Akong Rinpoché Establishing Buddha-Dharma

Part Eleven: a Study Programme

With Katia Holmes interpreting, most of the texts mentioned above were taught in Samye Ling in a very intensive period in 1980 and 1981, due to a veritable cascade of eminent visits from the Tai Situpa, the Shamarpa, Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoché, Tulku Tenga Rinpoché and Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoché. Unfortunately, due to severe ill health, Katia had to stop all activities for some years soon after this and the author took on the translation duties as the above teachers returned, 1982 onwards. Samye Ling also soon received the great Kagyu scholar, the Goshir Gyaltsabpa.

Deciding that the author had enough mastery of some of these texts, Akong Rinpoché set me to teaching dharma in Samye Ling, starting with small groups in 1982 and giving my first publicised course (on the Mahayana Uttara Tantra Shastra) in 1983. Katia and myself had been, in some ways, Rinpoché’s "guinea pigs" for seeing how well Westerners might learn these teachings and then how well they would be able to pass them on. He asked each visiting teacher to give us as much private time as possible and stressed to us how important it was to receive the nectar of these teachings from such great masters. It was indeed a huge responsibility and a great blessing and pleasure to do that. As early as 1978, Katia was giving language and dharma lessons based on Gampopa’s text to the Samye Ling community.

In 1980, Rinpoché had asked us to visit whatever groups or centres (Brussels, Barcelona, Glasgow etc.) already existed in order to share the little knowledge we had but given the busyness in Samye Ling at the time, the travelling could not start until 1982. 1981 saw the publication of our translation of the root text of the Mahayana Uttara Tantra Shastra. It was a great sadness and setback when karma caught up with Katia in late 1981 and ill-health put her effectively out of public interpreting or teaching until the 1990s. Katia was much more gifted in language than myself and I would normally not have translated for visiting masters, being very occupied at that time assisting Rinpoché in a thousand and one things happening with the Samye Project getting under way. However, there was no choice and so I became an interpreter as well as a dharma teacher of sorts.

Over the 1980s, Samye Ling had several teaching visits of considerable length from Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoché and the Tai Situpa. With the Karmapa no longer present and Kalu Rinpoché more and more busy guiding his own growing network of centres, Akong Rinpoché turned to those two masters as his guides for the development of Samye Ling and, in particular, concerning what texts should be taught and translated there. Rinpoché also organised a four-month tour of Europe by the Goshir Gyaltsabpa, with the author as interpreter. In particular, the Gyaltsabpa taught Shantideva’s Entering the Bodhisattva Conduct and Mipham Rinpoché’s Entering the Ways of the Wise during his visit and the author received transmission of these texts and was authorised to teach them.

The outcome of all this was for Rinpoché to instruct me to set up Samye Ling’s first dharma training programme. It was initially intended as a ten-year training, i.e. four years of initial training, based on texts, four years of retreat and then two more years on the two post-retreat texts . Rinpoché entrusted me with the teaching of the first section: the four years of study, based on a summer school and private study of the subject-matter. The syllabus was:

Year 1: Gampopa’s Ornament of Precious Liberation, Kagyu Hagiographies

Year 2: Mipham Rinpoché’s Entering the Ways of the Wise

Year 3: Shantideva’s Entering the Way of the Bodhisattva, Jamgon Kongtrul’s Torch of Certainty

Year 4: Asanga/Maitreya’s Mahayana Uttara Tantra Shastra

Years 5-8: Traditional four-year retreat of Kagyu tap-lam.

Year 9: The IXth Gyalwa Karmapa’s Profound Inner Meaning

Year 10: Hévajra commentary (“ta-nyi”).

Alongside these main topics were teachings in Tibetan language and practical teachings related to the retreat, such as torma-making and playing ritual instruments. The first four years of pre-retreat study, open to all-comers and not uniquely future retreaters, was well-attended , not surprisingly so, as there was so little Tibetan dharma on offer in Europe at the time. Two cycles of this programme were successfully completed at Samye Ling, from 1985-1988 and from 1989 to 1992.

By 1992, Lama Yeshe Losal had not only replaced Lama Ganga in charge of the retreats but had also recently taken over responsibility for the running of Samye Ling, at Akong Rinpoché’s request, thereby freeing Rinpoché to be able to spend more time with his growing international duties. As the new Abbot, Lama Yeshe decided it unnecessary to continue the 10-year study programme, mainly for reasons related to the retreats and what would qualify someone to attend retreat. It was decided that teachings on classical Buddhist studies would still continue at Samye Ling on an ad-hoc basis, given by our own staff or visiting teachers, depending on availability, and not falling into a regular programme of topics.

Samye Ling at that time entered a new phase, one in which Lama Yeshe Losal invested his energies into fields more directly related to his own excellence, namely those of forming a larger sangha and of vigorously developing the new Holy Island Project—placing the Samye Project, with its future college, temporarily on hold. He focused on inspiring people to follow his own example of meditation and ordination, seeing that as more directly suitable not only for the future retreaters but also more generally for people staying at or coming to Samye Ling.

.....this narrative continues: Seeing the Bodhisattva Cope with Change