What’s Next?

All of which is to say that, despite my not being a joiner, I’m recommending you consider treading this path with at least one other fellow journeyer, and going to in-person retreats whenever you can. All of that will give you a huge boost, and continually refresh your practice. It’s easy to look online for retreats. But how might you find someone to practice with regularly, to keep your practice alive and progressing? You could look at our Toolkit for ideas, and contact us in case there’s someone in your area, or at least online, who’s looking for someone too. Or talk a friend into it! Here’s hoping you find support for your practice in Sangha!

A whole lot, as it happens. Once you’ve spent about a year doing Shamata, Vipassana, and the Four Boundless Qualities, you’re ready for a group of practices called Ngöndro, meaning “Go-Before” or “Preliminary.” You’re probably thinking, “It seems like it’s going after.” There are a couple of reasons for thinking of them as preliminary. First, once you incorporate a bit at a time into your daily practice, you’ll still finish your session with Shamata/Vipassana, so these “Preliminary Practices” will indeed “go before.” Second, the five Preliminary Practices, altogether, take you through a microcosm of the whole Vajrayana path to enlightenment—each of the major stages in essentialized form.

For the rest of this Ancient Wisdom for Our Times series we’ll focus on the Ngöndro. By the end, you’ll have an introduction and beginning practice guidelines for all of its stages. Though it will be helpful to have them in hand, you’ll absolutely need to go to in-person retreats, at that level. The Ngöndro is the stage at which Vajrayana moves beyond the practices that all branches of Buddhism share. The medicine gets increasingly strong—kind of like moving to prescription medicine or very strong herbs—and you need an experienced doctor/herbalist to benefit from them and avoid bad side e ects. My purpose in writing this series is to give you a guidebook or beginning textbook for the Ngöndro, to refer to as you progress through it under the guidance of a qualified lama.

At the end of Book 2, I talked about the process of finding a qualified lama. The Buddha created the three Yanas, or branches of Buddhism, because he was aware that we’re all di erent and need di erent approaches. This is really true within Vajrayana. One lineage

Lama Tsomo about to lead students in a practice at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco

or another might appeal more to you; one lama or another might feel more like home to you; one sangha or another as well. The good news about America in particular and modern life in general is that we have a whole smorgasbord to choose from.

A Few Cautionary Words

The bad news is that we have that whole smorgasbord so we can get confused, waste time hopping from one “dish”—one path of awakening to the next—without making forward progress in any of them; or worst of all, mixing them together to create mush. Each of them has their own particular liturgies and subtle di erences that work within their own systems. The benefit will be lost if you try to mix and match. That works fine with couches and pillows (though not always) but really doesn’t work at this level of practice.

Root Lama

One di erence between Vajrayana and the other branches of Buddhism is that we use the Lama, the Guru, in a particular way. At the risk of stating the obvious, we have trouble seeing our own Buddha Nature, or we wouldn’t be going through all this! Fortunately, we humans have At the risk of stating this tendency to project unseen/ the obvious, we have unconscious parts of ourselves onto trouble seeing our own others. This can be terrible when it Buddha Nature, or takes the form of scapegoating, as we wouldn’t be going we all know. It can be wonderful if through all this! we use it to bring our Buddha Nature into view. When we enter into a Root Lama/student relationship, we and the lama agree that we’re going to project our own Buddha Nature onto them until we can fully know and own it ourselves. I hasten to add that in every single session, we go through the process of projecting our buddha nature onto our Root Lama and taking it back into ourselves, sitting awhile in the unity of what we projected and our own true essence. Eventually we know our own Buddha Nature well, and can live from that.

The other reason why the lama is essential for us in Vajrayana is that the methods become like increasingly stronger medicines. Once you get into prescription medi-

In every single session, we cine, you need a qualified go through the process of doctor. For really strong projecting our buddha nature medicine, you need to keep onto our Root Lama and going to the doctor for testtaking it back into ourselves, ing and tweaking. The other sitting awhile in the unity thing is that, since it’s our of what we projected and flawed ego that’s working on our own true essence. our flawed ego, and our flawed mind working on our flawed mind, we need an experienced lama to see us from outside ourselves, and give us advice or a nudge in a needed direction.

As you might be guessing, this spiritual mentorship is a profound relationship. In future books we’ll explore in much more depth how to do that relationship from our side, in practice as well as between

sessions. If we do it correctly, we can use it to grow by leaps and bounds, reaching the point of living from our own true nature much more quickly. If we do it wrong, we can end up confused, miserable, and o track. While Vajrayana is a very e cient and direct path, as with any strong medicine, you have to approach with respect and skill. If you see the Root Lama/student relationship in much the way I’ve described above, you’ll be on the right track to getting the benefits without stepping into the pitfalls. And, as with anything in life, it’s always essential to use your good sense and trust your gut. Remember, blind faith is not a virtue in this path!

Just to be clear, although I’m an ordained lama, I’m not a candidate to be your Root Lama. Fortunately you have better options. In Namchak we have Tulku Sangak Rinpoche and his brother, Namchak Khen Rinpoche. They are far and away more qualified for you to project your Buddha Nature onto, and they’re more experienced with guiding students than I am. As with any projection, you’re looking for the most likely projection screen. That would be someone who has used these methods enough that they’ve purified their own vision and minds to be worthy projection screens.

I speak English and can introduce these stages of practice in terms that make sense to modern Westerners. Having been at this awhile, perhaps longer than you, I can act as a big sister. I’ve been o ering that in these books, and in live, online meditation coaching calls. But with such great projection screens as those two lamas, why not go with the best? In your daily sessions, it doesn’t matter if they don’t speak English! You also don’t have to hang out with them a lot. Just as people project onto musicians and actors, we don’t even have to meet someone to have a strong projection on them. But with these lamas you can actually meet and get teachings from them. I highly recommend experiencing their teachings. Though they each have their own style, both are accessible, clear, and knowledgeable, not to mention entertaining!

Maybe you feel you need to go through the Vajrayana section of the smorgasbord, to see which lineage and lama best suits you. By all means! Once you’ve decided, and it turns out to be someone else, you’ll need to go with their liturgy and instructions for their system of practices.