May-June 2000

MONKS AND NUNS OF THE FPMT

Argentinean monk Ven. Lobsang Rinchen was given getsul ordination by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1999, and has often helped with Spanish translations at teachings in India and Spain. More recently he was requested by Lama Zopa Rinpoche to go to Centro Yamantaka in Colombia, South America. He spoke to Mandala while on retreat in Spain.

I am from Argentina, and was born in 1967 in Buenos Aires. When I turned 20 I went to university to study law, and after my first year I decided to leave Argentina. I went to work as a photographer in South America for two years, after which I went to Venezuela, where I saw 3,000 people killed in a huge revolution. It was a huge shock to me.

I left South America in 1989 to go to Europe, where I did many things – writing short stories and poetry mainly. After that, for the next six years I was mainly in Indonesia and Thailand, and after a while decided to go to India.

Many things happened to make me decide to go there, one of them being the suggestion of a friend of mine who had died. I had been in a hospital the same time as him in Bangkok, and he had spent a long time in Dharamsala. He told me, “When you don’t want to go around the world anymore, go to Dharamsala.” In 1993, I went to India, straight to Dharamsala. It was at Losar (Tibetan New Year), so I met His Holiness the Dalai Lama for the first time.

I went to a meditation course at Tushita, and felt a very strong connection with the teachings and the philosophy. I was very impressed with the Western nun from California – Sangye Khadro – who led the course. She was very moving, and was really embodying what I was hearing about in the teachings from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, especially the compassionate attitude. After His Holiness and Sangye Khadro, ever since then I have been exploring Dharma.

I met Lama Zopa for the first time in Spain in 1994 in O.Sel.Ling. Rinpoche was giving a talk about the nature of mind. All this time I was with a woman, Kaatje, so we have been together for nine years. She is a nun now; we took rabjung ordination with Denma Lochö Rinpoche in Dharamsala. Afterwards we took getsul ordination with His Holiness in 1999.

It was great to get ordained with her because we have been together for a very long time and have a very close relationship. But then we started to understand that sooner or later you have to separate from people; we had been traveling with each other so much we had become a bit dependent on each other. It was very important for us to develop this understanding of having to separate.

For a long time I felt that I would not be able to find a true cause of happiness in this world. I started to understand that whatever you do in this world, whatever you do with other people, it is the cause of suffering unless one has reached the state of total renunciation. Normally it’s very difficult to establish true relationships with people unless one has reached a certain degree of understanding about the nature of things.

For many years without talking with each other about this (because it’s difficult to think about that) Kaatje and I requested Lama Zopa Rinpoche for his advice about whether we should get ordained. He sent us a letter and said it was the best thing to do.

I’ve been ordained two years now, and I don’t find it difficult to be ordained at all. Of course, in the beginning, it was challenging – the idea of breaking up with someone and starting a new life. This was not difficult, but was challenging. Maybe what is most difficult is that still I do not know exactly (and I think it takes a long time) what is the place of an individual monk in the Sangha, in the whole group.

I feel that at the beginning you have to try to understand that you are not isolated, you are part of a big group of people that is working together. If you are not part of a monastery (like I have mainly been doing retreat) you are still not working alone. Especially with Mahayana you have to develop the feeling that you are all the time working with a network of people. The energy is not isolated; when you go into retreat you are in retreat with all the other people that are moving the same energy in the same direction. At the beginning I had the feeling of not being aware of it because I didn’t understand what the meaning of Sangha is. Little by little you develop the idea of what it really means to be a monk.

The most fulfilling thing about being a monk is having the understanding that basically there is nothing in samsara (or rather, with our ordinary attitude in samsara) that will bring happiness. Being a monk you are aware that you have taken vows; moment after moment you remember that you have given up many things because you understand that this makes every moment of life meaningful. Every day, every second, every moment you are leaving something behind, and every moment you can choose between doing things and not doing things. Every time you remember that you are creating merit, so being a monk gives the feeling all the time that you are doing something with your life. Also, if I am happy as a monk and enjoy it, it is a statement to the whole world that you can be happy without needing the things people ordinarily think bring happiness. You are happy being a monk and are able to live life without frustrations. You can enjoy that you are leaving behind so many things that are useless. It is an understanding and statement that happiness can be found somewhere else, in another way.

I am very happy to be a monk. When I took ordination I had the feeling that somehow by taking ordination, I would feel much closer in my relationship with the gurus. For example, I took ordination with His Holiness. Every time I look at His Holiness I know that he holds the three vows, he is a gelong, and I feel I am completely following the path of the Buddha.

I feel there are many different ways people can make their lives in ordination; some people study, some work, some people do retreat. In my case I think making retreat is very important, because I feel that by studying and practicing one can see the benefits of the Buddha’s teachings. Not the immediate benefit, but one can see the importance of moving in a good direction.

If you’re in retreat and have time to analyze many things, make some purification practices, and maybe there’s a little more concentration than before, then one can see how taking ordination is not just an act of faith, but is the basis for developing concentration. A conviction grows and you become very happy, because you are doing something that your mind knows is working. If you have doubt in your mind it makes it very difficult. Studying, practicing, meditation, the daily practice, I think these all are very important.