A DAY IN THE LIFE OF AN FPMT LAMA

Interview by Koosje der Kolk; Translated by Hans van den Bogaert

Geshe Sonam Gyaltsen was born in Lhasa, Tibet in 1941. He studied at Ganden Jangtse Monastery there and, after his exile, in India. He received his Geshe Lharampa degree in 1977. He studied also in Sarnath and taught in Ladakh until 1992, when Lama Zopa Rinpoche invited him to be resident lama at Maitreya Instituut in Holland.

My daily schedule varies greatly, to be honest, because I have no fixed time to go to sleep. I never sleep before 2 AM, so sometimes I get up at 6:30 AM, sometimes at 7:30, sometimes even 8 AM. After getting up I do my prostrations and I place the offerings on the altar, the water bowls and so on. In the morning I don’t do extensive practice; I do prayers like Six-session Guru Yoga. My main practices are at night.

Then I read texts. I really enjoy doing this. Because of this, I concentrate very much and time passes very fast. I always find many interesting things in the Buddhist texts. There are so many scriptures that for the time being I have enough to read.

In the afternoon I often try to study some English; it depends how I feel. I consider it useful to learn English. However, I’m getting older; I think I am of the age where actually I want to be practicing and preparing for death rather than learning new languages.

In the evening around 5 or 5:30 I start my prayers. That takes a long time. I have many teachers, such as His Holiness the Dalai Lama and of course the Yongdzin Rinpoches [ling Rinpoche and Trijang Rinpoche]. I have received initiations from them – Tibetan people like to receive initiations everywhere! – so I have do all the practices. I do them until well beyond midnight. I do merely the verbal recitations because I don’t know how to meditate on these profound tantric practices. Although I don’t know how to do these profound meditations, I have never hurt any person in this life, and I’ve never been jealous. I try to be a good Buddhist – but no profound meditation.

That’s my schedule for a day. If I’m not teaching Dharma, which is the reason for my stay here, I sometimes learn about the computer when I feel like it. On top of this I try to be available for people who want to ask questions.

Two weekends a month I teach the Dharma. I try not to merely teach the teachings as I have received them but to put them in a sort of Western package by thinking a great deal about the way people live here in the West, how they experience their surroundings and how things can be elucidated by examples that make sense.

The Dharma is obviously very valuable and there is a lot of wisdom in the Buddhist doctrine, but I try to make this wisdom reach people, really touch their hearts. Otherwise, if it remains merely intellectual knowledge, it will be just more luggage for them to carry around and it will not actually have the effect it is meant to have.

I have great expectations about the benefits of the Buddhist doctrine for Western people. They are very goal-oriented and have a high level of intelligence, so I have great hopes that some of them – even if it’s only one or two – will be able to practice the Dharma fully. My belief is based on the fact that Westerners tend to be very critical. They scrutinize a certain science, a certain subject, and then see whether it’s beneficial to them or not. If they find it not to be beneficial they just throw it away, and if they find it beneficial they go for it, they really try to do something with it. This strong tendency in Westerners makes me hopeful that my stay here will be fruitful.

Our main program here is the yearly Lam-rim Summer Course for two weeks, and I’ve used different texts for that. On top of that we have the study program that originally was meant to be three years but that will now take four or five years, or maybe even six. So far, I have taught Mind and Awareness, Buddhist Tenets, Grounds and Paths, Mind Transformation, and various lam-rim texts. We are doing The Bodhisattva’s Way of Life at the moment, after which we will continue with Ornament of Clear Realizations. Soon we will start Nagarjuna’s Letter to a Friend.

I have no special advice to the readers of Mandala, except to keep a positive frame of mind as much as possible and to never harm or hurt anybody. People have to work and they are very busy with that, but maybe take some time to do formal Dharma practice and to keep on studying to acquire more knowledge about this wisdom of the Buddhist way of life. But mainly I would say: keep a positive frame of mind, don’t hurt anybody, and try to be a good person.