March 2000
In This Issue
THE
FOUR PILLARS OF BUDDHISM -
<Part I>
<Part II>
Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
DZONGSAR
INSTITUTE CONSECRATION CEREMONIES
A
TRIBUTE TO NYOSHUL KHENPO JAMYANG DORJE
TALES
OF A VAGABOND -
INTERVIEW WITH JAKOB LESCHLY
TALES
OF A VAGABOND
INTERVIEW WITH JAKOB LESCHLY
In July 1999 Jakob Leschly, a long-time student of Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, visited Australia. Jakob is a Tibetan scholar and has completed a three-year retreat in Dordogne, France. The Gentle Voice caught up with him while he was here.
You were born in Denmark, I believe. Could you tell us a little about how you grew up?
Well, I was born just outside Copenhagen. My dad worked for the army, so we moved around quite a bit. My parents were good people, so I grew up without a lot of different anxieties. I was interested in the human mind early on. When I was about 14, I began to wonder about these big, existential questions, and pretty much then decided I'd become a vagabond or a tramp, also being aware that I would have to make the necessary steps then, and that later it would be difficult to "disentangle" myself. So when I was 17, I figured I was old enough to go ahead with it, dropped out of high school and left home. I was pretty inquisitive and somehow or other I stumbled across some people who'd been to Asia and studied Buddhism.
And that was your first contact with Buddhism?
Yes. I ended up taking refuge with Kalu Rinpoche when he came to Denmark in 1974. And less than a year later I went on a pilgrimage to India. There I met Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche in Kalimpong at Tibetan New Year in 1975, and a few weeks later in Darjeeling, where he was presiding at the cremation of Kangyur Rinpoche - Pema Wangyal Rinpoche and Jigme Khyentse Rinpoche's father. I had really liked Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, so I requested if I could become his student and he accepted me. So I went and stayed in the East to study with him, and came to attend several of the great empowerment series that he was giving during those years. To say "study" is perhaps an exaggeration. I would occasionally request and receive some individual teachings, but mainly it was being around him, sitting in the temple with him for four to six hours every day for months on end, and seeing what was going on, picking up on the atmosphere. His Holiness was mainly giving transmissions to the great tulkus and lamas. Even so, Dilgo Khyentse was incredibly accessible and welcoming, and I would go and have little exchanges with him. While I felt tremendous awe, his warmth and humour drew me in. Kind of like being adopted by a huge, friendly lion - you somehow expect you're going to be eaten, but then you find yourself being cleaned and patted. You felt so accepted by him. That was also when I met Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche.
Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche must have been quite young then?
He was around 16. I attended a teaching on the Bodhicharyavatara (The Way of the Bodhisattva) he was giving to a bunch of Westerners. He was pretty witty already then. He gave me the name "Wake Up"! To everybody who was attending the teaching he would give a specific nickname and they were all pretty spot on! Then I saw Dzongsar Khyentse again after my retreat, when he would come to see Dilgo Khyentse at La Sonnerie, His Holiness's house near Chanteloube.
And that was the retreat that was supervised by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche?
His Holiness supervised all the retreats in Dordogne for the following ten years, until he passed away, visiting at least once a year, sometimes more. At the time we started, His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche was living just a mile down the road from the retreat centre, so he came and closed the retreat, and opened it later, and also during the retreat came and taught from time to time.
What
a double blessing! What are your strongest memories of these two great
masters?
Obviously what someone like me perceives of such great beings is like
the perspective an ant might have of a great mountain. My memories of
them are of the tiny portion of their qualities I was able to perceive:
their kindness, humour, incredible knowledge and insights. Like I said
before, Dilgo Khyentse had this intense, friendly grandeur, and also this
absence of cultural boundaries - his sense of humour was so universal,
so sophisticated, and so intimate. Sometimes I would go and sit with him
in the morning at La Sonnerie, when he was doing his practice, pretty
much not speaking until after breakfast. He would look at me as I was
sitting practising and then mimic me, or make scary faces, or call me
over and then slap me, or dig his long nails into my forehead. But it
was never frivolous or silly, and it had such a sense of true kindness
and profundity.
His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche was from Central Tibet, where it's a bit more formal around great lamas, and I would usually only see him when he taught. He seemed to me to be amazingly relaxed and profound, and somehow you felt what he said was incredibly important.
What have you got out of the retreat that's become a part of you now?
I don't know if my case is that interesting - I can attest to the fact that I daydreamed a lot, and produced perhaps close to one tonne of manure. Anyway, we had a lot of exposure to both study and meditation. It was really a good experience, of course thanks to Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche and Dudjom Rinpoche, but also very much thanks to our retreat master, Pema Wangyal Rinpoche. It was kept in a format that was very traditional, but Pema Wangyal Rinpoche also accommodated to the fact that we were Westerners, making sure neither to indulge our habits nor provide us with some new Dharma credentials. He kept a very good balance between too tight and too loose.
How did you actually pick up the Tibetan language?
The little I know I picked up from being around Tibetans, and being curious about the texts of the teachings. I have some good friends who are translators, Erik Schmidt and Mattieu Ricard, as well as all the people now working in the Padmakara Translation Group. So it just seemed like a normal thing that you would get acquainted with Tibetan texts and attempt to read them, and then gradually they made sense. So it was really nothing structured, but just more out of curiosity.
I believe you've spent some time at Sea to Sky Retreat Centre?
Well, I've stayed there in 1995 and 1997, and visited at other times. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche had me make a rough translation of the Madhyamika Avatara, which he then used as a basis for some of his teaching. So I attended his teachings on Madhyamaka at Sea to Sky Retreat Centre in 1995, staying five months. Rinpoche would be in retreat, but he'd come down every afternoon and give a little teaching. And then I stayed there for some months in 1997, when Rinpoche was beginning to work on The Cup. We also did the "Distortion" article then.
From what you're saying you're not really based anywhere? You're doing the vagabond thing.
I stay in touch with Rinpoche and he guides me, telling me to do this, that or the other. I've done some translation of some of the texts that he's taught, staying at his institute in Bir, India, and the last few years I've been in the U.S. For two years now Rinpoche has had me teaching a little and that's how I'm here!
As a Westerner on the path, have you got any advice for other practitioners?
Well, for whatever it's worth, my advice is to initially trust the Dharma enough to really investigate it. Because if you trust the Dharma enough to be sceptical about it, you'll actually discover the Dharma is brilliant, and very much attuned to our existence as humans and to our minds. Once you have such a basis of trust in the teaching, you can use meditation under the guidance of an authentic teacher to set about clearing up confusion, arrive at some clear appreciation of your inherent goodness and begin the path to enlightenment. Then to continue to practise wholeheartedly is my advice.
Is there anything else you'd like to say in conclusion?
Read
the writings of Chögyam Trungpa!
