Te whole thing was a little liketrying to erect a large circus tent inthe middle of my mind, struggling topush up massive tent poles to stretchand raise the canvas until I had somemental room to just look around inthere. And it was hard work, for thesemental muscles had perhaps neverbeen exercised before.

And as silly as it seemed to me, I evenbegan looking to see if my mind was

red or some other color, whether my



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mind was located in my head, myheart, or my belly, and so on. Ofcourse, the answers were all negatives,

just as I had always thought, but in theprocess I was up and walking aroundin there, getting to know the place abit. And so it went. Was that whatRinpoche wanted us to do?

Where before I had kind of mentallyslept through this kind of questioning,now I was at least going through the

motions getting some exercise. I was also following the instructionsfrom my teacher, which I had soconveniently ignored up to that pointbecause I thought these questions went

without asking. Instead, I was askingthem again, doing what Rinpoche wasrequesting us to do. And that little bit

of exercise began to open up doors forme.

It went on like this for days, asrinpoche very carefully led us intoactually looking at our minds. I wasnally following along. Tese simpleexercises, along with the fact thatapparently by this time I had doneenough practice over the years orsomehow managed to accumulateenough merit or whatever it was that Ihad needed, so that I actually was ableto recognize or glimpse the true natureof my mind - not what I had expected.Tere was no lightning bolt, more likean exclamation point! Needless to say,



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it was nothing like I had led myself tobelieve all these years.

Of course my expectations were

whatever I had managed to distillfrom books and the teachings, mixed

with the tales of other practitionersand then sealed with my personaltake on things, in other words: a

jumble. Like most of us learning this,my preconceptions had managed tothoroughly cloud and obscure an

otherwise cloudless sky. Here it is worthwhile to backtrack and take acloser look at what I had expected.

Te Pointing Out Instructions

It is said in the Mahamudra teachingsthat the main and perhaps onlyfunction of the guru is to point out

to the student the true nature ofthe mind. After that it is up to thestudent. Te Nature of the Mind,this phrase immediately raisesexpectations reminiscent of the realmof Zen koan dramas. One thing Inever had managed to understandis that recognizing the nature of the

mind is not the same as enlightenment(whatever that is), so lets start there,and this is important:

What is meant by the phraserecognizing the nature of the mindas I understand it is more like beingable to nally see the actual problem I

was having with meditation all along,



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like: I had no idea what it was, andthat is embarrassing.

And, having some recognition, I then

saw that the nature of the mind is notsomething beyond my current reach(as I had always implicitly assumed),but rather more like very simplyseeing how the mind actually worked,seeing that the mind (my mind) wasin fact quite workable, as in: Hey,I can do it! I nally could see a little

into how I might work it. And beinga clever guy, this was a very practicalrevelation. Tis is what seeing the truenature of the mind is all about, a newtake on practice, not some euphoricrush of bliss.

Perhaps the most important result ofrecognition is that the responsibilityfor getting enlightened immediatelyswitched from books, texts, andmy teacher to me. What I saw orrecognized made me responsible,and only me. Tat had neverhappened before. I was always lookingfor someone or something on theoutside strong enough to aect meand somehow enlighten me. It doesntcome from outside!

As obvious as it sounds now, I couldnow see that was not about to everhappen, and I could now see why.Only I could enlighten myself. It

was my job, not someone elses. In

pointing out the nature of the mind



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to me, and my getting the gist ofit, Rinpoche had completed hisresponsibility to me and succeeded inmaking me fully responsible for therst time. I responded! But with thatresponsibility also came the insight onhow this mind training business couldbe done.

When I originally read in the classictexts about seeing the nature ofthe mind, I assumed and expected

some grand reworks-like displayand that I would be immediatelytransported into some transcendentalstate of illumination. You know:enlightenment or something likeit, whatever I had imagined all theseyears.

Expectations are seldom ever yourfriend and almost always obscurethe actual path and the reality. Itmight be better to say the teacherpoints out the nature of how themind works rather than simply saythe teacher points out the nature ofthe mind. Te nature of the mindseems so mysterious, and the actualityis anything but that. In my case, theless that is left to the imagination, thebetter. My imagination has lled me

with preconceptions and impossibleexpectations all my life.

In other words, at least in myrecognition, the Aha! experience

was not Aha!, this is nally some



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enlightenment, but rather a simple:

Aha! I get it now. So this is how themind works; even a beginner like me

can do that! Tis is actually workable,something I could actually do.

It is remarkable how in an instant myyears of expectations vanished and

were replaced by something simplypractical that nally made real senseto me. How absolutely encouraging!

Te pointing out instructions didntin any way mark the end of my practiceand my graduation to some higherbodhisattva-like level (like I hadalways wondered or imagined), butrather the end of my imitating whatit is I thought practice was supposedto be, and the very beginning of

actual useful practice. Finally I got thegeneral idea of how to work with mymind, and understood in a ash that Ihad been mistaken about this all of mydharma life, like perhaps 30 years!!!

For the rst time I saw simply howthe mind works and that there wasno reason that I (just as I am, warts

and all) could not just do it. And that WAS a new experience, to somehowbe at the same level with reality tosee it clearly. It was up to me to gureout just how to work, with this newinformation and to put the timein. Perhaps most important of all,I suddenly had the enthusiasm and



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energy to make it work that I hadbeen missing. No more boredom andlaziness when it came to practice.

And while the fact was less exotic thanwhat I had mistakenly expected, it wasperhaps (if my opinion counts) therst tangible result of many years ofpractice, and it was not just a passingexperience, but a simple realizationas to what had to happen next, like:

when you realize how something

works, you just get it. You dont forget,because it is not a simple experience,but a recognition. Tat quite ordinaryinsight was a form of recognition, andit was permanent.

In reality, for me this was a huge resultafter about 31 years of meditation ofthe sounds-like-this variety, years

during which I sincerely went throughthe motions, but with little result thatI could see. I had been rubbing thesticks and getting some heat but nore. Suddenly, there was some heatand also re. While not what I hadexpected, this was what I had alwaysdreamed about having happen: visible

progress.

Te Workable Mind

Te mind was suddenly workableand all I had to do was to work it,and I could now see that even I coulddo it! After perhaps thirty years, Iactually understood something about



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meditation. Not the enlightenment-revelation I had in my expectations,not the thunderbolt from above,not something beyond this world ofSamsara, but something much moredown to earth and already very closeto me the nature of my mind, thatis: how to work with it. After all myyears of theoretical practice, thingsnally got practical and therefore realpractice could begin. Nevertheless,as minimal as my realization was, itbrought about a profound change inmy approach to meditation.

I left that years ten-day teaching witha very dierent idea as to what mypractice was going to be about. Forone, it was now crystal clear to me thatthe amount of daily practice I was able

to squeeze out up to that time wouldnever be enough to get me to any kindof enlightened state. It was like goingto church only on Sunday. Beingthe devious, lazy, bad boy that I am,I would never get to heaven at thatrate. I had never been that much ofan angel anyway, more like the black

sheep of my family, and that too wasa problem.

I could now see that mind practicerequired way more eort than thesmall amount of practice I had beendoing each day, which practice itselfI had nickel and dimed to death asit was. It seemed that everything else



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in my life managed to come rst anddistract from my dharma practice and,on top of that, my whole approach topractice was cloaked in expectations,disappointment, and frugality ofeort. At that point in my life, I wasdoing as little actual practice as I couldget away with and still look at myselfin the mirror. I was worn out.

Worst of all, practice was not a joyfulaair for me. It was something I just

did and continued to do, sometimesonly because to not do it at all wouldbe more horrible than the pain ofactually doing it. I could not considerthe consequences of just stoppingpractice altogether, although I wasvery tired of it. Quitting was just tooscary to even consider. Te dharma

was too much a part of my ego, myidentity to just stop my practice. If Iwasnt a dharma practitioner, what theheck was I doing with my life?

But what I now realized was that, likeit or not, my daily practice even inthe best of times had been simply waytoo small an eort to ever get very far

along my personal dharma path. Atthe best of times, the most practice Ihad ever done was around two hoursa day, and even that much practice

would probably not be enough toclear the various obscurations I hadmanaged to collect. I needed some fulltime dharma practice and I was a part-

The Dharma in Naturei l


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time player.

One thing I did realize from thepointing out instructions was that all

of my years chained to the computeras a programmer had given me a realability to concentrate and for longhours at a time. Tat was not all bad. Ioften would work 12 or even 14 hours aday glued to the tube, as they say. And,although the computer work mightnot be particularly dharmic in nature,

the concentration I had acquired wasquite real, lacking perhaps only a morepure motive than making money,although that is not fair to me. In mylife, I have always turned my hobbiesinto ways of making money, so mostlyI loved what I did for a living and didit with a pure heart. If only I could

tackle dharma with the concentrationand enthusiasm that I put into myvarious computer and entrepreneurialprojects. I had been thinking anddreaming about this for years.

Te pointing out instructions Ihad received from Khenpo KartharRinpoche and the resulting technique

it inspired and made possible wassomething that actually stood up very

well o the cushion, that is: in everydaylife, what is called post-meditation.

Putting the echnique to Work

I slowly began to apply the techniquesof mind training I was learning to

The Lama of Appearancesh t I d i th t


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what I was doing on the computerall day long. During my computer

work, whenever I would catch myselfin a distraction, when I popped out of

whatever I was deeply involved in andfound myself once again outside myconcentration and looking around, I

would attempt to practice Mahamudrameditation. It could be as simple as adog bark, a phone call, the doorbell,an unwelcome thought, etc., whateverit took to startle me out of what I wasconcentrating on. Te result was that I

was suddenly forced out of whatever Ihad been focused on and just instantlythere - awake. Tose gaps in myconcentration were the only momentsI had to insert dharma into my work,but there were a lot of them.

It was in those gaps or momentsthat I would remember to look atthe nature of my mind or the natureof the thought that I was having. Inthe beginning it was only momentaryglimpses, brief glances at the natureof a thought, at the nature of themind, but I persevered. After all, I

had virtually nothing better to do with my time anyway, so wheneverI found myself startled or poppingout of whatever I was engrossed in, Itook that opportunity to at least tryand look at the nature of my mind,and to then rest in the true nature ofmy mind as much as I could. I was

The Dharma in Naturegradually exercising the mind


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gradually exercising the mind.

I had seen the nature of my own mind,how it works, which as I mentioned

does not mean I was enlightened inany way, only that I had seen somethingabout how the mind actually workedor was, and even that tiny hook wasenough to begin unraveling some ofthe obscurations I had labored underall my life. And I liked what I saw and

was beginning to learn to rest in the

nature of the mind, however brief thatmight be.

Tose moments of resting were short,perhaps more like nanoseconds thansomething more enduring, but thetotal amount of actual practice time I

was doing o the cushion added up tomore than I had been able to practice

at any other times in my day, includingtime spent on the cushion, which atthat time was a kind of a joke. Everytime I headed for the cushion it seemedlike I put on the robes of expectation,arrogance, embarrassment, pastfailures, and irritation. Te cushion

was getting a much-needed rest.

Tis new process of post-mediationpractice was not something I couldmeasure in days or even months. Ittook about two years of this kind ofexploration before I really had it downto any useful degree, but it WASuseful and it actually worked, which

translates to: perhaps for the rst time

The Lama of Appearancesin my many years of mind practice I


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in my many years of mind practice, Ireally liked practice, something I haddevoutly wished for all those years. Ifthere was one thing I was ashamed ofand feared all those years, it was that Icould not nd much joy in practicing.I knew that this was not the way itshould be, but I was powerless tobring joy to something I could notnd the joy in. And it took the shockof an outside event to really push meinto yet totally new territory. Here is

my story:

On My Own Again

I had been working for the precedingfour years or so as a senior consultant toa subsidiary of NBC, one specializingin astrology, something I know quitea lot about 45 years of experience.

I was putting in long hours for them(and for myself), because I wasbuilding content, something I am

well-known for in my career as anarchivist of popular culture, creator ofthe All-Music Guides (allmusic.com),the All-Movie Guide (allmovie.com)and other entertainment sites. It is

not unusual for me to put in 12 or 14hours, seven days a week. I was gettingup at 3 or 4 in the morning most days,concentrating on programming, oncreating thousands of tarot-like cardsfor astrology in Adobe Illustrator,

writing courses, and other text-relatedprojects. And I took plenty of joy in

The Dharma in Naturethat.


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that.

All of these tasks were perfect to testout my Mahamudra practice, which

was coming along really well. All itlacked was the motivation that comeswith a worthy object. In other words,I was practicing Mahamudra while

working on essentially mundane tasks,instead of the dharma itself, althoughmy intent and motivation for astrology

were very pure and heartfelt.

FreeIn late May of 2008, while attendingan astrology conference in Denver,Colorado (along with 1,500 otherastrologers), the head of the NBCoutt I was working for, who was alsoat the conference, told me that I no

longer would have a job with themafter June. In an attempt to pare downexpenses, NBC laid o a lot of folks,and I happened to be one of them. Ofcourse, this was a real shock to me,since I had been working so hard at it,and the nancial ramications simplymeant that I would soon have no

income whatsoever. At almost 67 yearsof age at the time, nding a job wasprobably not too easy, even though Ihad a lot of skills and experience, plusa good reputation. But it went beyondthat for me. It was one of those cornerslife oers us that we somehow justhave to get around.

The Lama of AppearancesIt turned out that I had to leave the


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astrology conference a few days earlywhen I found out that His Holiness the17th Karmapa was suddenly making

his rst visit to the United States andto his main seat in this country, Karmariyana Dharmachakra Monastery(KD) in the mountains above

Woodstock, New York. I could notmiss that event and, as it turned out,I could be useful as part of a three-man video team to lm the event, and

personally was able to lm some eventswhere they didnt really want much ofanyone present. I had been aroundKD so long that I was pretty muchsome kind of xture there anyway.

I would love to tell readers about thevisit of His Holiness, but that would

be a whole nother story, but the gistof it was that seeing His Holiness wasa big shot in the arm for me. I alsotook hundreds of still photos of theevent and after I got home, withina few weeks, I had made a 200-pagecoee-table sized book of the visit ofHis Holiness which I made available

for the close sangha. Te book wasinspired, not so much by me as aphotographer, as by the fact that allof the people I was photographinghad just been with His Holiness and

were shining with happiness and alight that was clearly obvious in thephotographs.

The Dharma in NatureTe time with His Holiness certainly


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yhelped to put the fact that I no longerhad a job into perspective, but tosuddenly be without a paycheck is a

shock, and it sure went through mysystem like a lightning. Where beforeI was working long hours at my job,suddenly I had all kinds of time onmy hands a really big gap of timein my life. alking about popping outof what you were focused in (the so-called gap in Mahamudra practice),

well, this was a really shocking gap,and I popped out big time and hereis how I was able to actually look atthat gap:

Te Photographer

I had been working as an entrepreneur without a break (or a gap) for over

thirty years straight. When you workfor yourself, you dont have weekendsand holidays, or at least you dont livefor them. When you love your work,time o and vacations are meaninglessor, worse, boring. Tat is how I alwaysexperience them. And now with all thistime on my hands, my past interest in

photography (and recent photo workat KD) began to come out, and thishobby plays an important role in thisstory.

I had been deemed a photographer bymy father (a really good photographerhimself) ever since he had given me a

little Kodak Retina 2a camera back in

The Lama of Appearances1954, when I was something like 13


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and sent me on about a 3,000 mile tripacross the U.S. and Canada (with a dipinto Mexico) on a bus with a bunch of

kids my age. He had explained to mebefore I left how to take good pictures,and I listened. Apparently I hadtaken some great pictures because hecouldnt say enough about them whenI returned, perhaps the only time heever felt that way about anything Ihave done. Te long and the short of

it is that I came away from that time with the sense that (perhaps only inmy mind) that I had a really good eyefor photography.

And I had been toying withphotography for a number of years.Like many of us, I had of course taken

the requisite shots of my family, ourdogs, and what not. And, as part ofa large archival database that I createdfor documenting rock and roll posters,I had purchased a Nikon D1x systemand carefully photographed some23,000+ posters. For this, I had builtmy own vacuum table, had an exact

light setup, and so on. So, I knew atleast something about photography.

But in the late spring of 2008, afterfalling out of a job, I found myselfembracing photography more deeply,perhaps just as a way to nd stabilityfrom my somewhat chaotic life at thetime. And then there was my interest

The Dharma in Naturein nature. Even though this happened

l h bl


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only a year or so ago, I have troublepinpointing just how I happenedto start going out into nature again.

I was a trained naturalist and hadintensely studied nature from the timeI was about 6 years old until in mylate teens, and I mean intensely. Inmy early teens I even was given a tinyoce at the University of MichiganMuseums building, just because I wassomewhat precocious. I was into it.

My wife loves nature and for the lastmany years had done all she couldto get me out in the woods, streams,and elds again, but I pretty muchdeclined the invitation. I dont know

why exactly. Perhaps it was becauseI felt that nature had been early-on

my real teacher and I had learned mylessons. Certainly school had taughtme almost nothing. Whatever lifelessons I carried came from observinghow nature behaved, and once learned,I was unwilling to open up that avenueagain. Why?

Now that I think about it, here is

probably the reason: My favoritefemale vocalist of all time is BillieHolliday. No other voice has movedme so utterly than she has. Tat beingsaid, the fact is that I dont listen toBillie Holliday very often, hardly ever.

Why? Because I have to really preparemyself or work up to hearing her

The Lama of Appearancessing, because she puts me through so

h i ll h I


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very much emotionally that I am notalways ready to let that happen. I tellyou this because it is the same with

nature and her lessons.

Te Naturalist

I studied natural history for so manyyears and with such diligence thatthere was not much I missed as to

what goes on out there in the woodsand meadows. I know every frog,

salamander, and snake, not to mentioninsects, and you-name-it. I not onlyknow them, I know all about theirlives and deaths.

Nature is so absolutely candid anddirect that she leaves almost nothingto the imagination. Nature does notknow mercy. It is all laid out for anyoneto see, and it is not a story withoutemotional aects. I did not need tobecome a Buddhist to love the life inevery living creature. I always felt that

way. When I was conrmed in myearly teens as part of Catholic ritual,my chosen conrmation name wasFrancis, after St. Francis of Assisi, thesaint who loved and protected animals.Tat was me. I have often joked that Ilike animals better than people, and I

wasnt being all that funny. It is kindof true. Te Buddhists tell us thatanimals are bewildered. I feel greatcompassion for their bewildered state.I am working on feeling that same way

The Dharma in Naturetoward human beings.


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So nature, like listening to BillieHoliday, was probably something that

I really had to work up to as far asre-immersion is concerned. It is just way too sensitive for words. Natureis beautiful, but nature is raw. Everylast animal out there lives in constantfear. Tey are always looking overtheir shoulder for something biggerthan they are that wants to eat them.

And they are always looking for somesmaller animal to eat. Tey havealmost no rest their entire lives.

Te whole concept of impermanenceand the fragility of life are everywherepresent in nature. Te countless tinytadpoles that dont mature before thespring pond dries out, the mass of

worms and slugs that get caught onthe tarmac as the erce sun comesover the horizon and dries them to acrisp, the huge Luna Moth that is soheavy it can hardly y, utters in thestill morning light, trying to nd a treeto hide in for the day, and is snappedup by the bird just as it tries to land,

etc. You get the idea. It is endless andmerciless.

And this is not an isolated story, notthe exception that proves the rule,but just the opposite: this is the rule,

with almost no exceptions, ever!Life is brief, fear-lled, and accidentprone for almost all sentient life.

The Lama of AppearancesAnd humankind is not an exception,although we choose to ignore how


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although we choose to ignore howSamsara (our confused state) actuallyis. We are one of the very few beings

that have any real control overdestiny, and we never have as muchcontrol as we imagine. Te rest of theanimal world are simply bewildered,too stunned by their lack of realintelligence to protect themselves.

I trust you get the idea here I am

painting; it is one of a nature that hasno mercy, and death that is inexorablein its presence and swiftness. Is itany wonder that I have to cross oversome kind of threshold to really wantto take a closer look at nature again?I already knew what nature is about.

You get the point.

Back to NatureBut that year of 2008 I was not in anordinary frame of mind. I had justbeen shaken out of every sense of safeI knew, at least nancially. I had beenput out, turned loose, and set freefrom any path or trajectory I thoughtI was on. So it is no surprise that Ieasily crossed over that threshold thatI had avoided for so many years andimmersed myself in the way things

were - nature. I already was completelyvulnerable, reminded personallyhow things can be when we have nocontrol. I was in the mood. And thecamera was probably my ticket to ride,

The Dharma in Naturemy excuse to get lost in nature onceagain It was like nding my roots like


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again. It was like nding my roots, likegoing home. It was consoling.

I became absolutely fascinated withclose-up camera work, what is calledmacro or micro photography. And forme, this meant close-up photographyof nature and all the living thingssurrounding us. And in what wasperhaps also a symbolic gesture, Igot out of my oce. For years, I

had been afraid to leave my ocelest I miss an important phone callor whatever next thing I was waitingfor. As mentioned, my wife had tried

just about everything to get me out ofmy stick-in-the-mud oce, but to noavail. But now I just walked out intothe elds. It was dramatic.

Each morning would nd me out inthe meadows and woods at sunrise,lugging my camera equipment around.Tere in the mist and dew-coveredelds I would be photographing allthat was beautiful or, many times, justsitting there in the grass as the rst sunrays peeked over the trees, and simply

doing nothing. Here is a poem I wroteabout that.

ime for Nothing

Excuse me for the moment,No matter the reasons why,I just need more time to do nothing,But gaze into clear empty sky.

The Lama of AppearancesAnd I am not talking about weekends.


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And I am not talking about weekends.I watched almost every sunrise fromaround late May through October,

until it became just too cold to takemy camera or myself outside forextended periods of time. Tink aboutthat for a moment: I watched EVERYsunrise for half a year and this afterseldom ever leaving my oce for 30or so years. My family must have beenpuzzled.

As I look back on it now, it was ofcourse a very remarkable time. HereI am remarking on it! But what wasmost remarkable about this time wasnot at rst apparent to me, and this is

what I want to present here.

Macro Photography and

MahamudraTe experience I had accumulated overthe preceding three years or so doingMahamudra practice on my computerhad kind of extended itself to anytimeI did close concentrated work. I amat home with drudgery, at home invery concentrated and tedious work.I need only point to that fact that Isingle-handedly (and later with a staof hundreds) recorded, reviewed, anddocumented every piece of recordedmusic from 10-inch records on up tothe present. Similarly, we documentedevery single lm and movie, complete

with its entire cast, and video games,

The Dharma in Natureand rock posters, etc. You get the idea.I am obsessive. My personal collection


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y pof CDs (which I no longer own) nowsits in a warehouse in Ann Arbor,

numbering well over 500,000 CDsand counting.

My point is that I have a hightolerance for tedium. And nothing ismore time consuming and demandingof concentration than computerprogramming and video editing, that

was: before I encountered macrophotography.

And I dont know for sure why I gotinto macro (close-up) photography,as opposed to landscape photographyor just walking in the woods andmeadows, but I have a guess. It couldhave been that looking through an

open lens with real magnication at atiny diorama, at a world that was everso much obviously more perfect thanthe one I was used to, somehow wasfreeing to me. Every tiny y and insectappeared so incredibly complete, soperfect in every respect at the microlevel.

Te outer world I knew had beautifulpatches and rotten ones too, areas that

were stained beyond appreciation.But here, in the micro world, youcould always nd some little bit ofperfection, perhaps a newly hatcheddragony that was absolutely freshin every way. And I particularly like

The Lama of Appearancesdioramas, miniature scenes - thetiniest of landscapes. I was transported


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p pby what I saw.

I can tell you that nothing I haveever done requires as much patienceand concentration as doing macrophotography. It can take half an hourof excruciating pain to hold a physicalposition with a tripod and camera untilthe wind manages to die down, just totake a single photograph of a ower orinsect. And I am NO known for mypatience, but in photographing natureI had found a worthy teacher.

Lenses

Before long I was spending up toseveral of the best hours of the day(dawn) immersed in peering throughvarious special lenses at the lives oftiny critters and plants. I soon foundmyself searching for ner and nerlenses, so I could see ever more clearlyinto these very perfect micro worlds.

Yet, I just couldnt see clearly enough,so I just needed better and betterlenses. Te outside day-to-day worldI lived in might seem dingy and wornmuch of the time, but these micro

worlds were as fresh as a new oweror just-hatched buttery. And: I wassoaking it up.

Without really thinking about it, I wasusing all of my Mahamudra experienceand techniques here in these micro

The Dharma in Natureworlds. And I literally mean: withoutthinking! As I concentrated on this


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photographing, looking deep intoand through the lens, I began having

extended periods of resting my mind,but I was not at rst fully aware ofthis. I mean: it was true rest. As I lookback now, I can see that I was (me,Michael) resting my mind and life inthe tiny scenes I was peering throughlenses to see.

I was nding true rest in thoseminiature scenes I could see. And I somuch needed the rest that I was notat rst aware that I was (I believe) alsoresting my mind in a dharmic way, andin a profound sense. When I point outthat I was not fully aware of what washappening, this is an important point.

Please keep in mind that I am holdinga precise position, camera and tripodin hand, frozen to a stance, so thata tiny insect does not y away, and

waiting for the incessant Michiganwind to die down long enough to takea photograph. And all the while I ampeering through this very special light-

gathering lens into a micro world ata tiny critter. And clarity! Te worldI could see in there was awesome,beautiful, and so very, very clear. I

was resting in that clarity, resting mymind. And I loved what it did for me.It was beyond thought.

For some reason, through the looking

The Lama of Appearancesglass (so to speak), I was able to rest mymind like I had not been able to do it

h h k


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on the cushion or even in my work,and for a long time! It would take a

book to explain what resting the mindreally is all about. No, a book couldnot communicate what I am referringto here. It would take being personallyshown how to rest the mind, but I cantdo that here and I am not a teacher.

Before I knew it, I was looking forwardto these forays into the dawn as if mylife depended on it. I could not waitto get up every morning, get outsidein the elds, and launch myself intothis particular state of mind. I knewthis was connected to my practice, butthat knowledge was not important atthe time, which tells you somethingby itself. It was the farthest thingfrom my mind. I just liked gettingmy mind right out there in nature. I

was fascinated by what I saw throughthose lenses. In the end, of course,

what I was seeing was related to myown mind.

urning the Mind

As I look back today, what was reallytaking place is all too clear, and natureheld just the reminders I needed tokeep my attitude adjusted. Te fourCommon Preliminaries of Buddhistpractice, what are often called theFour Toughts Tat urn the Mindtoward the Dharma are ever present

The Dharma in Naturein the natural world, things like thepreciousness of life, impermanence,h l f k All f h


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the laws of karma, etc. All of theseare literally magnied and obvious in

nature, where kill or be killed, eat orbe eaten, and things like a ower thatblooms for one night, a huge moth thatlives but 24-hours, etc. continuallyreminded me of those precious fourthoughts. I didnt have to remindmyself. Life in nature reminded meinstant by instant, day by day. It can

be heartbreaking. I had not looked atimpermanence this closely for manyyears, but I was looking at it now. RawNature is the best reminder of theFour Toughts Tat urn the Mindthat I know of.

For that spring, summer, and fall, Iwas really away from the maddeningcrowd, o by myself, observing myown mind in the midst of purelynatural phenomena. But what I didnot at rst see was how much I waschanging, perhaps stabilizing is abetter word. It was my mind and mypractice that were stabilizing. When I

was out in the eld and owers, I couldrest my mind, I could see the natureof thoughts as they arose, look at theirnature, watch them dissolve, and notdrag around some sad thought allday long. I was thrilled at the crystalclarity of the mind. But most of all I

was nding rest, resting my mind in

The Lama of Appearancesall that clarity, deeply resting.

Where before I was probably engrossed


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p y gin guring out why so-and-so did thisor that or how I managed to embarrassmyself in this or that situation, nowthoughts like that could be seen notfor their content, but in their actualnature and just dissolve like dew onthe grass. In an instant they were gone,back where they came from, away, andI was not etching yet another karmatrack deep in my mind.

Each morning I was up way beforedawn, gathering my equipment andheading out the door. It seemed Icould not get enough of what I wasnding out there in nature peeringthrough my camera lenses, but inreality I was learning to rest in the true

nature of my mind. I was practicingMahamudra, but in a more directmanner than ever before.

I knew I was using Mahamudratechniques, but I was not initiallyaware of how deeply I was changinginternally. Tat awareness only camemuch later. And I studied camera

equipment like there was no tomorrow,in particular ne lenses. I just somehowcould not get lenses that would gatherenough light and open up my visionas far as I needed. Every spare dollar Icould scrounge went into sharper andsharper lenses. I scavenged up and soldmy older equipment for this or that

The Dharma in Naturemore accurate lens, tele-converter,close-up diopter, or whatever wouldbring more light and acuity to what I


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bring more light and acuity to what Iwas doing. And the lenses helped.

I studied lenses. I went to optometristsand discussed with them the sharpnessof lenses and what was needed for thehuman eye to see at its very best. I gotnew glasses and special magniers forthe eyepiece in my camera. I trackeddown lenses that are almost neverfound, lenses that are legendary fortheir ability to gather light and tofocus with extreme accuracy. I burnedthrough the nest lenses that Nikonhas to oer (and that is many) and oninto lenses that are even better thananything Nikon can produce.

I worked with special architectural

lenses, lenses that tilt and shift,allowing you to bring a whole at eldof owers into focus, the nearest andthe farthest ower, all perfectly clear.I stacked lenses one on another to geteven closer in. I used tele-converters,diopters, and extension tubes to reachbeyond what I otherwise could. I

began to stack photos, which meansto take a series of photos, each at aparticular focal point, from near tofar, and then merge the stack to makea single image where all parts, fromfront to back are in perfect focus.

I am just giving you a taste of whatwas a real obsession on my part, and

The Lama of Appearancesa learning curve. I took more than50,000 photos during that periodand gradually became a better and


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and gradually became a better andbetter photographer. Tat is not such

a lot of photos, until you take intoconsideration how long it can take forone macro photo to be taken.

And through all of this, it was not theresulting thousands of photographsthat concerned me. I hardly looked atthem. Instead, it was the process thathad me spellbound, the clear lookingat the subjects and the seeing. It wasthe seeing! And it was the resting.Ostensibly I was looking throughner and ner lenses at nature. Inreality, I was learning to look at myown mind through the process ofphotography, and I had managed toconfuse the two. Yeah, Zen and the

Art of Photography is a book I couldprobably write now.

I was learning to rest my mind inthe moment and allow whatevernatural beauty there was to presentitself to me, to show itself, to appear.Everything was clear, luminous. And

the sheer exhilaration involved is hardto describe. Everything was lucid. Iwas lucid - clear as a bell!

And although I continued to practiceMahamudra during my ordinary

workday, as I found this or thatproject to do, it was mostly in thoseraried mornings out in the dawn that

The Dharma in Naturemy mind could fully rest and appearlucid. I was addicted to it right oand could not wait each day to get out


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y gthere among the bugs and owers to

get my mind right. And, as mentioned above, this wenton from late May until late Novemberof 2008, almost every day when it didnot rain. I dont know what my familythought, other than I had become acamera nut and that I didnt have a

job. I dont know what I thought aboutit myself. I never thought about it. I

was spending an inordinate amountof time doing it. My extended familyand friends would drive by me whereI was setting up one shot or anotheralong the roadside and give me strangelooks, like Oops, there he is again.Doesnt he work anymore?

I didnt have a job (I was looking forone), so I had the time and, after alifetime of working jobs, this wasthe rst real break I had ever givenmyself and I put it to good use. It was

wonderful. It was transformative.

Stabilization

All of this time what was reallyhappening (as I look back now) isthat my Mahamudra meditation wasstabilizing. After all, I was doing it notonly on those early morning shoots,but all the rest of the day as well asmuch as I could happen to remember

The Lama of Appearancesor wake up into moments to do it,

which was more and more often.

My initial fear and guilt that I was no


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My initial fear and guilt that I was nolonger interested in sitting practice, indoing sadhanas and other practices,began to fall away. I just did not careanymore what it looked like to thosearound me or even to my old self.

Whatever it was that I was doing withMahamudra was enough for me. I

was full up and I was in love with andhappy with my practice for the rsttime in my life.

It was just natural to move o thecushion for a while after so many yearssitting there. I had done two ngondros(traditional extended sadhanas), not tomention other more complex practices,and I imagine I had accumulated what

I was able to accumulate. I was tiredfor the moment of on-the-cushionpractice and inhaled Mahamudrapractice like a breath of fresh air.

It was clear to my family that I wasno longer spending much time on thecushion and their looks and glances toldme that they probably didnt approve

and certainly didnt understand. Afterall, I didnt really understand myself

what was happening. Michael, whohad been more or less diligent as apractitioner for so many years, wasout-and-out playing hooky.

Tere was no excusing it.

The Dharma in NatureAnd I did not care. I just knew I hadfound my way and was progressingsomewhere after all the years of


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anticipation. I was my own counsel

in this regard. Outside approval ordisapproval (my own or others) couldnot change my mind or my behavior.

And so it went.

When summer ended and wintercame on, I had to curtail my earlymorning explorations and graduallymove back inside. I looked forwardto the following spring with unusuallonging, but I also found that I wasable to carry on my mental training atmy desk and around the house withno problem. Something had changed

within me and permanently, but I wasnot really able to get a handle on ituntil the following spring when I was

once again headed back out into theelds and woods.

Spring Surprise

And out I did go, as early as Januaryand February, a bunch in March,and constantly by April. And I hadbeen gathering my equipment and

upgrading what I could aord. Butthings had changed for me and in aquite unexpected way, but it wouldtake me some months to gure thisout. At the time, I was hell bent toimmerse myself ever more deeply innature, and my outings were nowranging ever farther from home.

The Lama of AppearancesInstead of spending my early morningsat the back of the local cemetery, atthe fringe where the wild vegetation

h ll d l


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meets the well-groomed lawn, as I

had done the year before, I was nowactively planning trips to nature spotsall over. I was studying maps. I becamefascinated with Michigan bogs andthe life possible in those very specialenvironments.

It turns out that bogs only really thriveat latitudes higher than 45 degrees.

Big Rapids, Michigan (where I live)is almost 44 degrees of latitude, so wehave bogs in this area and just an houror so north of here are really vast bogs.

Why bogs? I have no idea. I aman enthusiast, and there is alwayssomething that fascinates me. Perhaps

it was that bogs are so very, veryfragile, tiny microenvironments thathardly anyone has ever seen, muchless spent time in. Out there, isolatedfrom nutrients, since the plant life onthem cant get nutrients from below(the peat is anaerobic and wont letanything through), many bog plants

have become carnivorous, dependingon insects and what-not for food.Bog plants include the Pitcher Plant,the Sundew, and the Venus Flytrap,among others. Whatever the reason,I was fascinated by bogs and foundmyself traveling many hours to visitthem and carefully document what I

The Dharma in Naturesaw there.

Te point here is that I had taken myphotography yet another step, not


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p g p y y p,only shooting whatever was availableeach morning near my home, butnow traveling long distances to samplethis or that special environment, thisparticular plant or that one. Withoutrealizing it, my enthusiasm had causedme to overstep the boundary betweenMahamudra practice and that ofbecoming more of a naturalist than I

already was.

From the time I was about six yearsold until I was in my late teens I hadstudied nature with a erce passion,so I already knew all about nature. Ialready knew all the little woodlandcritters, and I knew them well, their

habitat, behavior, and life and deathstruggles. And here I was furtherupping the ante as far as being anaturali

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The Lama of Appearances - Mahamudra Experiences