Behave
Like A Buddha Until You Become One
The Austin Student - Daily News Paper
November 30, 2005
By Emily Starbuck Gerson
On
the evening of Nov. 28, the international Buddhist figure Lama Ole Nydahl
was in Austin to lecture at the University of Texas’ Jester Auditorium.
Lama Ole is one of the few Westerners fully qualified as a Lama and meditation
master in the Karma Kagyu Buddhist Tradition.
He and
his wife Hannah went on a honeymoon in Nepal in 1968, where they met their
first Buddhist teacher.
They
Lama Ole Nydahl
were profoundly influenced by him, and went on to study with many important
spiritual leaders and dedicated their lives to studying and teaching Buddhism.
For the last 32 years, Lama Ole has been traveling the world to teach,
in a different city almost every day. His wife is often by his side when
she is not busy translating for the highest Buddhists in the lineage.
While he often strayed from his lecture title, “Unconditional Happiness,”
he did offer great amounts of insight on a variety of topics. He was funny,
personable, and wise. He began his lecture on the idea of happiness. There
is relative happiness, he says, which is temporary and usually comes from
material things. Then there is absolute happiness, which comes from the
mind and within. He also related happiness to the concept of space. He
explained that while many people viewed space as nothingness, it is actually
something – and something to seek comfort and happiness in. While
our physical bodies and thoughts change over time, our minds and space
remain consistent. We are born out of space, and we die back into space
and become one with it again. Space connects all of us.
He covered many different ideas, such as the concept of guru. In Western
culture, the idea of having gurus seems undemocratic and servile, and
unnecessary to go through simply to be a good Buddhist. He explained that,
essentially, we shouldn’t have to do things that feel false to us
– we shouldn’t have to grovel. We can take shortcuts in this
area because we know that the
cultures
that created a lot of these rituals had so much more time than we do.
Another interesting point he made is that while Buddhism seems hard to understand in the West, we have to remember that thousands of years ago when it was in its prime, those Eastern societies that practiced it were the high culture. At that time our Western cultures were still dominated by ax-wielding barbarians!
He also touched on the idea that we need to get rid of ignorance to make way for compassion, and also many times said that we should all behave like Buddhas until we become one.
Diamond Way Buddhist Center of Austin
He said that the main difference between world religions is that Western religions are mostly about faith, which means believing in a god, and the Eastern religions are about experience – not believing that there is a god, but that you can become one, or like one. We can all be a Buddha.
After the lecture, Lama Ole had a lengthy question-and-answer session. One woman asked about the contradiction between the concept of karma, which is essentially causality and says you get what you deserve, and the Buddhist desire to put an end to suffering. She asked how people can reconcile their compassion for these people, knowing that they technically brought this upon themselves through past actions and karma. In a thought-provoking answer, Lama Ole answered that there was no contradiction – that people create their lives for themselves and regardless of whether they had good or bad intentions, the actions they have chosen for their lives result in certain consequences. The best we can do is have compassion.
Other questions were asked about proper meditation position, chakras about the differences between different types of Buddhism and many others. After the question-and-answer section, Lama Ole led a guided meditation. He had us repeat the Buddha Refuge, which explained that the thing you can take the best refuge in is the mind and meditation. Everything else will die, change or fall away.
Lama Ole was an interesting character. Slightly unorthodox and humorous, he touched upon issues such as sexuality and the war in Iraq, and thus made this three-hour session quite interesting.
I was in the front row with a tape deck recording his speech, and was so close to him that he could hear every time my tape ran out and needed to be flipped over. And each time he heard the machine click, without me asking, he stopped his entire lecture and waited for me to flip over my tape. As he said himself, he is a man of compassion.
Lama Ole with Wife Hannah Giving
Blessing after the Lecture
Diamond Way Buddhist Center of Austin (512) 371-9803
e-mail: austin@diamondway.org