true you’re very learned, but you’re too proud!” and he mocked me. One day he
said not just once, but again and again, “It’s no use being a great scholar. You need
realization. Thinking you’re very learned will only harm that, so it would probably
be best if you stopped your textual teaching.” It made me think that I should offer a
pledge to practice, so I asked Rinpoche, “Would it be best to do a one-year Direct
Crossing [togel] retreat, or a one-year long retreat reciting the entire Nyingma
tantras? Please tell me, Rinpoche.” “Both are excellent, so do both,” he replied.
“Which one should I do first?” I asked. He seemed displeased and the next day said
again, “Teaching texts to students has spoiled you!”
I then thought to myself, “Before, when I knew nothing at all, and Khen
Rinpoche Dawai Wozer told me to teach the dharma from texts, I said to him, ‘I
don’t know anything myself, so how can I teach?’ and he replied, ‘When I first
came to India, I wasn’t as learned as you,’ and he encouraged me and gave me
confidence. As a result, for about seventeen years, I have been teaching fifty or so
monks without a break. It seems that by now I have fulfilled Khen Rinpoche’s
instruction, and it is time to fulfill Dungse Rinpoche’s command.”
So I said to Rinpoche, “From now on, I vow not to teach even a single verse of
dharma.” For a little while, Rinpoche didn’t say anything. Then he said, “If I tell
you not to teach the dharma, won’t I have negative karma? I’m not saying that. I’m
saying you need to abandon the pride of thinking ‘I’m so learned.’”
Later on that evening, after we had made the feast offering, and I had returned
to my room, I sat in bed thinking. “Today, something really shocking occurred. I
wonder what will happen if Rinpoche really makes me vow not to teach anymore?
If I give up teaching the dharma, my life’s work will be at an end. Why? Because
the source of funding of the monastery is the West and Taiwan and other places
where I teach the dharma. If I don’t teach there, I’ll stop going there. Likewise, if I
stop teaching the monks at the monastery, even if I stay there, my whole purpose
of being there will be over. I’ll also have to give up explaining what to adopt and
what to abandon, virtue and vice and moral conduct at the Vajra Guru Mantra
Accumulation ceremonies and other dharma gatherings outside Humla. I’ll have
no work, and it’ll be like I’m already old. From today on, I will have nothing to do
other than stay in an uninhabited retreat place, and I would be committed to
staying there for the rest of my life.”
Pondering what would happen, I stayed awake for many hours. I felt very
nervous, and when I thought about it carefully, I saw that, just as Rinpoche had
said, I had a very strong attachment to teaching the meaning of texts. Even though
I believed I was not proud about being learned, as Rinpoche had said, it became
clear that I was actually so strongly attached to texts that I could not bear to part
from them. As a result, I understood that whether it was attachment to virtue or
vice, it was still attachment and a direct obscuration of the dharmakaya. From
then on, seeing my own faults, my attachment to texts decreased. The students of
Dungse Rinpoche’s lineage have an amazing understanding and quality.
chris devlin
(Chris Devlin)
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