Monks on a mini-visit here
By Chris Daley
February 18th, 2010

Democrat staff writer

“Just chill out!” is how we might say it when advising someone to slow down, relax, let go. Venerable Geshe Laram Sonom, a Tibetan Buddhist monk put it a bit differently Wednesday afternoon during a visit to the Cozmic Cafe in Placerville.

On the 10th anniversary of their annual tour to several California foothill communities, four monks of the Gaden Shartse Monastery in India presented two special ceremonies on “Healing for troubled times,” which could also be translated as “healing for troubled minds.”

The monks opened the session with several minutes of traditional sonorous chanting, essentially prayers to local deities, inviting them to join and asking permission to inhabit their “space.”

The Geshe (a title comparable perhaps to Esteemed Professor) is renowned throughout the Tibetan monastic communities exiled in India ever since China invaded and occupied Tibet in the 1950s. Tour leader and recently ordained monk Jangchub Chophel introduced the Geshe to the audience of about 75 gathered in the multi-use room above the Cozmic Cafe. Chophel, a former Southern California school teacher born John Bruna, was highlighted in a Mountain Democrat feature when the monks were in town last year. He served partly as translator and partly as interpreter during the Geshe’s “lecture.”

Describing the path a monk must take to achieve the Geshe title, Chophel said that living the monastic life isn’t quite what one may think.

“They don’t just get to sit around meditating all day,” he said. “Theirs is a very rigorous life of scholastic and academic study. They learn and discuss and debate for many hours a day, six days a week. And after 15 or 20 years, they take the exam for Geshe. It’s a very high level of achievement, and no more than two a year may advance to that status.”

Geshe Laram, speaking in heavily accented but very articulate English, thanked the audience for being there and wished them “Happy life, a life of wisdom.”

Wisdom, as he described it, is much more than an accumulation of knowledge and its use. He contrasted positive or “good” wisdom with negative or “bad” wisdom.

The latter was more clearly explained during a question-and-answer period after the presentation.

“We must have positive wisdom to heal our minds and bodies,” he explained. “Without wisdom, we cannot accomplish nor do what is right…Rude ignorance can only be healed by wisdom, and without it, parents cannot raise their children well. It is also the gift that teachers need to give to their students. That wisdom is the beginning of protection for their minds and bodies.”

The Geshe went on to connect the wisdom concept both to “natural destruction” and “man-made destruction.” Earthquakes in Haiti, tsunamis in Asia are clearly examples of natural destruction, he said. “They take the lives of human beings and animal beings, and we must use our wisdom when we respond to those events,” he said. “If we use knowledge and wisdom in the wrong way, it results in man-made destruction, and that harms humans and countries and each other’s bodies and minds.”

He used folk tales and analogies to explain positive and negative or corrupt wisdom.

“If we have a poisonous tree in our lives, we need a sharp sword to cut it down. In order to heal ourselves, we need a sharp wisdom…The same sharp wisdom can be used to get rid of fundamental ignorance and to heal our bodies, our speech and our minds.”

Chophel took the microphone and expanded on the Geshe’s words. He introduced concepts of mindfulness, living in the moment and “chilling out.”

“We don’t think about what we do every day. We go around putting our purse in the refrigerator, the computer in the microwave and our car keys some other place where we can’t find them. We need to take a moment to use our wisdom, to find what’s best for us, to think about the choices we make in our day. Being mindful, living in the moment and taking the time to think helps us get to the core root of our problems,” Chophel explained.

He suggested that a significant part of the “core root of our problems” is our attachment, to things, to others, to the notion that we are all independent rather than interdependent.

“This is my car. These are my clothes. The stronger we attach ourselves to other things, the greater the negative effects on our body and mind. And our ignorance, our negative wisdom, causes us to be angry and frustrated.”

Geshe Laram resumed with a story about the fish that keeps trying and trying to “catch that certain insect” and eventually it is caught by a clever fisherman.

“Supermarkets and malls fool us again and again, just like the fish is fooled,” he said.

In response to a question about how to deal with negative or toxic behavior from others in our lives, Chophel noted that “those who cause us the greatest grief are our greatest cause of enlightenment. Without that practice, we can’t progress, because ultimately, it’s not them, it’s our own ’stuff’ we must deal with. The exception is my ex-wife,” he quipped, drawing an audience round of guffaws.

The Geshe clarified that wisdom alone is not enough, that it can result in laziness, but when enthusiasm is added to wisdom, it becomes a powerful force for our use.

“Death is our last challenge,” he said. “We must be virtuous and have the habit of a positive mind, so that it is there at the time of death. And we must be careful to surround ourselves with people of a positive mind.”

Buddhist tenets teach that after death comes another life and another life until we achieve a state of enlightenment, also referred to as emptiness, which allows us to quit our earthly existence. And Chophel noted that “keeping that positive wisdom at death will have a huge imprint on our next life.”

“We need the wisdom of listening, of contemplation and meditation. The wise take time to think about life every day.”

The Gaden Shartse monks will be in Grass Valley for the next few days where they will put on a comprehensive program of teachings and healings and create one of their sacred sand Mandalas. They are optimistic that another, larger group will return to Placerville, perhaps later this year.

E-mail Chris Daley at cdaley@mtdemocrat.net or call (530) 344-5063.